Google Enterprise press event today at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco
Google convened the press to a San Francisco hotel earlier today to discuss an unusual topic for the mostly consumer focused company: the enterprise market.
Instead of Google’s enterprise president Dave Girouard, I could actually very well picture Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff or another enterprise software exec doing the same pitch.
Girouard confirmed Google’s long term commitment to the enterprise space. The Google Apps initiative (Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contacts…) started a little over 5-years ago – Google is 10-years old – and have so far attracted 1.75 million businesses – with dozens of them with more than 1000 employees – and totaling more than 15 million active users.
Girouard also confirmed that Google’s enterprise business is worth several hundreds of thousand dollars and is profitable.
Three companies that deployed Google Apps extensively were present at the meeting: Genentech, Avago — the first company with over $1.5 billion in revenue to use Google Apps suite – and Morgans Hotel group, the owner of the Clift Hotel in which the event was held.
According to Girouard, companies are adopting Google Apps because:
- It’s 3 to 20 times cheaper. The smaller the organisation, the bigger the gap between Microsoft’s and Google’s prices. Simply because Microsoft would offer bigger discounts to large companies. Google just charge $50/month per employee no matter the size of the company;
- Google’s cloud service offiering is more reliable than if a company would deploy it internally. “Failure is not an option,” said Girouard;
- It’s constantly enhanced with new features. Much faster than for traditional enterprise apps.
More on Google’s enterprise announcement (Google Apps Sync for Outlook) on a related post.
And here’s a video excerpt of Girouard presentation today:
