Microsoft Office/SharePoint 2010 and Google Apps: Skinning The Same Cat?
Microsoft would love for us to believe that SharePoint 2010 and Office 2010 are so completely superior to Google’s Apps offerings that businesses would be foolish to adopt Apps over a Microsoft-centric solution. In the past, Microsoft users haven’t really been compelled to take on their desktop offerings, and while Office 2007 was excellent, many organizations didn’t feel the upgrade from 2003 was a must-have. But now with Windows 7, Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 there seem to be more reasons to upgrade or potentially adopt/grow a Microsoft ecosystem.
Google, on the other hand, has a platform for development around enterprise collaboration and has opened all of its APIs to Google Apps, allowing developers to create a variety of applications that leverage the cloud-based, collaborative features of Apps. Developers are provided with sophisticated tools to extend the capabilities of Apps, suggesting that organizations could build their own powerful applications within the framework of Google Apps (just as Microsoft shops can within the framework of SharePoint).
There are definitely things that Google needs to do better to meet the needs of more complex organizations. More granular rights, roles and permissions for groups and individuals is an absolute must and needs to happen ASAP if Google wants to counter many of Microsoft’s Google-isn’t-ready-for-the-enterprise arguments.
Ultimately, whether Microsoft Office and SharePoint 2010 or Google Apps works best for your organization, you have to see which platform works best for your processes and business rules. Google Apps and Microsoft SharePoint 2010 may be taking two different approaches, but they are about the same thing: getting work done.
No commentsiNet.Invoices Optimizes SAP’s ERP A Fraction of The Price
For all their clout in the ERP market, SAP has had some trouble recently, mostly due to their plans to increase maintenance and licensing fees and their current lack of a general cloud-based solution. ERP-Link Corporation uses SAP’s situation to their advantage, creating SAP-Microsoft interoperability solutions; most recently, they released iNet.Invoices, a Dynamic Business Application allowing SAP users to optimize and automate invoice management for a lower cost.
With iNet.Invoices, companies running SAP for Accounts Payable and Logistics can run automated invoice management by leveraging Microsoft SharePoint Server, which provides rich document management, and workflow and Office interfaces. More specifically, the application verifies information in real-time about vendors, orders, and goods received against a user’s SAP system, and through SharePoint they can engage the information through Office apps.
iNet.Invoices optimizes at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions, which is a timely offering given the state of the economy, but also considering SAP’s current pricing. Business ByDesign, their SaaS offering, won’t be generally available until next year, and in the meantime, their on-premise products (which are already more costly by nature) are about to see rising prices.
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