Capgemini to offer Google Apps to enterprise clients

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 12 September 2007 12:17

Business IT - Technology

Capgemini adds: "Having the ability to share, review, and edit data in a collaborative environment on the Web naturally serves the needs of Capgemini's enterprise clients with multiple facilities, global locations and distributed employees."

The move was welcomed, but with some reservations by consultancy Ovum which said: "An important element of Capgemini's services here is the archiving and storage of e-mail for compliance. (Google itself does not offer this service, though it is in the process of buying Postini which does.) "

However on the downslide, Ovum added: "Our main objection is that Google has just gone with the existing model of documents - with separate word-processing, spreadsheet and graphical/presentation modules. As we've said elsewhere, we think the world is ready for something better."

Ovum also notes that: "the applications on offer from Google are not as fully-functioned as those from Microsoft and IBM. The word processor in particular is pretty lightweight. Secondly, there is no off-line capability with Google Docs, and most laptop users would expect to want to edit documents while on the move.

On a more positive note, Ovum says that "Google Apps will get [enterprises] off the upgrade cycle. No need to upgrade the hardware, operating systems, servers and desktop software to upgrade to the latest office suite - all you need are desktops with network connections and browsers."

This would seem to be a two-edged sword for Capgemini: Capgemini Global Outsourcing's desktop offering makes revenue from managing and implementing all these upgrades. On this score, Ovum says: "desktop management has become a bit of a commodity that generates thin margins. Capgemini also thinks Google Apps is helping to differentiate its desktop management service offering from competitors - it will, but probably not for very long as this is unlikely to remain an exclusive partnership."