Google Apps Not Yet a Threat to Microsoft Office

Posted by: Rachael King on June 08, 2009

Today, there are more competitors than ever to Microsoft Office. Yet, it appears that most companies aren’t making the switch just yet. Last week, Forrester Research released a survey of 152 IT decision-makers, where nearly 92 percent support either Office 2007 or Office 2003 while only 3.3 percent use Google Apps. Sun StarOffice accounts for another 2.6 percent and 1.9 percent use Lotus Symphony.

“The bottom line is that Microsoft Office works, and it works really well for most companies – maybe almost too well for those still using 2003 or earlier,” Forrester analyst Sheri McLeish told CIO Magazine.

This surprises me since I’ve interviewed a number of companies that have dabbled in Office alternatives. In August 2008, Manesh Patel, CIO at Sanmina-SCI, said that about 1,000 employees of the electronics manufacturing company used Google Apps in place of Microsoft tools. He estimated that the number of Google Apps users could rise to 10,000 or about 25 percent of the total workforce by 2011.

Some of the earliest adopters of Google Apps were small companies. In April 2007, serial entrepreneur Peter Yared chose to use Google Apps for his social media app company now called Transpond. Aside from saving cash, he liked the ability to easily collaborate with colleagues who were scattered in different locations. Yared says his 10-person company still uses Microsoft Word for documents with many images and also for longer documents because they need the “track changes” feature.

This makes me wonder if other companies are also experimenting with Office alternatives without giving up Office entirely. Are there features that simply haven’t been replicated in competing products yet?

For the record, I haven’t had any problems with the 2002 Microsoft Office suite I use on my work PC. I don’t know how much my employer paid for this package but I would hazard to guess that my IT department could have found less expensive alternatives.

Have you switched or are you thinking about switching to an Office alternative? If so, why?