Genentech chooses Google Apps over Microsoft

“It’s ludicrous that cloud computing is taking over the world,” Ellison quoted during Oracle’s annual shareholders meeting last October.

South San Francisco’s Genentech 16,300 employees have switched to Google Apps for their email, and limited use of Google’s Documents and Spreadsheets. Google Apps Premier edition is $50 per user per year, which means and additional $815,000 to Google’s deep pockets, instead of Microsoft (or Genentech’s Senior Exchange Administrators).

The term “cloud computing” can mean several things: No more maintenance of mail servers and your MX records. No more Exchange, no more W2K3 server licenses, no Server and SAN hardware, and sadly, no Senior Exchange Administrators. At a higher lever, that means no Data Centers, no air conditioning headaches, and no worries of power outages from brown outs & black outs.

Genentech’s email will be 100% Google Apps, but it sounds like they still want to retain the use of MS Word & Excel as a parallel run. It makes sense as they already have the licenses for it.

Plus, they can continue to use Outlook client (in POP or IMAP mode), or the Gmail’s web interface. Both options are supported, so email can easily be retrieved at home or on the road.

But everyone has Blackberries these days, right? With Gmail and Google Apps, a separate Java based email client is available, with the “conversation mode” or threaded feature, which makes correspondence easier to manage.

On top if hosting their MX record, Google Apps Premier edition services include email anti-virus, anti-spam, archiving, and SSL access via HTTPS. Shared Calendars are quite easy to manage as it superimposes appointments, rather than a separate side-by-side window like Microsoft Outlook.

The irony of Cloud Computing is you are trading away your dependencies on your servers for your Internet connection. Old school System Administrators would say it is better to have local servers in case the network goes down. Plus you can always email your colleague a 20Mb PowerPoint slide without choking the network. Why send data over a T1 or 10 Megabit line when you have Gigabit Ethernet at work? Of course System Administrators are going to say that… they want to keep their jobs!

It should be noted that Genentech’s Chief Executive, Arthur Levinson, sits on Google’s board of directors. Whether that had a factor in the decision making (or cheque signing) is behind closed doors.

2009 will see a major shift in a lot of companies thinking outside the box to save a few bucks.

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About Jimson Lee
Jimson is a freelance industry analyst, with over 25 years experience in the IT industry. Prior to joining CRMHelpDeskSoftware, he spent 4 years as a Senior Consultant at Sierra Systems Group, part of Golden Gate Capital, a leading private equity firm with $9 billion in capital under management. Jimson currently resides in Rome, Italy.