White Stratus Finds Google Apps Gaining Share of Enterprise Software Market

Online, March 4, 2011 (Newswire.com) - White Stratus polled over 2000 enterprises in the US with more than 250 employees found that on average almost 1 in 5 of them were now running the cloud-based Google Apps solution in their organizations rather than the traditional Microsoft enterprise software.ArticleA data data study by White Stratus shows many large enterprises turning away from Microsoft and turning onto Google Apps. The study polled over 2000 enterprises in the US with more than 250 employees and found that on average, 7% of them were now running the cloud-based Google Apps solution in their organizations.

The leading industry to take up the Google Apps product suite was the education sector, where nearly one quarter of the organizations polled were using Google. Other key industries making the switch to Google solutions which were leading the move were utilities (10.4%), Real Estate (9.1%) and Professional Services (9.1%)

According to Tim Drury, CEO White Stratus, it is understandable that Google Apps has been so successful in grabbing market share in a relatively short period of time. "Enterprises are attracted to Google Apps by extremely low pricing, high levels of reliability and innovative new features that allow organizations to change the way they work", says Drury who was a Partner with consulting firm Accenture, spent years helping large organizations with complex IT initiatives.

There were some industries however, such as Finance (5.4%) and Healthcare (4.2%) that was showing more resistance to Google's cloud offerings. Says Drury "These industries are heavily regulated and there are still some concerns about whether cloud-based solutions can work for them. The Healthcare industry for example is subject to HIPAA/HITECH regulations that strictly govern where and how private health information can be stored, which has slowed the adoption of new cloud technologies".

The study also showed that while smaller organizations were most likely to make the switch, 5.5% of large enterprises with more than 10,000 employees are already using Google Apps, suggesting that the Search Giant is increasingly being seen as having a viable enterprise solution.

Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead at Google in San Francisco (alternative: Anthony Chesterfield, SVP Professional Services at White Stratus) commented that "larger organizations are starting to accept that Google Apps can not only save them significant cost, but can help them become more efficient, and deliver a much needed competitive edge in today's challenging market".

As Google continues to take market share from enterprise software titan Microsoft, the lines are being drawn in a battle for cloud supremacy, that will likely rage for the next decade. Although Microsoft offers a competing cloud-based product BPOS (in the process of being relaunched as Office 365), the two Microsoft cash cows Google threatens the most are Windows and Office. Those companies and larger enterprises opting to 'Go Google' typically move completely away from Microsoft products as they become more confident that Google Apps is the best choice. This may indicate a shifting and future decline in revenues for the Redmond-based software industry leader, if Google Apps adoption continues increasing.