Daily Debrief: Google looks to the cloud Video

Daily Debrief: Google looks to the cloud Video Transcript

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>> This is the cnetnews.com daily debrief. I'm Charlie Cooper. Earlier today Google made news with a very bullish forecast about the future of Enterprise computing, specifically as it affects the cloud. I'm here with news.com's Steven Shanklind [assumed spelling]. And Steve, big Enterprise conference taking place in Boston. A fellow by the name of Rishi Shondra [assumed spelling], product manager for Google Enterprise, is offering this prediction, that the next ten years of innovations are going to be in the cloud. Now no small amount of self interest there of course, but, and I'll ask you whether or not you agree. But before that, let's talk about Google's cloud strategy. Can you briefly sum up what it is.

>> Sure. Well Google wants everything to run on the internet, and they don't have an existing business happening on Windows PCs or Mac PCs, or anything like that. So they don't have a business to protect, so they can afford to push the internet as a platform as hard as they want. And there's a lot of action happening there. So they're trying to build obviously things like email, but more recently also things like spreadsheets and word processing documents, calendars, a lot of things. They're trying to move these from desktop applications to applications that run on, that run in a web browser.

>> The whole Google apps umbrella.

>> The whole Google apps umbrella.

>> But it's not exactly a smooth ride. There is some bumpiness, we saw this last week, also yesterday with Amazon, which is again, one of those companies making the transition. They suffered some outages. So there still are issues before we reach this promised land if you will.

>> Right. So the problem we have today is that your PC crashes, and you have this program that conflicts with that program, and you have all kinds of IT problems. Well some of those things do go away, you don't, it's easier to administer a lot of applications if some other company is running it for you on the cloud. But on the other hand, that other company has to keep things up and running, and Google Docs goes offline for twenty minutes here, there, you know, there are problems that happen. And that's now outside your control, so that's one issue. Another issue is of course ubiquitous internet connectivity, which does not exist right now. It's getting better, every day it gets better and better.

>> Work in progress.

>> But you know, and Google is working on offline abilities to use Google Docs, like spreadsheets and word processors, but it's not there yet.

>> Shondra brought up a good point saying that Consumer World is more Darwinian than the Enterprise World. So users are unlikely to stick with an inferior product, but the cost of switching is zero. Does that also apply when you talk about Enterprise.

>> I don't believe that the cost of switching for anybody is zero. I think the cost of switching is always significant. And Google tries to make it easy -

>> But it's one click away.

>> It is easier, it is easier to switch when you're in the cloud, but it's never easy to switch. It is easier though, and there are lots of issues with corporate IT being you know, very conservative, and not you know, and pretty sluggish frankly. Certainly consumers are much more willing to say well I'm gonna try out the latest social network, I'm gonna try out the latest instant messaging client. And they do move a lot faster, and it is more Darwinian I think with the consumers. What's interesting I think is the dynamic where consumers try software or websites or services. They install it on their own machines or they visit their own websites. And then two years later, four years later, all of a sudden it turns out this is a reality that corporate IT has to deal with. And you know, we've seen this with instant messaging software, we've seen it with Google Search for that matter.

>> Might we see it with Twitter.

>> You know, I suspect in some degrees we will. [ background music ]

>> Part of another broadcast. I'm with Steven Shanklind, my name's Charlie Cooper. ^M00:03:47 [ music ]