Pricing of collaborative cloud services from Google, Microsoft and IBM
by Volker Weber
Google Apps Premier Edition is $50 a year, per user, with 25 GB of storage. That is a little over $4 per user and month. It includes Google Mail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Video and Google Sites.
Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite is $15 per user and month. It contains Exchange, Office SharePoint, Office Communications, Office Live Meeting. Microsoft has a handy online estimator for your monthly bill.
LotusLive Engage contains meetings, files, activities, instant messaging, forms and charts. IBM has not published any pricing, but it's also not exactly a secret. IBM wants you to call, or they will call back after you filled out a form. Maybe that's a good thing. The offering is complicated. Here is what I found out so far about their list prices (including 1 GB of storage):
Google Apps does not have meetings, which is the main feature in LotusLive Engage. Engage in turn does not have email or calendaring. Microsoft Online has both.
Comments
Great comparison, thanks!
IBM still doesn't get it. Cloud based apps are suppose to be simple, intuitive and easy to use.
Creating a simple data collection form on Lotus Live took me almost 40 mins. First I had to create a template and then use the template to create a form. Why do I have to create a template? I don't know. Compare this to Google Apps - Creating a form in Google Apps is as simple as creating a excel spreadsheet and literally takes minutes. Really. Oh by the way, when I tried to save the form in Lotus Live, the application crashed and my browser exited.
IBM HAS to stop using Java. They gotta make the switch to AJAX, Adobe AIR, and MS Silverlight if they wanna compete with likes of MS Office Workspace or Google Docs.
And now that Silverlight 3 supports off-line mode, using Java to build user interface seems so antiquated....
@Saqib: nice try with the Silverlight pitch. Why would IBM use it when others ditch it. And what has a front-end technology to do with the back-end? AFAIK nothing. There is plenty of Ajax in the system as well.
While your observation is valid: too complicated, your conclusion for the root cause is questionable and IMHO wrong.
The usual suspects are: Interaction model, structure and implementation.
:-) stw
Microsoft does not have a cloud offering - they have a pathetic VPN tunnel to a hosted version of their apps.
This has no multi-tennancy support, and precludes any form of collaboration outside of your company.
Unfortunately customers are still to stupid to see this distinction.
Correction to the earlier comments: As employee I can confirm that Microsoft does already offer single and multitenant enterprise grade solutions form the cloud. This is offered as the Business Productivity Online Suite since 2008. This offering includes Exchange, Sharepoint, Office Communication Server and Office Live Meeting, all components can also be ordered seperatly.
As a developer I would closely watch our Azure Services Platform which provides a wide range of internet services that can be consumed from both on-premises environments or the internet.
As Individual User planning to collaborate and share you should look out for Microsofts Live offerings, where Live Mesh is a cool offering.
All in all a complete set that spans the requirements from large enterprises to individual users and a seamless experience from on-premise to cloud.
This is Software+Services available and real.
So the $58/month charge is actually for 15 users of the site? Or is it $58 x 15 ? I agreee, it is confusing.
It is per user. Assume you want 20 people in. You need to pay for 20 licenses for 12 months. Either you pay each month (first column) or you pay upfront (second column).
If you buy the host+14 package, any 15 of your 20 people can be in a meeting together. If you need all 20 in meetings at the same time, you need to buy the host+24 package.
Its 20 people * 12 months = 240 user monthes. Times the cell in the spreadsheet that suits your payment schedule and package.
240 * 46 = 11,040
240 * 56 = 13,440
240 * 71 = 17,040
240 * 88.5 = 21,240
Is that really right? The price per user-month goes up as user number increases? Surely it would go down? Volume discount?
Grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory, one product line at a time.
Chris, I am sure that large customers will demand a discount anyway. IBM seems to have planned for that. ;-)
Or you could go with Socialtext. 20 users is $99/month or $1,188 for a year for all 20. You get Signals (microsharing), Profiles, Dashboards, Wikis, Activity/Update Streams, Socialtext Desktop (Adobe air client), etc. Buy here.
Hmm, who will take care about clouds when those companies bankrupt? In fact what will those cloud providers do if their services won't be profitable? In my eyes this whole cloud-put-a-four-letter-word-in-here is highly overrated. But we'll see in five years...
Alan, not to belittle your solution, but that would be neither email nor online meetings?
Mathias, it's kind of hard to predict who goes out of business. A year ago you would have thought that an investment banker is safer than a cloud startup, right?
Vowe, no problem at all. We're not in the email nor online meeting biz, and try to help people reduce their use of them where appropriate.
Well no, I wasn't an economic specialist. Even at school I had problems to understand all those weird financial constructions. So actually I wasn't that much surprised about this destraous outcome. What I maybe was wrong about is the evolution of mobile phones. I didn't expect that to happen that fast (remembering good old Nokia 7110) :)
But cloud computing is much more about privacy and trust. And it would be a problem for me to put on my European business onto American servers. Nobody knows the future but everybody knows that economic espionage is everyday's business in the U.S. It also is a little bit contrary to Microsoft's original doctrine to establish a personal computer in everybody's home. Well, let's hope for the best.
Mathias, replacing one FUD with another?
Not really... Just looking at this "invention" with a sceptic view.
"everybody knows that economic espionage is everyday's business in the U.S."
Rather a far-reaching stereotype there, Mathias...
Mathias: who says that the servers are located in the US? There are Data Centers in Europe as well.
Thomas: I wouldn't call this a stereotype since this fact is mentioned in most publications of German intelligence agency. Don't forget the prohibition of strong encryption and some more weird laws in the U.S.
Bob: Well that's a good point, but who will give a warranty for "no mirroring". I would never put a whole division like accounting or sales onto a "cloud". Anyway it's weird to see companies building fences and cameras at their facilities but giving away most secret data and communication for free. ;)
The good thing about allegations is that you don't have to prove them. Or the bad ...
Mathias: "fact is mentioned in most publications of German intelligence agency". Then your intel agencies must be *much* more honest, ethical, and accurate than most for you to believe them without question. (insert saracasm there). And we don't prohibit strong encryption, we just prohibited it's export. Yes, stupid... But it's not like our banks are all running 8 bit encryption these days...
@Matthias - There's this product called Lotus Notes. You may (or may not?) have heard of it. It's famous for the strength of its security model, including extremely strong encryption. The product is designed in the US. So to claim that the US prohibits strong encryption is ... well ... bizarre.
Economic espionage is a thriving industry in *every* country, and if you think that the people who engage in that practice respect national borders then you are going to be in for a very rude awakening at some point.
Now, if you were referring to traditional (governmental) espionage, *then* you'd have a case. We do expect that the Obama administration will have more respect for our (and your) rights than the previous one, but that will take time.
Rob, Notes does not have extremely strong encryption.
@Volker - I think we have a different definition of extremely strong, then. It's a subjective term, I guess. I consider it to be extremely strong if it's strong enough for the CIA and US military. You have a specific standard in mind that Notes doesn't meet, though? Knowing you, I'm expecting the assertion isn't unfounded, so I'm interested in knowing what defines extremely strong encryption for you.
Rob, we may have. I would call Notes' encryption standard encryption. If Notes used 256-bit AES, I would call it strong encryption. For extremely strong you would need to go to stuff the NSA can't break. :-)
Thomas: I never said that our intelligence agencies are angels on earth. But I'd still rather keep my data on my own server e.g. encrypted with TrueCrypt etc. than on some unknown server in a huge company. I'm a little bit scared of this good-will explanations of exposing data to someone and paying for this service. It's not standard outsourcing and it makes a company weak and a dependant of its data guard.
Difficult to explain, I know. It's just like... hmm, not wanting to drive a car for some reason. You know that it looks good and it maybe drives well. But... it's still not your car.
@Volker - Beating the NSA? I think that moves past extremely strong and into impossible. heh. I'm generally cynical about 'uncrackable' claims, particularly when they involve the NSA. Heck, those lunatics don't even let themselves dream, in case they give something away. :D
That being said, I was under the impression that Notes DID support AES 256 as of 8.01 (requires a 2048-bit RSA key). I admit that I haven't tried it, so I could definitely be wrong.
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