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As the Google Apps vs. MS Sharepoint debate continues, Shane O'Neill of CIO gave us four reasons not to opt for Google Apps. Recent times have seen some prominent patrons of Google Apps opt out, which points towards some serious shortcomings of Google Apps as an enterprise tool. Shane interviewed some companies who chose to Forego Google, and lists out the following shortcomings,. Email Interface Problems - Most people are used to using MS Outlook and Exchange as a business email solution. Changing over to the new fangled interface of Gmail, and its unique way of handling threaded messages and meeting requests does not go down that well with business users. Moreover, Google's Outlook synchronization tool is known to be troublesome, and can not handle the nuances of MS Outlook as well, as Gmail and MS Outlook are structurally different. User Adoption Problems - When users discover that Google's email and document manager tools - Gmail, Google Docs - do not quite work like the tools they're used to working with - MS Office and MS Outlook - it might cause a user revolt. Once users lose confidence in a new technology, it is very hard to convince and pull them back.  Downtime Problems - Google Apps has been hit with well publicized downtime problems lasting for several hours over the last couple of years. Sometimes, the whole solution does not go down, but specific modules of the solution go down. This is annoying and frustrating to users who previously used on-premise solutions, and could immediately go to the IT department to get the problem rectified. Customer Support Woes -  Since Google serves millions of customers worldwide with Google Apps, customer service is bound to be a problem. Google offers phone support only for "service not usable" issues, which is simply not good for many users. Google Apps support is also known to be complacent, with sub standard responses to customer queries. The above arguments certainly incline one to consider Microsoft solutions as an alternative, inspite of the costs involved, merely for the familiarity. However, it is not an either or situation, as there are many credible collaboration software in the market which may be more suitable for specific contexts - HyperOffice, Zoho, Zimbra, LotusLive etc.Â
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