A few months ago, Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace, a list of additional services grafted on Google Apps, and offered by third party publishers. Google Apps became then a complete “platform” ecosystem, aligned with new mobile’s app stores paradigm, or like force.com offers from Salesforce.

It is clear that this platform vision is a real success. This success is due to its ease of adoption, thanks to the fact that the applications are hosted, available as SaaS and Clouds. One click and any application you need for your information system becomes available.

Google, always one step ahead

Google is once again one step ahead of its competitors, Microsoft and IBM, who are launching their own equivalents of Google Apps.

What do we find in the Google Apps Marketplace? CRM services, mind-maps services, drawings services, enterprise social networking-class services, projects management services, billing and bookkeeping services, e-mailing services, workflow services,..

All these services have access to your Google Apps data, and can actually interact with your mail or documents data. For example, the workflow services will be able to read or write the informations in your spreadsheets documents and automate a number of tasks for supplying or collecting  data, with validation by different people following a determined process.

For example, a small company that is starting its business and wants to build a solid and modern  information system to support its activity, will only have to license Google Apps, CRM, billing, bookkeeping, e-mailing  and workflow related services. This will equip it as well as a much larger company having invested huge amounts of money to build a similar architecture, with the help of a team of IT specialists to manage the whole thing. Here, the services are available without maintenance, software updates, storage costs, or IT staff  dedicated to its support. The goal is direct effectiveness and more reliability that any traditional IT  department could deliver.

All this was impossible just a few months ago. We are witnessing an unprecedented democratization of business information systems.

This will forever change the computing landscape and provide real opportunities for all organizations, regardless of the size and budget, to work with professional tools in all areas of their information system. This should substantially increase the performance of the enterprises and their impact on the global economy. First the Web has allowed SMBs to reach unexplored markets (the long tail effect), now Cloud Services and platforms allow them to manage advanced information systems that they couldn’t afford in the past.

What price for the services of the Marketplace?

Marketplace services generally aim to offer relatively low cost of entry, but it is not clear that all the providers of such services are adopting the right business models. Keeping in mind that Google Apps are charged at 40€ per year per user, we can easily think that additional services will be charged at a lower price than the Google Apps licenses. It is the case of services like RunMyProcess (30€/ year per user) or SocialWok ($36/year per user). But there are also many other services that charge as much as $10/month per user.

Some Google Apps additional services cost 2 to 4 times more than Google Apps, is it justified? If the client must license multiples services together, the cost may soon be  relatively important, and will slow the rate of adoption, at least for small businesses.

I think that some of the service providers have not really taken a comprehensive view of the market, and, as there is no established competition either, the market is not self-regulating yet. The experience of the Apple store shows how the prices have evolved after its launch: Low prices quickly became the norm, because developers quickly realized it was better to sell more units at a lower price. Competition has accelerated this realization. It seems that many of the participants in the Google Apps Marketplace have not fully accepted this yet, which will undoubtedly slow down their adoption rate.

The ExamGeneral example

At Kimind, we encourage our clients to go forward and integrate this market reality in the definition of their online business services. That’s what we did with ExamGeneral, a specialized service for creating and taking online tests and exams. It has been designed by Kimind, then realized and produced on behalf of the Californien start-up ExamGeneral. Since March, when the Marketplace preview was presented, we submitted the initial functional specifications for the management team, with associated business model, in order to demonstrate the significant potential for ExamGeneral to thrive with the online release of such an additional service.

In addition, as ExamGeneral addresses mainly the education market, there is a double benefit. Google Apps for Education is used by more than 8 million students around the World. ExamGeneral can reach this market at once, just by being present in the Google Apps Marketplace

Our teams are currently working on the realization of the interface with Google Apps, and ExamGeneral should be available in the marketplace by mid-September. The integration is made at several levels: first at the user authentication level, which relies on Google’s; then it gets into the data itself, where teachers can link their courses and their documents reviews from their Google Docs; finally the test results will be automatically loaded into a Google Spreadsheet to be consolidated and shared.

ExamGeneral is a perfect example of Integration of an external service to the marketplace, which will benefit both from the Google ecosystem to increase its market presence, and make additional services available to users that ExamGeneral would not have developed on their own. Google will thus indirectly propose an online review service backed by Google Apps to its millions of users .

Conclusion

If you are a SaaS provider and you’re reading these lines, give a lot of thought about taking advantage of this opportunity. Your decisions will help shape the market, which is still in early stages. When competitors from different domains have come to the Marketplace, it will be harder to differentiate your business proposition. But for now, it has just started, and it is the right time to invest. Furthermore, projects usually have short term objectives, so the first level of adaptation is simple, and the rest can be developed incrementally.

Please do not hesitate to contact us to discuss and brainstorm on the different possible options.

Our work was mainly divided into 3 stages:

• the first step was the realization of an opportunity study, around 3 major areas: the 10 years vision of the office automation and collaborative business evolution; the impacts in terms of employees’ changes of usages ; losses or expected potential gains in terms of overall productivity for the company. The study, conducted at the same time with other actions concerning the choice of the final solution (between Microsoft, IBM and Google), has led to the final choice of the Google Apps by the group.

• the second step consisted in coordinating on real process a first functional Google Apps driver on 3 months to assess the changes of usages on a smaller sample and evaluate leading actions to a massive deployment. The driver, initially provided for less than 100 persons, has engaged fast several hundred users and has been acclaimed. Many metrics have been developed to measure user’s satisfaction through different fields and the adoption facilities. Results were extremely successful and led to the overall deployment.

• the third step is the final deployment to all employees, which is gradual according to different products, to existing developments and necessary technical or organizational evolutions. Google Docs and Sites are immediately deployed to all employees whereas Google Mail and Calendar requires a more gradual recovery of existing data on previous systems and will be deployed in early 2010 as officially announced by Valeo.

The feedback is extremely rich. The first interesting point is the ease with which users adopt the solution as soon as their profits are presented and demonstrated. Of course, 100% of the needs previously covered by Microsoft Office for example can not be covered by Google Apps (complex Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint Slideshow filled with animations), but it makes you realize very quickly that:

1. users ask for simplicity, an easy production system and the possibility to exchange information with their employees. Once they realized that Google Docs for example offers those two dimensions simultaneously, they are willing to sacrifice some advanced aspects of existing products in order to get new Google solution’s benefits.
2. at least 90% of normal daily usages of an employee are covered by the Google tools. We can even affirm that 100% of the usages of a large majority of users is covered by the Google solution. Only what we might call  “power users” will need in some cases advanced features of Excel or PowerPoint (we consider Word as a part of another category because up to 99% of it is very quickly replaced by the direct online production by using the wiki mode or shared documents ). In this case and for that users we retain the version of MS Office, what drastically reduces the need in licenses (one license Google Apps costs 10 times less).

Contrary to many misconceptions in this field, Google Apps is not only suited to small companies but also to large ones. This real implementation confirms on one hand our own studies (solutions like Google are the future of office automation and collaboration) and on the other hand confirms that Google Apps is perfectly usable for large organizations, on a very large scale to replace Microsoft Office and any other collaborative solutions.

The only initial condition is to determine previously the needed usages transformation by the firm to switch from an old paradigm to a new on , and to implement a policy for adoption and dissemination that enables the softest deployment among employees, while enjoying the features of viral adoption of such a product.

Profits are then to go, not in terms of “better knowledge management ” or “better ability to innovate,” or any other qualitative argument difficult to quantify in the short term, but in terms of individual and collective productivity gains. Because at the end, the challenge of using those new tools is exactly located on the level of the daily work productivity (and this is the creed defended by Kimind since its creation through its consultants expertise).

By simplifying the usage of those tools and by fostering massive and instantaneous collaboration between employees (and beyond that, thanks to the immediate sharing with partners, customers or suppliers), individuals themselves and the group improve the flow of their work process, break down barriers accumulated over the past years and decompartmentalize bottlenecks of saturated mailboxes and overflowing shared file servers.

It is extremely easy thanks to field interviews conducted by Kimind’s consultants, to make protagonists themselves aware of huge time savings they will make in their whole process by excluding informal daily work displayed. Not only time savings but also the ability to perform tasks that were previously impossible because of the lack of true collaborative tools.

It is therefore a real transformation of usages that can be observed, which induces a transformation of the organization, and must therefore be underlined by the top management to be adopted quickly.
Google Apps is currently the only solution to such an approach and such productivity gains on a large scale and for large organizations. No other solution offers a broad functional spectrum, even if often it covers better some subsets.

But a large organization needs a global solution, and Google Apps is today the only operational alternative, what has been demonstrated through this massive deployment and feedback. Other actors like Microsoft and IBM will of course evoluate, but the transformation of their own architecture and attitude is extremely slow throughout the evolution of these solutions, and delays are important.

Google Apps is therefore perfectly suited to the usages of large organizations. The problem is not in that fact, but in the ability of large organizations to evolve and realize that it can and must do  it to reach new levels of productivity previously unsuspected.

Feel free to contact us directly if you hope for similar results, faster the projects are launched, faster the results are out.

Marc is organizing a virtual event on Jan. 7, 2010, where he will present the key points for a move to the Silicon Valley, the best place in the world to grow a technology or green startup worldwide.

Don’t miss this event, register online at “Silicon Valley Connect”.

In social networks like FaceBook, applications are embedded in the service itself and are not usable outside the service to keep users in the environment. With iGoogle social gadgets, it’s the future possibility of taking the gadgets in any other environment, because Google gadgets are made to be reusable thanks, in particular, to the OpenSocial standard launched two years ago.

So, it’s the opposite of the strategy of FaceBook that Google sets up, the ability to disseminate massively social functions in (pervasive in English) other web services

Google is faithful to his way of growing.

It is also one more step taken by the realtime web: permanent and real-time interconnection of Internet users through its services.

After having precisely defined the global idea of the project as explained in the previous note, we had to complete the website we were responsible of. We won this part of the contract because of our proposed costs and solution given the short notice (less than 8 weeks for the first version), that were realistic unlike other responses to the tender).

We were able to propose this thanks to:

• An offshore development team (reducing costs)
• An agile method of project management (gain speed and quality)
• The XWiki development platform

The set up of an offshore development team

To provide competitive cost of development, Kimind has been working from the beginning with an offshore development team located in China. We have acquired a great expertise on the subject, tested on many large scale projects. The offshore development is a very current topic… It clearly requires a good knowledge of remote collaborative work  and management, and agile methodologies when you are a small team. Which is fortunate, because everyone is teleworking at Kimind !

In addition to financial benefits, the agile operating methodology used with the development team, needed because of distance to avoid skidding, greatly contributes to fluidify the project progress!

Quality monitoring and compliance with specifications , reporting

Our client did not have to directly deal with the development team. A Kimind’s consultant acted as an interface and has been the single point of contact and project management. This avoids the communication problems associated with offshore.

The consultant acts as a coordinator between the different actors (customers, developers, designers …), supports the definition of detailed functional specifications based on feedbacks and monitors quality and progress.

The reporting was done transparently using a collaborative platform website, Google Sites in this case, since it was possible for our customer to follow the project evolution in real time and to give their feedback when necessary. Indeed, developers reported directly their progress there, specifications and other documentations were stored, avoiding any functional misunderstanding.

By the way, we notice that this way of working often helps to make people more sensitive to the “2.0″ working methods, and they often emerge conquered! (Once the apprehension of the lack of an ultra-detailed specification is exceeded (aka “the umbrella”)) ☺

We were able to show a large flexibility. The agile methodology used, based on short iterations and customers’ feedbacks allow us to anticipate and resolve problems quickly, and also to change the specifications throughout the project if necessary, keeping well in mind the imperatives of time.

Finally

We have managed from start to finish the project, from requirements definition to delivery, providing both functional expertise and technical execution. All this, on the basis of very competitive costs due to the offshore development team and the use of the open source XWiki platform for development.

The client was very satisfied by the result that was shown in a trade show less than 8 weeks after starting the project and has fully covered its expectations (functional, budgetary, delays). Feedbacks on the project progress were very positive, particularly concerning the reactivity of different actors and flexibility.

But all this was possible only because of the mutual trust relationship: no one was hiding behind a rigid 200 pages specifications, and everyone (the client, we, developers, designers …) worked with one goal in mind: keeping responsibilities and completing the project. This is for a light project management: a great confidence and reliability of collaborators.

Kimind delivered at the end of summer the first version of a Web 2.0 site on behalf of one of our customers which specializes in car parts equipment. A project we have supported from requirements definition to delivery passing by its executions.

The context

The technical documentation center wanted to launch a platform enabling them to provide their customers with the documentation associated with their products, that is so far stored in inaccessible places, not really available and in different formats: text documents, presentations, videos … Moreover, their partners needed to easily add content themselves, and that customers can efficiently navigate in it. It should also facilitate interactions (comments, rating system …) to eventually create a community around the catalog and make it a reference, without falling into the complexities of many online catalogs.

Obviously we had to share the draft central contribution of Web 2.0 to this project: social networking, user-generated-content, assessment by users.

The first version should be ready for a trade show scheduled less than 8 weeks later…

The first major phase of the project was to define the project in itself and to choose the best solution to achieve:

We first had to identify needs and to establish general functional specifications.

From an original vague idea, requiring a collaborative and participatory vision of the problem, a Kimind’s consultant conducted a brainstorming session to clarify the project, generate ideas by the participants, define the participatory dimension and define all needs associated. He then formalized it and he generated in few days functional general specifications that gave the outline of the project with its Web 2.0 their dimension.

We could then choose the best solution for the project in terms of cost, time and sustainability.

Following this, Kimind quickly moved on Practice (technical recommendation): choice of a collaborative CMS and/or a programming language, advised infrastructure… all this being based on defined needs carried out. Our thorough knowledge of collaborative tools, through our everyday experience (for our customers but also internally), gives us fortunately a complete picture of opportunities, beyond the single dimension of technology.

Because of the short delay, it became necessary to start with a CMS that have a similar architecture to the expected results, and on which it was possible to graft complex modules. We naturally led to XWiki, a second powerful wiki generation, customizable and suitable for specific developments. In addition, XWiki is a French and open-source product!

In a forthcoming note, we will explain how we have successfully completed this project with short delays and very competitive costs…

Stay tuned!

The following : here

A great announce from SocialText. Read more here… and try it online…

• A new fundraising of 4.7 M€
• A strategic alliance with Dassault Systemes, which now distributes BlueKiwi

Financial consolidation + global trade axis, these are two great steps over BlueKiwi to become a global player software. Is BlueKiwi going to be one of the few exceptions in the french high tech area to succeed starting from France? We hope so, and they provide the means:

• their investor are strongly supporting them
• BlueKiwi’s team is composed of smart people
• two new offices will be opened in September in Boston and San Francisco, mandatory steps to be taken seriously by US businesses and realize the next fund raisings.
• product is improving rapidly
• SaaS solution is online for some months and is affordable
• maturity of the market is growing rapidly despite (through?) crisis
• they have strong customer references
• competition exists, but is not as advanced

All qualities that make BlueKiwi can really become a worldwide leader in this market if the adoption by clients is at the rendez-vous.

So good luck again