Mary Jo Foley at ZDnet writes an article with ten questions from Microsoft to ask (and answer) before deciding to switch to Google Apps rather than Microsoft Office in an enterprise environment. Google Docs and Spreadsheets in it’s Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE) edition is being targeted at enterprises, and, due to the cost, churches and non-profits. Non-profits even enjoy a lot of free benefits from Google although I don’t have a full comparison handy. I think these questions are worth asking, because many I don’t have answers for. I keep being tempted to take a look at Google for more than just hosting personal email (even using my own domain), but I’m not convinced that for business use they are appropriate in more than a few cases right now, especially the apps. I actually have one “business” domain that I am going to convert to Google Apps email but I have very specific reasons, and it’s not the whole company! But this post is more about the Docs and Spreadsheets aspect of their offering, which I have even more reservations about. Here’s a taste:

9. Google says that enterprise customers use only 10% of the features in today’s productivity applications which implies that EVERYONE needs the SAME 10% of the feature when in fact it is very clear that in each company there are specific roles people play that demands access to specific information – how does Google’s generic strategy address role specific needs?

Thanks to Vladville for the post with the original link.