The Why Microsoft Blog details the assumptions used in the Gone Google Calculator and costs that they leave out. He also walks through a sample calculation and details the information and the results in the blog post. It’s quite fun to read actually.

Some of the Google Calculator assumptions are:

  • You click on 77 spam emails every day.
  • If you lose a laptop it costs you $47,000.
  • Migrations costs from your existing system to Google are $0.
  • End user training costs are $0
  • The cost for your own IT Pros to deploy a new LDAP sync tool, installing Outlook connectors on every desktop, and new web browsers on every desktop to enable new Docs features is $0.
  • Users don’t have Blackberries (which requires you to host your own BES Servers).
  • Lost productivity per employee due to document fidelity issues between Office, OpenOffice, and Google Docs = $0.
  • Even if all of your business documents are converted to Google Docs, business partners will still send Office attachments that will need to be reformatted and then possibly reformed again if you change it and send it back to the business partner.
  • $0 cost assumed for lost user productivity of not being able to work while offline.
    • Even if your users only work when they are connected to the network and not while traveling, Google has had 450 minutes of downtime within the last 60 days (as of 6/15/10).
    • Google does not have a financial backed SLA, meaning that whatever business experienced this downtime, they just get a few more days of Google Doc services, not a service refund.

     

    Then there is the question of when you decide to move away from Google, what is the exist strategy?

    • How do you migrate from Gmail (Mail, Calendar, Contacts) and Google Docs to another Cloud provider or on-premise solution?
    • How do you get your data out (over the internet only, on backup tapes (format), on hard drives, on removable media. etc)?
    • What data file format are you given?
    • What content or capabilities are lost?
    • How much will it cost?
    • Does it require a partner to help?

     

    Does Google understand the Enterprise? Check out Andrews analysis and the calculator walkthrough and decide for yourself.

    http://blogs.technet.com/b/whymicrosoft/archive/2010/06/15/lies-damned-lies-and-the-gone-google-calculator.aspx