Google vs Microsoft in the Enterprise

I think that Chrome and Chrome OS give Google a fighting chance to compete with Microsoft for the SMB, Enterprise and Government markets.  Today Microsoft is the dominant desktop infrastructure vendor.  Over 80% of all business use desktops and servers running Windows OSs and most of them use MS Office applications.  The remaining is a very fragmented market divided between Apple and all the versions of Linux.  

Search is Google's cash cow and Windows OSs and Office applications are Microsoft's cash cows. The key here is that Microsoft is vulnerable as more and more business implement Cloud Computing services (Infrastructure, Platform and Software) from various providers.  Microsoft has several weapons to protect its dominant desktop and server markets in the Enterprise.  Bing is Microsoft's well funded and potentially competitive offering against Google Search.  Likewise, Chrome, Chrome OS and Google Apps are Google's well funded and, hopefully someday, competitive offerings against Windows OSs, IE, MS Office and Office 365.  This war is just starting and will play out over the next decade.  And I think consumers and businesses will benefit from the competition.  I wonder what IBM is doing?

 

Should I install a second OS in my CR-48?

I will take all the mystery out of this question by answering that I decided not to install a second OS in my Chromebook (aka CR-48).  If you read my post of April 9 2011 you know I am quite happy with this laptop which has become my primary computer since I received it couple of months ago.  There were several reasons I was thinking to add a second OS.  And note that I never entertained the idea of replacing Chrome OS with another OS as some other adventuresome CrOS Pilots have done.  What I wrestled with was setting up the CR-48 to dual boot Chrome OS and another Linux OS such as Ubuntu or JoliOS.  There were two primary reasons I was going to do this:

1) Boredom - Testing the Chromebook and Chrome OS has been interesting and rewarding.  There is a certain excitement to receiving a weekly and sometimes more than once a week OS update and uncovering the new features, fixes to previous bugs and yes new bugs.  Many of my fellow Pilots post their findings on the Chrome notebook pilot Group (and other Forums) within minutes of a new CrOS release.  I happen to be on the Development channel which receives the new features and fixes before they are released on the Beta channel.  Each Pilot can use either channel but if you use the Dev channel you just have to be ready for more bugs (than the Beta channel) and for features and functions that used to work not working anymore.   The important thing is to have a sense of humor and realize this is a work in progress and certainly not ready for public release.  If Chrome OS was released today it would fail immediately as the general public and media would justly not stand for its many shortcomings.  At the same time, if you are a Pilot, then you have to take the good with the bad and contribute to the development of CrOS by reporting bugs, providing Google with feedback and requesting features and functions you feel Chrome OS should have.

Now to the point of Boredom - I begin to feel bored a couple of days after a new Dev channel release comes out.  By then I have experienced and read about all the features, fixes and new bugs in the new release and impatiently wait for the new Dev release which will come in less than a week.  So I've become a junkie of discovering new features and taking the CR-48 where it has not gone before.  In my fevered quest for a fix the next step could be opening the CR-48 case and performing the delicate operation to load and install a new OS or set it up to dual boot CrOS and another OS.

2) Offline Applications - Question: What is the CR-48 running CrOS without access to a fast Internet connection?  Answer: A very lightweight boat anchor.  Modern browsers including Chrome, Firefox, IE9, Opera, Safari and others have made Cloud applications and storage a reality.  More and more applications are Web aware and in many cases the applications have similar levels of functionality to legacy applications - for example Google Docs continues to improve and may someday surpass the dominant MS Office suite.  For the last two years with my other laptop I've been using a combination of Google Docs/Gmail and LibreOffice and left MS Office and Outlook and have not looked back.  LibreOffice.org was formed as an Open Source project to pick up where OpenOffice left off once Oracle bought it.  LibreOffice applications support MS Office file formats.  Today I use LibreOffice for those times I cannot use Google Docs (less and less) or if I am without access to the Internet.  This local capability is something we cannot do with Google Docs, Gmail or with any Cloud based application that is solely dependent on a good (fast) Internet connection.  Compounding this limitation, the CR-48 running the current versions of CrOS has limited local file management capability and is lacking offline support but for a few very basic applications as well as some games and media players.  The real solution will be upcoming CrOS functionality that will allow Google Docs, Gmail and other application to work offline and then sync with the appropriate Cloud storage medium when connected to the Internet.  I will call this Cloud Nirvana.

Coming back to reality - for me one way to fix the need to work while offline is setting up the CR-48 to dual boot Ubuntu or JoliOS and use local applications and storage.  This would allow me to continue to test Chrome OS' current capabilities on the CR-48 but also use Ubuntu or JoliOS when I need to work offline.

The anti-climax to this article is to re-state what I said on the first sentence: "I decided not to install a second OS in my Chromebook".  And I have two reasons 1) I'm chicken and don't want to break my one of a kind CR-48 and 2) Patience is a virtue so I will wait for Google to do it's magic and provide Offline support to it's suite of applications and third party developers.  Again, Cloud Nirvana.

What do you think?  Should I go ahead and dual boot my CR-48?  What would you do?  Gabe

My experiences as a Chrome OS Pilot

I'm enjoying my role as one of Google's Chrome OS Pilots (no, I am not employed by Google).  Chrome OS Pilots are lucky recipients of CR-48 notebooks.  Google gave away over 60,000 CR-48s between December 2010 and February 2011 to people picked randomly who had applied to become Chrome OS Pilots and receive a free CR-48 notebook.  CR-48 notebooks currently run beta and developer versions of CrOS.  These capable notebooks are not for sale but manufacturers such as Asus, Samsung, Lenovo and Sony have announced their intentions to sell CrOS notebooks when CrOS is publicly released around July 2011.

I use my CR-48 for business and personal applications on an almost daily basis.  Note that CrOS and therefore the CR-48 are totally dependent on Web (aka Cloud) applications and Cloud based storage for documents, media files, pictures, etc.  It's generally agreed that most Cloud based applications will need to have an offline session capability to be truly usable when an Internet connection is not available.  The current beta and developer versions of CrOS (and existing versions of Chrome browsers) do not support this capability yet.

A stable production release of Chrome OS will also allow computing device manufacturers to design and produce competitive tablets at a lower cost than tablets running Windows, iOS, and even Android.  In my opinion a family of Chrome OS tablets will be a huge commercial success and perhaps a better competitor to current and future Apple iPads than Android (or other OS) tablets.   iPads are successfully being deployed in business applications with forecasts of huge adoption in vertical markets such as healthcare, education and finance.  Note that most tablets will require wireless connectivity to access ever increasing Cloud based applications and storage options.  Here is an interesting article describing the scope of the tablet market in the Enterprise:  http://goo.gl/mrM9q 

I plan to continue to write about my experiences with my CR-48 notebook and Chrome OS.  Your comments, feedback and questions are greatly appreciated. Gabe