I was talking with a client the other day who mentioned that one of the reasons that they were initially slow to move to Google Apps for the enterprise, was the amount of time it typically takes Google to move products out of Beta. The reason that this ceased to be a problem, was when he realised two things.
- There is no obligation to turn on (or even allow to be turned on) all of the Google Apps product set.
- Google Apps “beta” offerings, are frequently better than other manufacturers applications that have been fully released to market.
The difference here is one of perception. Some manufacturers take a half finished product, market and sell it, and then fix the problems with updates afterwards. Google put a beta label on it, and then continually take feedback and improve it until they are happy, at which point they remove the beta label.
It is pretty much impossible to put a completely finished, bug free, perfect product out to the end users, and these are just two ways of dealing with that fact. Is one better than the other? Not necessarily – just different.
Any thoughts? Feel free to post in the comments…
Tags: Enterprise, google
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