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MINNEAPOLIS
—
Google's
latest brainchild, Google Wave, is all the rage among
bleeding-edge technology enthusiasts. But corporate
information technology executives say that while they're
intrigued by Wave — a replacement for e-mail, the most
widely used of all Internet services — they're not
ready to adopt it.
Part of
the reason is a reluctance to entrust important data to
someone else's servers, even those of giant
Google
. But another factor is old-fashioned resistance to
change.
"If
I knew how long it will take for Google Wave to be
adopted, I'd be a lot richer than I am," said
Stuart DeVaan
, CEO of Implex.net, a
Minneapolis
firm that provides IT outsourcing of services such as
e-mail to 2,000 firms worldwide. "The user
experience is the Holy Grail of computing, and once
people are used to using something like e-mail it's hard
to get them to use something different.
Google
will have to win people over by proving Wave offers a
better user experience."
With
Wave, people can exchange messages, share or edit
documents, even play games in a computer desktop space
that is shared by many people simultaneously.
Google
introduced it for testing by a select group of users in
May, and in September opened up the testing — by
invitation only — to about 100,000 people.
Wave
immediately ran into a wave of skepticism.
"People
have a reluctance to change," said
Mark Bowker
, an analyst with
Enterprise Strategy Group
in
Milford, Mass.
"E-mail is pretty simple, and people understand
what it does. Maybe the consolidation of instant
messaging and e-mail Google Wave represents makes sense,
but it might be years before it happens."
"I
kind of like Google Wave," said
Bill Konkol
, vice president of technology for
Hopkins
radio advertising firm
Marketing Architects
. "It saves running separate computer servers to do
a lot of different things, such as live video meetings,
instant messaging and e-mail. But are people willing to
trust Google Wave as a replacement for e-mail? That's
going to take years. After all, it's taken some time for
people to adopt Gmail,
Google's
free e-mail."
Gmail,
introduced in 2004, has only recently been adopted by
local universities that plan to outsource student e-mail
to
Google
in order to save money. The
University of Minnesota
,
Macalester College
and
Hamline University
have done so, and
Macalester
also put its faculty and staff on Gmail.
But, just
as Gmail simplifies life for universities running big
e-mail systems, some, such as blogger
Daniel Tenner
, believe Google Wave simplifies e-mail.
For
example, employees no longer have to collaborate on
documents by e-mailing them back and forth; they look at
the documents together. Wave also makes it easier to
bring in new collaborators without forcing them to speed
through a long list of e-mails that have already been
sent back and forth. In addition, Wave allows much
bigger attachments than e-mail typically does, and, when
e-mail messages are flying furiously back and forth, it
automatically downshifts into the faster instant
messaging mode.
"Wave
is not a geek/hacker tool, or a social media tool, it's
a corporate tool that solves work problems," wrote
Tenner, who is chief technology officer at
Woobius Ltd.
, a British tech firm that sells its own collaborative
software. "The way
Google
should have advertised Wave is: 'It solves the problems
with e-mail.'"
So why
wouldn't people, corporations and universities accept
something that is designed to be superior to
old-fashioned e-mail? Maybe because they're still busy
figuring out how to use the last technological
revolution, "cloud computing."
In cloud
computing, companies are supposed to save money by using
distant computers owned by others to run programs, store
data and manage networks.
DeVaan's
firm uses cloud computing to test its new software, but
he admits that the cloud concept isn't for everybody.
"When
we need to test business applications we've developed,
we go to Amazon and use their servers for an hour or a
day or a week — it's temporary computing power you can
use as you like. But that's not something we'd offer to
our customers."
Konkol is
interested in cloud computing, and does it in a very
small way using a storage networking device from
Compellent Technologies
of
Eden Prairie, Minn.
The device can "borrow" data storage from one
of Konkol's company locations for use at another
location. But he'd be reluctant to use anyone else's
"cloud" service.
"If
the company that provides the cloud goes out of
business, how secure is your data? How do you access
it?" he asked. "So far, cloud computing has
not been embraced in
the Twin Cities
in any significant way."
Given the
reluctance to accept the better-understood cloud
computing, it may be no surprise that there's no
stampede to Google Wave.
"Right
now, people don't take Google Wave seriously as a
business product," said
Greg Schulz
, a
Stillwater
information technology analyst. But maybe that's fine
with
Google
, which he believes has other motives in introducing new
technology like Wave.
"
Google
keeps creating these windmills that
Microsoft
has to chase in order to catch up," Schulz said.
"It keeps
Microsoft
unsure of where to focus."
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