On Thu, 2006-02-23 at 10:03 +0000, Daniel Carrera wrote: > Ian Lynch wrote: > > As it is if the electricity goes off and most people don't worry too > > much about that. > > Electricity is more reliable than internet connections. When internet > connections become as reliable as electricity is today, a lot more > people will be interested in web-based office.
But electricity was not always as reliable as it is to-day and people were still reliant on it. Chicken and egg, when there is a demand for a higher level of reliability it will happen. > > > 50% of people are employed in > > SMEs not large companies so there is a huge market to be tapped in small > > companies to start with and then move up the pyramid. > > You have an SME. Would you trust your entire company's documents on the > hope that Evil Edna won't go down again? When you can get OOo for free > without that risk? Yes, if Google offered me web based services that could do all the things the business needed at $50 a terminal I'd definitely consider moving over. I might be a bit more careful to have a more robust caching server and might well rent two independent broad band connections. That would still be a big saving on costs - and we are an established IT company. Most small businesses are crippled for hours if *anything* goes wrong because despite paying support contracts the supporters don't arrive immediately. New start ups don't have the same constraints. Those are the initial markets and its a big niche that is scalable to larger things. Chances are workers in these businesses will also take a domestic service at home. > Perhaps a better market for Google Office would be schools (not for the > staff, for the kids). They have more reliable internet, and if the kids > can't get their homework one day, it's not the end of the world. Except that schools are much more dependent on media based things. Its a common mistake to think of schools as a less demanding market. In many ways they are more demanding and more complex. However, I think there would be potential take up there too. > You need to look for customers who won't mind not being able to access > their files for one day. Why if you provide them with a backup connection? Its about £25 a month for our 2 meg ADSL connection so doubling that cost is not prohibitive. > The only example I can think of is a school > network for the kids. Even a student (e.g. my brother) wouldn't go for a > web-based office because it could mean that his homework is late. But at > a school, if it goes down, it goes down for everyone, so the teacher > would extend the due date. You can't guarantee kids have a computer or Internet connection at home. Most do, but even if one or two don't you can't insist on them doing homework that requires a computer - against the law on Equal Opps grounds here. If the school says the kid has to have something they then have to provide it. In fact a very low cost connection would make it possible to ensure all kids did have the tools at home. For it to be worthwhile doing it, Google doesn't have to have the whole market immediately they just need a significant niche immediately and then to be able to develop it upwards. In any case there are ways of caching stuff on a local machine if there was a connection problem. Saving some basic files to a RAM disc is no big deal and with RAM prices continuing to fall, having a local workspace with say OOo embeded into the machine in ROM with the OS is not impossible either, ok it wouldn't be web based office but really the concept is more about low cost low maintenance terminals provided as part of a service. Exactly how the technology is distributed between the terminal and the server isn't that important as long as it can be made to work. -- Ian Lynch www.theINGOTs.org www.opendocumentfellowship.org www.schoolforge.org.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
