You Want Your ThirdPipe Because…

We talk alot about the ‘ThirdPipe’ here. That ubiquitous high bandwith presence that is everywhere and preferably wireless.But maybe its tiime we show you why you need it. in cruising the Web today I ran across this site. They did a nice rundown of office suites online.

Office suites you say? I got MS Office now and I ocassionally use Google Docs Dog so what’s the big deal. Well none in a sense. For an individual we highly recommend Google Docs. It has most of the features anyone would want. The fact there is nothing to buy is a plus. We use it heavily. [PS. If you haven't tried Google Notebook, get it. It is a labor savor on the 'Net.]

But consider if you are a Small to Medium Size Business (SMB) or a startup.with not a lot of capital. The picture changes. If you go the usual route — OS, MS Office apps, Exchange, maybe Project — at retail prices one could be well into $1500 per desktop sans the hardware to support it. In a 10 person office that is not an insignificant investment. Then there is also the ongoing maintenance ahd hassles for all that software. And for a 10 person office they can’t afford a full time tech guy/gal, so they might consider GeekSquad on a premium basis for support. Bottom line is they will spend around $20k the first year and possibly $5k a year for support and then repeat the whole cycle again 4-5 years later.

Is there an alternative? Going with an online suite. One could go with Gooble Business as a service. But I want to present an alternative — ThinkFree.. Thinkfree has a couple of pluses that Google Docs lacks — online/offline capability, ease of use, etc. But the biggest is a near MS Office like environment. That reduces training costs in transitioning to their product. But all the nits are there — word processor, spreadsheet, presenter online. Price is less than $50 a year. So now that 10 person office spends less than a $1000. Not only that but if that office listens to ThirdPipe they follow our cheap hardware model — No more than $250, use it till it breaks. If you can’t fix it buy another. GeekSquad is too expensive in this arena.

Your saying to yourself, I work in a 1000 person company is it even possible to run an organization this way? On Google Docs it depends. On ThinkFree, yes. The real issue becomes one of security. In that 10 person office example security is not an issue as long as you use the share tab judiciously. But the larger an organization becomes security increases. Confidential data needs to be protected. If one deals in federal contracts one will bump up against C3 requirements in many cases. I don’t think Google Docs could be certified as such. ThinkFree however is a different matter. As the organization grows they can transition over to a internal server based model.

The organization keeps the ease of maintenance at the desktop level reducing support costs. All the maintenance is on a set of servers run by the IT shop. Any updates are managed at the server level and propagation to the desktop is automatic when the user logs into their compute device. The load on IT is reduced to managing uptime and not fiddling with desktops, client patches, and viruses.

Sounds like Thinkfree is the perfect solution. Almost but not quite. At this point they don’t have a project planner tool. Not everyone needs this but it should be considered as an additional product. The other minor issue is openness. From their literature I did not see an API. It would be a killer platform if for the server edition of their product they supported/encouraged third party development of applications. The ability to include custom applications would be make them a formidable competitor in vertical markets.

The cost and support factors favor the Saas model. The annual costs are lower than contracted costs for purchasing raw bits. The reduction in support expense is just icing on the cake. But to make this all viable we need ubiquitous broadband and preferably wireless at data rates that make this viable. It is a chicken and egg sort of thing. But it is clear that the chickens are here and looking for a roost on a fat pipe.