[natemcguire]

I'm a little surprised the author doesn't comment extensively on the availability and use of google docs as a useful and FREE (or fairly cheap) replacement for the office suite. Having been a hardcore enterprise user of MS Office (excel, ppt, access, to a lesser extent word) for the first 5 years of my career, I'm very familiar with the value these software suites play in large organizations. Shared tools make collaboration easier and shared formats make operations across the globe even possible.

Google spreadsheets still a little work to do but excel for Mac is is the same position. So you replace everything MS office can do with a free suite of tools that are a near enough equivalent and what do you get? Just like we saw the personalization of tech in enterprise organizations with hardware (buying and using our own iPhones/iPads and saying screw centralized IT), you will see the same thing happen with software. Add in the collaborative aspects of google drive vs emailing docx files back and forth and you see clear advantages to choosing something other than MS Office.

What happens when that next 3com or IBM sprouts up using google docs and becomes a multinational 100k+ employee organization? Do they switch to MS Office? Maybe, but I doubt it would be the best choice for companies in the future.