Ed Bott
Office 365
or
Google Apps
Christopher Dawson
Best Argument:
Office 365
Audience Favored:
Office 365 (82%)
List of Events:
Opening Statements
Trust the most experienced
Ed Bott: Microsoft knows enterprise software. Its Exchange server will celebrate its 20th birthday next year, and during that time it has evolved impressively, knocking off some impressive competitors along the way. (Remember Lotus Notes? WordPerfect GroupWise?)
It was natural that Microsoft would move Exchange into the cloud, which they did in 2008. Office 365 is the successor to that service.
Microsoft Exchange has a big-company-only reputation. That might have been true five years ago, but not today. What impresses me most about Office 365 is how it delivers a powerful and sophisticated service in a package that scales from one-person shops all the way up to global enterprises.
Google has done a good job of scaling its free Gmail service into something that a lot of people love. But which company will I trust my business with? It’s no contest: The one with the most experience wins.
Google Apps is a no-brainer
Chris Dawson: Google Apps was designed from the ground up to support business collaboration in the cloud. From the early days of integrating Writely and XL2Web with Gmail six years ago to the modern incarnation complete with full office suite capabilities, a marketplace of integrated third-party apps, and a variety of editions to support key verticals, Google Apps has always focused on enabling people to work together better online. In fact, although Google Apps works quite well as a standalone office suite and cloud storage medium, its native sharing and simultaneous editing features for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings for a single price in a 100% SaaS environment are where it really shines.
If your business is serious about collaboration and wants the fastest, easiest, least expensive way to get employees working together without any investments in on-premise software or hardware, Google Apps is a no-brainer.
The Rebuttal
Closing Statements
Microsoft knows what businesses need
Ed Bott
Handing over control of your company’s email and collaboration infrastructure is a big decision that shouldn’t be made lightly.
Both Microsoft and Google have built impressive online offerings backed by massive infrastructure. Google, as my esteemed colleague points out, believes you should “live in the cloud, promote collaboration in the cloud, and operate in the browser.�
Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world, where the cloud disappears at inconvenient times, often when you need it most. And those browser-only apps are improving steadily, but they’re still second-rate.
With 20 years of experience in collaboration software, Microsoft knows what businesses need, and Office 365 delivers that enterprise-class product to businesses of all sizes.
This is Microsoft’s core business, and they’re in it for the long haul. For Google, this is still a sideline. Maybe it’ll be around next year, maybe it won’t. I know which company I’d bet my business on.
Different way of doing things
Christopher Dawson
Office 365 is an incredibly useful means of accessing your documents from the browser. Fidelity is good, integration across Microsoft ecosystems is good, and this represents a solid choice for organizations heavily invested in Microsoft infrastructures. The leap to the cloud, after all, is not something that comes easily, especially for large enterprises.
However, Office 365 doesn't give us much that we can't achieve with Microsoft Office and Dropbox. Google Apps, on the other hand, represents a significant transformation in workflow, business processes, and collaborative potential, all administered, provisioned, and managed with total ease from the web. It's a different way of doing things and it isn't the right choice for every organization but can be transformational for those ready and willing to embrace it.
True real-time collaboration, combined with a vast set of integrated third-party applications from the Google Apps Marketplace and mobile device management/integration, make Google Apps a winning choice.
Best bet? Depends
Lawrence Dignan
This debate was a bit tricky. Comparing Google Apps and Microsoft's Office 365 can spark a bit of a religious debate. In the end, Ed Bott had the better argument against Christopher Dawson, but the reality is that both of these cloud office suites can work depending on your situation. As many talkbackers noted, Google Apps is better for small businesses based on cost while larger enterprises already invested in Microsoft may find Office 365 the better bet.
More from "The Great Debate"
I can't hop on board the Google Apps train, is because it's Google. They haven't exactly been consumer friendly as of late, and I'm not sure I can trust them anymore.
As for the technicalities, I use Office 2010 on all my machines, and if I need to go offline, I can simply download whatever document I'm working on, and know it has full compatibility with the offline Office suite.
As for the technicalities, I use Office 2010 on all my machines, and if I need to go offline, I can simply download whatever document I'm working on, and know it has full compatibility with the offline Office suite.
There are a few situations, not uncommon, where Google Apps is the easiest thing to do. When you need to work quickly with a distributed group of people and make no assumptions about what software they're running it's great, because it's free and almost everyone has a Google account. This is about the word processing of course; the spreadsheet is primitive and buggy and you can't do anything remotely sophisticated in it. GMail is very good of course and the calendar is passable (when it's not failing to store the event you just spent several minutes creating).
But for real day-to-day work it's not even close. Microsoft's apps are far better.
But for real day-to-day work it's not even close. Microsoft's apps are far better.
Google apps just doesn't offer anything even SkyDrive/Office Web Apps don't too, but then for O365 you also have the option of a fully featured & matured Office application suite too. I just don't see what Google Apps offers above even the web-version of Office.
Microsoft builds products and services for businesses and consumers. Google is a search and advertising company that happens to have a few products and services they make available to draw people into their ecosystem so they can show them more ads.
Well, at the places I've worked so far, neither. At the retail place I worked at, very little is done with any sort of office suite. At the school I worked at, we just pushed the full version of Office.
These apps are probably fine for collaboration, but honestly - if you're not in a collaborative heavy business, you're probably fine with a regular office suite, rather than some online thing that will probably take another 30 years to catch up with the full feature set of the offline suite.
Honestly, I'm not very impressed at all with the functionality of the offline apps so far. Google docs is so far behind Microsoft Office it isn't funny, and although I haven't personally tried Office 365, I've heard it's playing catch up as well. Yet these things are somehow supposed to replace their offline equivalents? How?
For my own personal use, I'll just go the Dropbox route and sync my files between my machines. That works fine, and I don't need an internet connection to edit the files, just to sync them.
It just seems like the use cases for online documents are pretty small. Sure, they may make sense to the average tech journalist, but outside of tech journalism? Not so much.
These apps are probably fine for collaboration, but honestly - if you're not in a collaborative heavy business, you're probably fine with a regular office suite, rather than some online thing that will probably take another 30 years to catch up with the full feature set of the offline suite.
Honestly, I'm not very impressed at all with the functionality of the offline apps so far. Google docs is so far behind Microsoft Office it isn't funny, and although I haven't personally tried Office 365, I've heard it's playing catch up as well. Yet these things are somehow supposed to replace their offline equivalents? How?
For my own personal use, I'll just go the Dropbox route and sync my files between my machines. That works fine, and I don't need an internet connection to edit the files, just to sync them.
It just seems like the use cases for online documents are pretty small. Sure, they may make sense to the average tech journalist, but outside of tech journalism? Not so much.
Office 365 is Office, synced in a cloud....that you could use through a browser too. There're collab options too, but there's nothing stopping you using it like an online file-system replacement for "My Documents" folder. Google docs however....it's all in the browser or nothing.
Is this a debate to see which is better or if the cost savings for going to Google Apps is good enough for my business?
We are currently looking at cloud solutions to reduce cost for our organization and of course looking at Office 365 and Google. To compare the products is not fair, Office 365 is better than what I have today and 50x better then Google. However, Google is cheaper and is it good enough? I would go with Google because I can save operation costs but at what cost to my users and my company? Will my users be as productive as they are today? Not sure, but don't think so because I wasn't when tested Google. Will my legal department laugh at me when I mention I Google? Probably. Will my users be more productive with Office 365? Hard to measure but with the great features such as Lync for IM and Meetings, and new features in Office 2010 and Exchange which are included - I can't imagine not being more productive.
Be interested in hearing the debate and others opinions. I just think it's amazing on what people are willing to give up for price.
We are currently looking at cloud solutions to reduce cost for our organization and of course looking at Office 365 and Google. To compare the products is not fair, Office 365 is better than what I have today and 50x better then Google. However, Google is cheaper and is it good enough? I would go with Google because I can save operation costs but at what cost to my users and my company? Will my users be as productive as they are today? Not sure, but don't think so because I wasn't when tested Google. Will my legal department laugh at me when I mention I Google? Probably. Will my users be more productive with Office 365? Hard to measure but with the great features such as Lync for IM and Meetings, and new features in Office 2010 and Exchange which are included - I can't imagine not being more productive.
Be interested in hearing the debate and others opinions. I just think it's amazing on what people are willing to give up for price.
My ABM co-founders and I are building our new start-up, using Google docs for all our doc storage and collaboration. They think GD is pretty cool ... largely because they have never tried O365. I, on the other hand, having used both extensively, can assert with full confidence that O365 is LIGHT YEARS ahead of Google Docs in almost every way. using GD feels like using early Wiki sites from 10 years ago. Office365, on the other hand is so close to using Office itself that I use Office365 for more than half my doc editing needs.
Forget the Controller, who saw the price difference and was convinced. My users have been given the chance to try the various tools available to them, and they have overwhelmingly chosen GD.
The comparison is not of apples and apples. MS's online app is not standalone, whereas Google Docs is. This point was made by larry@ but needs to be heavily emphasized.
I use Google Documents (word processor ) and Spreadsheets (Excel-equivalent) and I see the limitations vis-a-vis the MS equivalents. However, for most daily use both Google Docs are good and download pretty well into MS file formats (have not tried or Open Office). The spreadsheet is fairly advanced and improvements are made to all apps every now and then.
For true independence from a 'home' computer it is no contest -- GD wins hands down. But if this is not a requirement I can see that Office 365 has its merits.
I use Google Documents (word processor ) and Spreadsheets (Excel-equivalent) and I see the limitations vis-a-vis the MS equivalents. However, for most daily use both Google Docs are good and download pretty well into MS file formats (have not tried or Open Office). The spreadsheet is fairly advanced and improvements are made to all apps every now and then.
For true independence from a 'home' computer it is no contest -- GD wins hands down. But if this is not a requirement I can see that Office 365 has its merits.
Non-profits get to use GAs for free. It is a no brainer. 365 doesn't really impress that much anyway.
Have you actually seen the web based apps compare next to each other? Google Apps looks like a chalk board with basic functions while Office 365 looks like a full blown desktop application with much greater functionality. Plus, Google lost me with all their focus on advertising and the fact that they own a large proportion of all the spam hosting companies across the world.
But I've given Google Docs, Thinkfree, Zoho and EditGrid fair workouts, and I find Zoho to be much better than Google Docs, and EditGrid to be the best of these for an online spreadsheet.
This battle is like watching George Foreman fight Justin Bieber.
Ed, first you over-reached with your first statement. MS doesn't know squat about the enterprise. If they did, they wouldn't always be the last to the party with new functionality. Exchange is a very robust, serviceable platform suffering from two main drawbacks. One, it is the biggest malware target on the planet and two, the client offerings to access it (Outlook, OWA, ActiveSync, etc) are crap.
And knocking off Lotus Notes and WordPerfect? Are you kidding. The Lotus Notes guys live under a rock! I doubt they know we've reached the 21st century. I doubt most of them even realize they've been working for IBM for the last 17 years! And GroupWise was never going to be a serious contender against the Office/Exchange power axis, because Office single handedly killed WordPerfect.
Google Apps are no better. They look like they were written by high school students for a senior project. They're only good for the most rudimentary tasks. Their fit and finish are awful.
Ed, first you over-reached with your first statement. MS doesn't know squat about the enterprise. If they did, they wouldn't always be the last to the party with new functionality. Exchange is a very robust, serviceable platform suffering from two main drawbacks. One, it is the biggest malware target on the planet and two, the client offerings to access it (Outlook, OWA, ActiveSync, etc) are crap.
And knocking off Lotus Notes and WordPerfect? Are you kidding. The Lotus Notes guys live under a rock! I doubt they know we've reached the 21st century. I doubt most of them even realize they've been working for IBM for the last 17 years! And GroupWise was never going to be a serious contender against the Office/Exchange power axis, because Office single handedly killed WordPerfect.
Google Apps are no better. They look like they were written by high school students for a senior project. They're only good for the most rudimentary tasks. Their fit and finish are awful.
Love the Integration capabilities of O365 with the Ent. You get to choose whether you want to run all your email online, onpremise or in a hybird mode.
There isn't anything wrong with Google Apps, They just are not Office 365. Many people use Gmail at home and MS Outlook at work to cover their email because they are full-featured products with a supporting cast of other apps readily available. That trend should continue.
The biggest problem with Google apps for me is that if you have 2 or more groups who use Google apps then you either have to access one with a browser and access the other with another browser or constantly log out each time you access Google apps.
I have not tried Office 365 because I have the office suite at work and at home. Computing in the cloud is not what I want to do. If I need certain data then I can use a USB drive to store it and carry it with me. I am not working on any secret or controlled access apps.
I have not tried Office 365 because I have the office suite at work and at home. Computing in the cloud is not what I want to do. If I need certain data then I can use a USB drive to store it and carry it with me. I am not working on any secret or controlled access apps.
What google is to search Microsoft is to business apps. How am I supposed to trust anything that's perpetually beta and has next to no tech support?
It is the Evil Empire vs. the road to hell(good intentions). I will go with the evil empire.
My experience has been that Google dominates the markets where integrating content into a website is important. How do Microsoft's solutions address scripting, webpage integration, data collection, and the myriad other things I need to build a successful enterprise without having to buy onsite products?
having seen both in use (not on a personal level of use, but at locations I deal with) it seems that from the IT perspective, the Google Apps users aren't as thrilled with it as they once believed they would be. The Office 365 users feel they got everything they where looking for. The biggest "complaints/issues/desires" seem to come from the Google App users wishing it could do "this or that", or some other feature they had before.
could ever hope to argue Google Apps over Office. I mean, even the idiots arguing for Google Apps don't believe it. Google Apps is third rate dog ****, not mention Google knows nothing about servicing business. I'd love to see business try and call Google support. They won't get any. In fact, there has been story after story after story of businesses dropping Google Apps because of a complete lack of support when things go wrong. This does not even mention what a joke Google Apps is compared to Office when it comes to functionality.
I work for a large, multinational company with more than 60,000 desktops. Last year, we migrated to Gmail and Google Apps. Now we are being instructed to stop deploying Office on new builds. When we rolled out Gmail and Google Apps, Google had multiple support people working at all of our larger sites and plants to help with the transition. Microsoft would have...um...wished us well?
For what most people do, Google Apps is good enough. It's improved a lot just since we've been involved, although there's a ways to go IMO. For the foreseeable future, Office is necessary for a relatively few -- namely those using add-ins critical to their work.
Hopefully, Google Apps will have the benefit of forcing Microsoft to be more competitive in their offering. But as long as I can open, edit, or create documents and spreadsheets and there are no compatibility issues, I'll go with whichever costs the least.
For what most people do, Google Apps is good enough. It's improved a lot just since we've been involved, although there's a ways to go IMO. For the foreseeable future, Office is necessary for a relatively few -- namely those using add-ins critical to their work.
Hopefully, Google Apps will have the benefit of forcing Microsoft to be more competitive in their offering. But as long as I can open, edit, or create documents and spreadsheets and there are no compatibility issues, I'll go with whichever costs the least.
I've tried both platforms and can say that the richness of Office 365 really works well with its offline counterpart. I believe if you're a power user using the real thing is where it's at. Now with the SkyDrive synchronization between your desktop and Windows Live and it's a really powerful combination.
Quite frequently I may not be near an internet connection and need to answer email or continue working on a document. Office 365 gives me that flexibility to get things done, sync to the cloud, and maintain the reliability I expect.
Quite frequently I may not be near an internet connection and need to answer email or continue working on a document. Office 365 gives me that flexibility to get things done, sync to the cloud, and maintain the reliability I expect.
I'm surprised no one mentioned google drive yet. It officially launched today and I have been playing around with it. It added offline support for chrome users *ahem- just like office 365- ahem*. It also added many more file types support more third party apps, a new API, 5x the storage of google docs, and the ability to save ALL of those files offline with the apllication simalar to dropbox's. This same application is for android, windows, Mac, and I think Linux. It will soon be coming to ios devices. This is on top of the current features.
There is a difference. Office365 uses Share Point. SkyDrive or google drive don't come close to the benefits that Share Point offers.
I was just testing google docs within the last hour. I started a presentation and after starting a new slide and inserting a photo, the browser shell locked with the message, "The server is unavailable. Trying to reconnect." Frozen for five minutes, I elected to refresh the page. Lost the insert and the second slide.
If you had to pick a cloud system, I would steer clear of google. But my preference is desktop applications. They can be triaged at the desktop per user instance if something breaks. If google breaks, everybody is going to the cafeteria while somebody you don't know "works on it."
Any way you slice it, if they promise 99.9% uptime, that means there will be .1% downtime. That is 8.76 hours per year (for EVERYBODY) that you should expect to not be able to use their servers. You don't get to pick those hours because that is an estimate of the time it is broken. It is not necessarily going to be broken for a single user, but for the entire company, or at least that campus...
Scheduled down time is another thing. Google's, or Microsoft's for that matter, estimate of unavailability is not related to the reliability of your ISP, either. If your ISP guarantees 99.9% uptime, they are going to fail for at least 8.76 hours... That is what they expect you to suck up. That does not include the time the water department chops through your outside trunk while doing sewer rehab, or the trunk failure caused by the flash flood that washes out the bridge which supported your ISP's central region backbone. Nor does it include the power surge that mangles a gateway in your closet.
But, most of these outages would not impact a user who had PowerPoint open on the desktop and was working from local files, or even a mapped pe rsonal share.
As for data storage, you are going to trust... who? That's another issue, sort of.
Anyway, if you think that expecting your productivity processes to come to a dead stop for a couple of days a year, and that is a best case scenario, go with either of 'em. There is no choice for NONE, so I picked Office 365.
If you had to pick a cloud system, I would steer clear of google. But my preference is desktop applications. They can be triaged at the desktop per user instance if something breaks. If google breaks, everybody is going to the cafeteria while somebody you don't know "works on it."
Any way you slice it, if they promise 99.9% uptime, that means there will be .1% downtime. That is 8.76 hours per year (for EVERYBODY) that you should expect to not be able to use their servers. You don't get to pick those hours because that is an estimate of the time it is broken. It is not necessarily going to be broken for a single user, but for the entire company, or at least that campus...
Scheduled down time is another thing. Google's, or Microsoft's for that matter, estimate of unavailability is not related to the reliability of your ISP, either. If your ISP guarantees 99.9% uptime, they are going to fail for at least 8.76 hours... That is what they expect you to suck up. That does not include the time the water department chops through your outside trunk while doing sewer rehab, or the trunk failure caused by the flash flood that washes out the bridge which supported your ISP's central region backbone. Nor does it include the power surge that mangles a gateway in your closet.
But, most of these outages would not impact a user who had PowerPoint open on the desktop and was working from local files, or even a mapped pe rsonal share.
As for data storage, you are going to trust... who? That's another issue, sort of.
Anyway, if you think that expecting your productivity processes to come to a dead stop for a couple of days a year, and that is a best case scenario, go with either of 'em. There is no choice for NONE, so I picked Office 365.
I have been using microsoft office since Version 2003 and I am accustomed to its programs, shortcuts and web services. I am very satisfied and see no reason to switch to another service for now. And I think google is just copying microsoft and other companies. Android, google docs, chrome, google plus, gmail and now google drive are copies of iOS, office, IE, facebook, hotmail and skydrive/dropbox respectively. Anyway, competition is always good for users.
I have been working with a client who moved the entire office apps and mail system to Gmail and Apps SaaS offered by Google. But what happened thereafter was funny; we all happily followed the words of the admin and started working and collaborating although with dismay due to lack of features and richness. Anyway we were forced to use it, but then the going got tough due to the project getting into trouble with everyone getting involved with heavy amounts of email exchanges, documents, RCAs, specs being rewritten, requirements being changed etc etc :-); and guess what!!! the Google SaaS failed pathetically.
We all went back to our favorite "Office" and got everything resolved.
"Office" is better software, way better.
We all went back to our favorite "Office" and got everything resolved.
"Office" is better software, way better.
To be honest, their servers are hosted in a highly reliable and secure data center. All you need is a browser
Anyway for those who wanted to host their own cloud ms office then you will need a software like ThinServer which can virtualize your windows into multi users system
Anyway for those who wanted to host their own cloud ms office then you will need a software like ThinServer which can virtualize your windows into multi users system
If you're a mom and pop shop, and you've never used Outlook before, and you're never going to grow, and you can live with the GMail UI, then I think Google Apps is fine.
However, in our 30 person company, we tried GA for almost a year, and it was categorically despised. They claim integration with Outlook, but it's incredibly buggy (for months they had a bug where a random 1% of emails wouldn't appear in Outlook Inboxes, for example), and the GMail UI is just not business friendly. Want to re-send (not forward) an email? Can't. Want to attach an email to an email? Not possible. How about true nested folders (not fake ones that are really labels)? Nuh-uh.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Real businesses need and demand Outlook, for good reason.
However, in our 30 person company, we tried GA for almost a year, and it was categorically despised. They claim integration with Outlook, but it's incredibly buggy (for months they had a bug where a random 1% of emails wouldn't appear in Outlook Inboxes, for example), and the GMail UI is just not business friendly. Want to re-send (not forward) an email? Can't. Want to attach an email to an email? Not possible. How about true nested folders (not fake ones that are really labels)? Nuh-uh.
I could go on, but you get the idea. Real businesses need and demand Outlook, for good reason.
On balance, I may favor Office 365 because I own Office Professional Plus but for small businesses, Office 365 is likely not the best solution. It has certain weird limitations. It does not have support -there is weak online support- and a paid solution needs support. In addition, public websites are Sharepoint based and they are extremely limited. Lync is very limited to only web conferences.
Thus Office 365 is a good solution for larger business that host their websites somewhere else; for small businesses both of these offerings are just fine unless a more complex website is preferred, in which case Office 365 is definitely not recommended
Thus Office 365 is a good solution for larger business that host their websites somewhere else; for small businesses both of these offerings are just fine unless a more complex website is preferred, in which case Office 365 is definitely not recommended
I prefer being able to choose and change my mind on on-prem and in-cloud apps.
if you want that fast, scrappy, just do it collaboration that Google Docs is supposed to be so good at, try OneNote - hosting your notebook on Office 365 SharePoint or using the OneNote Web app; you get instant live collaboration, co-editing and seamless updates. If you're on a plane, you have your content with you without paying $20 for Wi-Fi. My writing partner and I write thousands of words a year in it. Favourite thing about Office 365? Exchange works just like it did when we had to do the work of running it, but now we do no work. I've run Google Apps too, and it was frustrating to have an interface that was underpowered and different in every tab. And return receipts you have to decline every time you open the message? Hope they changed that before someone went postal. Favourite thing about Google Apps? How it pushed Microsoft to do a good job with OWA.
After yesterday's launch of the new Google Drive -- which is the storage platform for Google Apps -- I'm more in the O365 camp then I was before. The privacy clause basically says they can "do whatever" with your content to maintain the "service" - including "translating" it (huh?) and other issues. That's not exactly what any serious business, organization, or entity wants to hear. Especially if there's requirements for confidentiality, privacy, etc. I think out-of-the-box, Google Apps provide for an easier collaborative experience but, that doesn't overrule the protection of access/non-disclosure of your data.
Others wrote it but I will categorize further:
Google Apps is good for Small Businesses due to cost savings while O365 is good for medium (>20 empl count) businesses as well as small/med/large enterprises (>500, >5000, > 50000 counts). Ultimately, it is return on investment as measured by licensing costs (or subscription costs to put it right) and maintenance costs (support calls) over a number of years. We can assume VPN costs are equal in either case. If support costs lag subscription costs as in most SB cases, then GA is good. Otherwise, O365 is good. There is another problem with GA though. Advanced features have to be introduced into GA sometime if they want to take it to the next level.
Google Apps is good for Small Businesses due to cost savings while O365 is good for medium (>20 empl count) businesses as well as small/med/large enterprises (>500, >5000, > 50000 counts). Ultimately, it is return on investment as measured by licensing costs (or subscription costs to put it right) and maintenance costs (support calls) over a number of years. We can assume VPN costs are equal in either case. If support costs lag subscription costs as in most SB cases, then GA is good. Otherwise, O365 is good. There is another problem with GA though. Advanced features have to be introduced into GA sometime if they want to take it to the next level.
Plus, I think MS could rightly be sued for false advertising. It's not Office 365 - it's Office 362.25 (and counting... down).
I have no love for Google - they're a profit-motivated corporation after all, but I can't stand MS, their (lack of) ethics, their hostility for their users (which their users, strangely, accept quite happily, from what I can tell) and I think their software is generally of remarkably poor quality given the huge buckets of monopoly profits they have rattling around.
I have no love for Google - they're a profit-motivated corporation after all, but I can't stand MS, their (lack of) ethics, their hostility for their users (which their users, strangely, accept quite happily, from what I can tell) and I think their software is generally of remarkably poor quality given the huge buckets of monopoly profits they have rattling around.
Having worked with both I have to say they each have their down sides. They both suffer from boardroom pie in the sky design. Many features dont work and they really do not function as advertised. Office 365 is great for a small company that has never had exchange before. God help you if you are migrating from and additional exchange box and use sso.
Single sign on and Federated services in its current design is rediculous. Your adding several single points of failure to what should be a simple system... email.
If your not prepared to do the full setup in power shell by hand, you do not have the capability to implement and manage single sign on.. bottom line.
Google apps is nice but come on.. they need to work on their sync tools.
The reality is each of these systems likes to believe that it should be the single source for all that is email for you. They dont make it easy to add multiple accounts, which many people do. Microsofts 365 with single sign on is horrible. While you may get single sign on up and running, just check through the tech notes on email migration... nasty.
Bottom line... if you are considering either of these, check the Knowledge bases and forums for associated problems with the configuration your considering.... make a list and be prepared to discover new ones.. then decide if you want to go through the trouble.
Single sign on and Federated services in its current design is rediculous. Your adding several single points of failure to what should be a simple system... email.
If your not prepared to do the full setup in power shell by hand, you do not have the capability to implement and manage single sign on.. bottom line.
Google apps is nice but come on.. they need to work on their sync tools.
The reality is each of these systems likes to believe that it should be the single source for all that is email for you. They dont make it easy to add multiple accounts, which many people do. Microsofts 365 with single sign on is horrible. While you may get single sign on up and running, just check through the tech notes on email migration... nasty.
Bottom line... if you are considering either of these, check the Knowledge bases and forums for associated problems with the configuration your considering.... make a list and be prepared to discover new ones.. then decide if you want to go through the trouble.
I've tried both, sharepoint and google docs for sharing documents within my company and the results is sharepoint has made us worry not about the business but about the tool, keep updating, protecting, unprotecting.... in google docs is simple, just join the document and start editing no matter who was/is using it, Office 365 is more of the same without saying microsoft lacks of keeping the users up to date, who uses ie7, ie8 and who ie9? same for office users Google has found the way so all the users stay up to date and have no hardware related problems.
I am all for 365, it has the best design and formatting features for all of the basic office products. It gives you a good balance, and allows you to get to your documents when you're no where near an internet connection.
For small upstarts and business' who dont have a heavy investment in IT, G-Apps are hard to turn away from. As long as you have someone else with other applications doing all of your hand out material. Otherwise your proposals and product info would look like dog poo.
I don't know if I would move from Office to G-Apps. The learning curve was treacherous for some of my co-workers in the past.
In the future, G-Apps will be a major contendor, and Microsoft will have to keep stepping up their game. We'll have to see where the battle lines are in 10 years. It will be interesting!
For small upstarts and business' who dont have a heavy investment in IT, G-Apps are hard to turn away from. As long as you have someone else with other applications doing all of your hand out material. Otherwise your proposals and product info would look like dog poo.
I don't know if I would move from Office to G-Apps. The learning curve was treacherous for some of my co-workers in the past.
In the future, G-Apps will be a major contendor, and Microsoft will have to keep stepping up their game. We'll have to see where the battle lines are in 10 years. It will be interesting!
Sometimes simplicity wins...
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Best online app solution, not most complicated or full featured...
It does depend on the situation
For small upstarts and business' who dont have a heavy investment in IT, G-Apps are hard to turn away from. As long as you have someone else with other applications doing all of your hand out material. Otherwise your proposals and product info would look like dog poo.
I don't know if I would move from Office to G-Apps. The learning curve was treacherous for some of my co-workers in the past.
In the future, G-Apps will be a major contendor, and Microsoft will have to keep stepping up their game. We'll have to see where the battle lines are in 10 years. It will be interesting!
Google Drive privacy??
Ive personally implimented both ...
Single sign on and Federated services in its current design is rediculous. Your adding several single points of failure to what should be a simple system... email.
If your not prepared to do the full setup in power shell by hand, you do not have the capability to implement and manage single sign on.. bottom line.
Google apps is nice but come on.. they need to work on their sync tools.
The reality is each of these systems likes to believe that it should be the single source for all that is email for you. They dont make it easy to add multiple accounts, which many people do. Microsofts 365 with single sign on is horrible. While you may get single sign on up and running, just check through the tech notes on email migration... nasty.
Bottom line... if you are considering either of these, check the Knowledge bases and forums for associated problems with the configuration your considering.... make a list and be prepared to discover new ones.. then decide if you want to go through the trouble.
Google Docs has shown its better performance on simultaneous editing