Is Office 365 The Best Fit For Your Organization?

Microsoft Office has been around for many years, and its first product Microsoft Word, was released in 1983 (the year I was born). Since then, the Office suite has had many changes, but none more drastic then the 2011 release of Microsoft Office 365. This release put Microsoft in the “cloud wars” race, with their all-in-one cloud based system. In 2013, Office 365 got upgraded with an expanded feature set to stand with their offline Office 365 applications, giving Office 365 users the benefit of any new software upgrade without having to pay for it.

Office 365 initially looked as if it was focused more on larger businesses by offering the most robust, feature-rich and expensive business solution available. Now that Office 365 is expanding its offerings in the low end pricing, by offering single user licenses, expanded cloud storage and wider range of business solutions packages, they might be trying to tap into the smaller businesses and organizations market as well.

Is Google Apps Competition for Office 365?

Google is a 15-year-old company that has quickly taken its place as the best search engine in the world, and one of the top online business solutions. In 2000 Google launched their Google Adwords program aimed at monetizing their search engine. Google Adwords quickly became a success and soon after the company released Google Adsense. Google Analytics was released in 2005, and that took website optimization to a whole new level. Google Apps was officially released in 2006, with the start of their cloud based services. Google launched Android OS in 2007 and Chrome in 2008. Google continues to release new applications and features to their products that revolutionize the way we use the internet and cloud services.

The Stackup

Experience/Time: As far as seniority of initial applications goes, Microsoft was first with their Microsoft Word release, but for the cloud services aspect of these companies and their applications, Google wins with the release of their Google Apps.

Price: Both Google Apps and Office 365 offer their applications free to qualifying non-profits.

Features: Office 365 is way more feature rich in email, spreadsheets, presentations and a ton of other business solution applications. Google is tailored more for small organizations that don’t need all the features that Office 365 offers.

Email: Office 365 has personal folders that are used to place and categorize emails in Outlook. Outlook is seamlessly compatible with other Office 365 products and has no formatting issues when working with other Office 365 apps. Google’s Gmail has a label feature that works different then the Outlook folders and can group emails by label name, which makes Gmail’s labels a better search tool when compared to Outlooks folders.

Storage: Office 365 currently offers unlimited cloud storage with OneDrive. Google Apps offers unlimited cloud storage as well.

Security: Office 365 continues to be a more a more secure and compliant productivity solution that evolves over time. Google apps is also a very secure solution, but has limited support when it comes to more advanced issues.

Support: Office 365 offers support on many levels, but Google apps only offers limited support.

Office 365 on the job

British Airways was having issues with their messaging and collaboration tools, they used four different emails and had massive problems sharing calendars. British Airways needed mobility, flexibility and the option to access their work and data from anywhere. Office 365 was the clear solution to handle their massive 41,000+ colleagues and provide them with the features and collaboration tools they needed.

Office 365 continues to advance and add value, tools, productivity and collaboration to their Office 365 cloud solutions. Office 365 is suited for the organization that doesn’t want to worry about running into limitations on what your apps can do, and like to have the security of 24 hour support if needed. Google apps has a place for smaller organizations that will never needed the vast capabilities of Office 365, but when organizations are global and need to have world class applications and support. Office 365 has the winning applications and feature set.