It’s a question we hear often: why go with Office 365 when I can use Google Apps? We’ve heard the horror stories and helped dozens of business move away from Google Apps. Here are some of the reasons why they’re ready to change.
More Complete
Office 365 was developed with a complete and thorough vision of business productivity. It provides a full set of productivity services in the cloud, along with a desktop version of Office.* Google Apps relies on consumer—not business—services like Google+ Hangouts that aren’t included within its service level agreement. Additionally, Google Apps lacks the capability to support business intelligence or enterprise content management workloads, forcing customers to rely on third party services. Office 365 covers it all.
Choice & Flexibility
If you choose Google, everything has to be in the cloud all at once and there are no plans to select from—it’s an all or nothing proposition. Office 365 is a better fit for most businesses because it enables them to move to the cloud at their own pace causing minimal IT disruption, and they can select a plan that fits their unique business needs.
Privacy, Security and Compliance
This is a big one for nearly all of our clients. Office 365 meets world-class industry standards embodied in ISO 27001, FISMA and CJIS, while supporting compliance with laws like FERPA. It offers critical customer contracts like HIPAA business associate agreement and EU model clauses. Additionally, Microsoft commits to only using your data for your productivity services. Google, on the other hand, promotes services in Google Apps for Business that are governed by consumer-oriented terms, putting user data privacy at risk. Capabilities, like loss prevention, are only offered through third-party services that are governed by entirely different service level agreements. Simply put, Google is focused on advertising and lacks clarity around data governance policies. Is that something your enterprise can afford?
And here are some specific, side by side comparisons of Google Apps and Microsoft when it comes to the integrity of your documents in the cloud.
Excel Online vs. Google Sheets
Users expect existing Excel documents from their desktop to look the same when they share them in the cloud. That’s the point right, continuity? Unfortunately, that isn’t the case with Google Sheets.
PowerPoint Online vs. Google Slides
When you spend hours working on the perfect PowerPoint presentation, the last thing you want is your formatting to go askew. When you share that new PowerPoint file in the cloud with your sales team, you expect them to see exactly what you uploaded. Where PowerPoint Online retains your file’s integrity, Google Slides undoes your hard work.
We’re experts at helping businesses move to Office 365. If you want to find the right cloud solution for your business, contact us and we’ll help you get started.
*Dependent upon Office 365 plan selected