Should Your Small Business Choose Google Apps Or Microsoft Office?
Posted by Chris Manzano on Tue, Nov 17, 2009
The Office Killer?
No, not the 1997 comedy-horror film directed by Cindy Sherman; I'm referring to what some folks are calling Google's App service. Google's service wraps together Gmail, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and other services into a business-oriented package with the ability to use your own domain name.
As usual with virtually anything that anyone identifies as a "killer," the label is pure hype. There are many things that Microsoft Office does well that Google Apps doesn't do at all. I'm guessing that even Google doesn't think that the service will knock down Microsoft Office anytime soon. But its mere existence is probably enough to agitate Microsoft - call it an Office Annoyer.
Here's what $50 gets you with Google:
- Gmail with your domain name and 10GB of storage (versus 2GB for the free version)
- Google Talk
- Google Calendar with shareable schedules
- Google Start Page that can include company info
- Google Docs and Spreadsheets (the neat hosted word processor and spreadsheet)
- Google Page Creator (a very basic Web site designer)
- Control panel to manage everything and some sort of hooks into your company's existing IT infrastructure
- Mobile access to some functionality (such as Gmail)
- 24/7 tech support (including phone help) and a 99.9% uptime guarantee for Gmail (but not for the other applications)
When all is said and done, it's probably easier to come up with examples of organizations that aren't going to switch to Google Apps than of those who might.
Companies that will want to keep Microsoft Office:
- Any company that's staffed by power users. Google Docs and
Spreadsheets are neat but very, very basic; both the word processor and the spreadsheet lack features you might want for even pretty basic business communications. And Gmail and Google Calendar don't exactly add up to a true Outlook rival (although both are easier to use than the equivalent functionality in Outlook).
- Any company that's using Microsoft Office apps that have no counterpart in Google Apps, such as PowerPoint or Access.
- Anyone who's proprietary about their data. Google's term of service for Google Apps has some alarming boilerplate about the company not being responsible for lost data. Despite that, I think it's in a far better position to reliably back up and protect data than most small companies are. Even so, I think a lot of organizations will have qualms about sensitive files living on some Google server somewhere.
So who might want Google Apps?
- There are certainly many users in the world who really only need basic tools.
- There are absolutely many companies, especially small ones, for whom $50 a year is a far more appealing price tag than several hundred dollars for a copy of Microsoft Office.
- There are definitely corporations who'd rather offload the management of e-mail and other applications to an expert like Google than to worry about them themselves.
- There are unquestionably organizations that are adventuresome enough to be willing to be among the first to try dumping Microsoft Office for a Web-hosted alternative.
Back in the 1990s when Microsoft Office appeared, they used the word "killer" in conjunction with it to, as in "Lotus 1-2-3 killer." First, it wasn't, but Microsoft kept working away, and 1-2-3 did indeed die. Technically speaking, 1-2-3 and the other Lotus desktop apps are still alive, but if you can tell me when they last received a meaningful update, I'll give you a reward.
In summary, Google Apps is a great product suite that needs to be properly considered prior to making it your suite of choice. It has its benefits and its disadvantages, it all depends on you as the user and what it is you need from your software.
Microsoft will soon have an online version of Office. Check out my next post where I will give you an insight on Microsoft Office online.
google photo: Rick McCharles
microsoft office photo: robertnelson