RESEARCH NOTE. Workplace Service. Q&A: Google Apps v. Microsoft Office 365

Copyright © 2012 Aragon Research Inc. and or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This publication may not be distributed in any form without Aragon Research’s prior written permission. The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources believed to be

reliable. Nevertheless, Aragon Research provides this publication and the information contained in it "AS IS," without warranty of any kind. Authors: Mike Anderson, Jim Lundy

Q&A: Google Apps v. Microsoft Office 365

Summary: As people become more comfortable with

cloud-based office suites, Google and Microsoft are

competing

to

see who will own the “office in the cloud.” Here we answer

some questions from clients about these two technology

providers.

On the surface, Google Apps and Office 365 both feature a

core of email and calendar systems with office productivity

apps for creating and editing documents, spreadsheets and

presentations. Users can store files, share them with others,

and collaborate in real time on the phone or with chat, which

can include voice and video. Both

services are compatible

with Microsoft Office and

can share or interchange files with

the desktop versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint (file

fidelity differs, and only Microsoft integrates with OneNote).

Beneath

these similarities, however, there

are fundamental

differences that clearly define the battle being waged. Google

Apps and Office 365 are very different products with very

different objectives. Google’s aim is to supersede the desktop

suite and

make “office in the cloud” the dominant mass

-market

approach by providing “good enough” capabilities

across the most popular applications. Google’s starting point

is a set of services aimed initially at consumers, with

enhancements aimed at attracting enterprises.

Microsoft approaches the cloud as an extension of its

desktop Office

franchise,

with a

strong focus on enterprise

needs.

Office 365 is intended to protect that franchise and

extend it with cloud capabilities,

backed by

business-class

privacy, security and service continuity.

This

Research Note

an

swers some common questions about

these

rival cloud

suites.

For details about the two offerings,

see

RN 2012-15, “Google and Microsoft: The Battle For Office

In The Cloud.”

The battle will continue to evolve. As an

example, Microsoft, as of July 16

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Topics: Workplace; Content Management; Collaboration

Issues: What are the technologies and architectures that enterprises should leverage in the workplace?

How will content management technologies and architectures evolve?

Who are the collaboration providers, and how will they evolve?

Office 365 in a Preview (beta mode). It includes new features

and capabilities (see the Aragon Research First Cut “Microsoft

Revamps Office for the Cloud and Tablet Era”).

Why is there so much interest in moving email to the cloud?

The main attractions are

lower cost and the increased storage

it immediately provides for users. Mail servers are costly to

maintain, and the demand for more storage never ends. Given

the overhead in power, cooling and personnel, many

enterprises would like to get out of the email business. Cloud

providers offer transparent management, effective security,

instant startup and unlimited storage at prices that are

typically half or less of the in-house cost. Clients should

contact Aragon for one-on-

one help evalua

ting providers and

proposals.

What are the main end-user benefits of a cloud office suite?

The biggest benefit

for

email is larger file storage –

up

to 25

GB per mailbox in most configurations. This saves time nearly

every day for users

, who with limited

mailboxes today have to

stop what they are doing to delete attachments or emails so

they can send outbound emails.

Beyond email, another

attractive feature that both Microsoft

and Google offer

to content creators

is

simultaneous

collaborative authoring. The ability to co

-author in real time,

see the text change as the other person types, and discuss

the process in chat is a revolution in the authorship process.

A third

is the feature that automatically saves a file within

seconds after it’s altered. This

pr

events collisions between

edits, and ensures that the file will be current for all viewers.

Is mail storage a big issue in the workplace?

Often,

the single biggest issue that

office and knowledge

workers face on a daily basis is lack of storage space for all

the emails they receive. This alone is one of the biggest

benefits to migrating to

the

larger

cloud

email boxes that

come standard from either vendor.

What percentage of Microsoft’s business is cloud versus

on-premise?

Just as most of Google’s revenue is from search, most of

Microsoft’s

revenue

is

from

on-premise

software,

predominantly Windows and Office. The company has

embarked on a series of Web initiatives over the years, of

which Office 365 is the most recent. Although Microsoft’s

cloud office

approach started slow, it has gained momentum.

Microsoft claims Office 365 is being deployed at a pace eight

times faster than its predecessor. The key factor in enterprise

adoption is that most business-based Office 365 users are

also desktop Office users.

Microsoft sees Office 365 as an extension, and eventually a

replacement, for its Office desktop software. Until the entire

personal computing paradigm changes, the on-premise and

PC-based Office software user base remains a huge asset

that Microsoft will protect. Adding Office 365 seats into that

mix will expand Microsoft’s reach, and moving

PC-based

users to the cloud will keep the entire population on the most

current software version. Its arguments are based on safety

(it’s an offsite backup archive, which appeals to IT managers

even more than to users) and on portability and convenience

(work anytime, anywhere, on any device with a browser). But

the caveat

is that so far, Office 365 is only a subset of the full

Office; you really need both

to have an

optimal experience.

Microsoft

has moved past

“cloud versus on

-premise” to

“cloud

plus

on-

premise

,” which

helps

enterprises leverage

their Office installed base while moving to the cloud over time.

How important is email to Google’s overall business?

The vast majority of Google’s revenue is from advertising to

search users. Today, Google’s enterprise business is less

than 4 percent of its total revenue

– but

that has doubled in

the past two years. Google has committed a lot of resources

to building a b

usiness base outside of search. It has

established a sales force aimed at expanding its enterprise

sales, and there’s no reason to believe they will not continue

to grow.

What’s the difference between Microsoft and Google in u

ser

interface?

Google has str

eamlined

its

Docs

user

interface, but

the

new

app icons can leave users wanting more.

While the Office UI

has become a de facto paradigm, Google’s UI is clearly less

similar to it than

Office 365’s.

Microsoft aims to

provide

a

common user experience across

all client environments, and

it does so more consistently than Google, just as it does

with

file

s

tructure

.

Internally, however, Office 365 shows some

recognize

the SharePoint

cloud

module, but

it’s inconsistent

with the rest of Office 365.

A

new version of Office

(Office 2013, now in “customer

p

review

” or

beta)

has a simpler and cleaner UI

than earlier

versions. The new look and some new

capabilities will also be

available in Office 365.

What is the difference in organizing and managing content?

Microsoft’s

eleven-year history with SharePoint

has

given it

far more

document management experience

than

Google,

which sorts content into

“collections”

(renamed “folders”

in

Google Drive).

Adding

content

to an existing

folder

can be

cumbersome, although the ability to put files into a local

folder and sync it with Google Drive has simplified this. On the

other hand

,

SharePoint excels at sharing and managing

content, and has significant capabilities for metadata,

managing records and handling sensitive documents.

What is Google’s approach to content authoring?

One could characterize Google Doc’s approach as “good

enough” for the average user.

It

allows users to create new

files that are stored in the

Google cloud (Docs

or

Drive). The

editing tools for documents, presentations, spreadsheets and

forms keep improving, but they still

do not match Microsoft's

Office suite for breadth of features.

One feature that Google pioneered is

that

more than one

author

can

simultaneously

edit

a

document, spreads

heet or

presentation, and

all the collaborators

see

all the

changes at

the

same time, whether they are working on a

desktop, a

tablet or a mobile device. Google allows every user to do this,

while

Microsoft offers it

only

to users with premium,

higher-cost editions of Office

and to users of the free Office web

apps. However, in the new version of Office 365, currently in

Preview, Microsoft has addressed this issue:

if a

Windows-based

user does not have a local instance

of

an Office

app,

Office 365 will stream a temporary copy. This support extends

to up to 5 user PC and mobile devices, and enables personal

settings to roam with the user.

Can users work in Google D

ocs offline?

Offline users can read

some content (documen

ts and

spreadsheets only, at this time),

but

only in Google’s Chrome

browser. However,

if

they want to edit offline

they cannot

do

so

natively

;

they

have to

download and save the content in

Word or RTF format. For this, they need a local editor (MS

Office

or equivalent), which largely restricts this activity to the

desktop.

To address this, Google recently

acquired Quickoffice, a small

company

that

makes an offline editor for mobile devices

specifically designed to edit Office files and to integrate well

with Google and other cloud sharing and storage services. It

should not be difficult for Google to port this product to the

desktop. While it’s not likely to emulate the most

advanced

Office functions, such a move would be a big step toward

giving Google us

ers a comparable set of capabilities.

What applications

are

available in Google Apps?

Essentially the core

tools that are in

Office, minus OneNote

:

t

hat is, email and a calendar (similar to Outlook,

but

with

fewer features), a word processor,

a

spreadsheet,

and a

presentation

tool

. Google also offers a range of editing,

blogging and web publishing tools that are not explicitly part

of Google Apps.

Who is the ideal user for Google docs?

The Ideal use case is for the casual or average user who

needs to create letters

or

memos

;

i.e.,

routine internal

business documents or

content that is used as input, to be

finished with another tool

. Heavy-

duty

or advanced users

, or

those who create content for publication, would be more likely

to need the Microsoft Office desktop suite.

What are the challenges to working with Google Apps?

Google

Apps

works best with less complex documents

requiring less sophisticated editing and formatting.

Its

capabilities continue to improve, but are

still basic compared

to Office.

It’s also

better at short documents.

Long

documents or copy and paste can take time to reformat,

and

may need to be broken into smaller chapters.

Where there is significant use of

complex Office documents,

Google Apps will be a challenge. Although Google can import

Office files,

they are stored

in a proprietary format that is not

compatible

with Office,

so

issues of

file format integrity

can

arise in a mixed environment.

What about conversion to MS formats?

Google does convert, import and export

Office documents.

However, not all images, smart art,

fonts and

formats retain

fidelity. This enables either software to be used to create

drafts for later editing in the other, but loss of formatting

makes sharing

final products

less certain.

Are there workarounds for

file format fidelity concerns?

File format fidelity can be a problem when documents

move

back and forth between products or platforms.

To avoid

confusion and additional work in an Office environment,

Google

D

ocs

/Drive

can be used

as a con

tent management

system to store PowerPoint, Word, and Excel files but not edit

them.

Since the files are stored in

their native Office formats,

they are not directly editable in Google

Apps

.

Google Cloud

Connect for Microsoft Office also enables collaborative

multi-user

editing from desktop Office software. This works only

under Windows, and all users who collaborate this way

must

do so

within

desktop Office.

Documents, presentations and

spreadsheets can be drafted in Google Apps and exported to

Office format to exploit the rich functionality and formatting

capabilities of the Office suite

.

What is the recommended deployment

of

authoring tools?

In many situations, power users will stay on Office, but the

issue is

“

does

everyone need the latest version of

Office?”

Newer users, or those who

do

lightweight

editing

or casual

authoring, are ideal

candidates

for Google

Apps

,

or for the

Kiosk Worker version of Office 365

.

A

mixed

environment of

desktop Office and Google Apps can

work as long as the

groups remain

separate, and share

or

ex

change Office

documents infrequently. In an environment

where Office is

broad

ly

used

, Google Apps will

require more work

arounds

and suffer more problems with file fidelity than Office 365 will.

What about Google presentations?

Google Apps can create basic presentations, particularly

those that

are mainly text-based.

While more templates are

promised, and its handling of graphics has improved, it’s

better suited to basic

presentations used for internal

collaboration and

communication, and

less well suited to

external uses such as

marketing

or

sales, or to

high-profile

internal

uses

other

than

creating

source

drafts. Power users

What will

G

oogle Drive add to Google Docs?

Google Drive superseded Google Docs in the summer of 2012.

It added

new

features, particularly desktop sync and mobile

support, improved the user interface and increased storage to

50 GB.

What will Microsoft SkyDrive add to SharePoint?

Microsoft

now

offers

SkyDrive for consumers and

will soon

offer

SkyDrive Pro for

its

business customers. Based on

SharePoint,

SkyDrive

Pro will add things like

desktop sync so

users

can auto-

upload documents to SharePoint

repositories.

SkyDrive Pro is not released yet.

How does Google Apps store into folders?

Historically, Google used

“collections” for organizing files.

With the launch of Google Drive, Google changed

its

nomenclature to “folders,”

the industry-standard term. Google

folders are sync-able: users can create a document on

a l

ocal

machine, drag

it to a local sharing folder, and it will auto-sync

to the Google Cloud, which then syncs it with the user’s other

devices.

What are the forms capabilities in Google Docs?

Simple forms can easily be created to capture information,

such

as for a survey. The results can be automatically

populated to a Google spreadsheet,

to enable

tracking and

reporting.

Does Google have a product like OneNote?

No. This is a differentiator that favors Microsoft.

How does Outlook work with these suites?

Outlook is a very popular enterprise desktop mail client, and

Outlook users can configure it to run with Google Apps.

That

said,

users are

becoming more

comfortable with

browser-based mail, as well as the very effective mail clients that run

on tablets and

phones.

Aragon Advisory

Look at your

users’

needs and consider classifying them

by

the type of authoring they do (see RN 2012-27, “Introduction

to Segmenting Office Users and Authoring Tool

s

”).

In some

cases,

it

may be

appropriate

to shift some workers to the

cloud and keep others in their current configurations.

Pay close attention to your needs for interchanging Microsoft

Office files, as file fidelity with Google Apps may be a

significant issue.

Bottom Line

Google

Apps

is challenging Microsoft Office 365

as a cloud

office

suite. Enterprises can save money by using a

combination of tools, but should evaluate the cost savings

v

ersus

the reduced functionality

of Google Apps and the