Google, Microsoft or Both…

The last thing you want to read in your inbox is that your monthly IT costs are increasing, but that is the reality this month as Microsoft has announced their pricing changes. This has been a trend this year as several IT Security vendors have also followed suit.

There has been a massive spike in conversations with our clients over the last few weeks regarding alternatives to Microsoft as an office productivity suite for business. So let’s talk about that now. Is there an alternative? What aspects need to be considered? What questions must be answered??

The explosion in the use of the word “hybrid” in recent years brings to mind so many aspects of daily life.?

You finish off your hybrid breakfast (veggie smoothie and a bagel), you jump in your hybrid car to attend your hybrid office space (as you do work from the office on Fridays). The marketing team is working on hybrid solutions to reach a broader client base, and the multicultural morning chat is full of hybrid words.?

Today, many businesses run on a hybrid office productivity backbone centred around Google and Microsoft office suites for business users. They have realised that you can have the best of both worlds.?

There are several vital elements to consider when comparing Microsoft and Google office suites. These elements are specific to your business requirements and the range of daily office and team activities. So what questions do you need to answer before making that critical decision of Google, Microsoft or Both??

• Pricing and Subscriptions: Can you get everything your team needs for the right price?
• Business Applications:? Which applications are included in your subscription, and more importantly, which ones does your business requires?
• Cloud Storage: How many TBs of storage does each user account provide?
• Business Security and Support: Dig deep and ask what levels of security and support will you get from your chosen office suite?
• The truth about collaboration:? Are they offering real-time, no geographical limits to team collaboration? Can your staff all be up-to-date on every document all the time?

The two giants have been going toe-to-toe over each of these elements for many years now. Yes, Microsoft were the trailblazers for a long time. However, Google exploded on the scene with G Suite in 2006 (Originally called “Google Apps for your Domain”), with classics like Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Page Creator and the eternal Gmail. The following rebrand was in October 2020 as G Suite became Google Workspace, a powerful office suite available in different business level subscriptions, and that is where they are today.

The Microsoft evolution during the same period included the change from the legacy Office 365 launched in 2017 to Microsoft 365 in April 2020 with over 20 different office applications for business productivity. In addition, during the pandemic era, there is no doubt that the development of Microsoft Teams as the market leader for video meetings and team collaboration has boosted the Microsoft platform’s popularity.?

How do the big guns of today’s business documentation and collaboration platforms compare feature for feature? Let’s take a look using the five key areas that we have just considered:?

As you can see from the comparison chart, pricing between the Google and Microsoft platforms are quite similar. Microsoft has recently announced their March 2022 price increases that included clear financial incentives to move towards annual subscriptions over monthly rolling subscriptions. We have found that for small businesses, the annual savings options for 1-10 users is not substantial, whereas a business with 50+ user licences will be looking at more significant monthly savings with the annual subscription.

Take some time to analyse your current monthly costs and usage for your Google/Microsoft licences. Are you currently managing the best possible solutions for your business requirements? Also, are you actually using all the software licences that you are paying for??

We started by talking about the hybrid explosion, so how is that related to our comparison?

After taking all things into consideration you might find that you do require a Google/Microsoft solution for your users. Taking into consideration that the old phrase “I can’t open the attached document, can you please send it as…” is now a phrase of the past, (because we can open Microsoft documents in Google with difficulty) the hybrid solution is now a viable business option.

We support a number of clients that are working with both Google and Microsoft across their business, and they dovetail very well for their different requirements. The difficult thing is finding an IT Security and Support partner that has the experience, and a trained technical team to guide you through every step of the hybrid transformation. I would welcome a meeting with you to discuss any questions you have about your Google or Microsoft business platforms and even the possibility of looking deeper into that hybrid solution that is becoming so popular today.

Useful Information for your business:

Google Workspace: https://yourcloudworks.com/google-workspace/?

Business Guides: https://yourcloudworks.com/guides/?

How-to Videos: https://yourcloudworks.com/how-to-videos/?

Tech Tip Videos: https://yourcloudworks.com/tech-tip-videos/?

Your Cloud Works Monthly Newsletter: https://yourcloudworks.com/newsletters/?

Hackers Toolkit: https://yourcloudworks.com/hackers-tool-kit/?