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Office 365 comes with Microsoft apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, One Drive and Outlook, while Google for Work contains Google apps like Gmail, Hangout, Calendar and Google Drive. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses and each is suited for specific kinds of users and businesses.
Pricing and Storage
Both tools start with $5 per month. While, Microsoft requires a full year commitment for its enterprise plane, Google’s complete package is available on monthly basis. Google, however, offer their suite for $50 per year discounted price.
Each Office 365 user gets a 1TB storage space, while Google’s entry level plan comes with only 30GB online storage for each user. However, Google do provide unlimited storage space on its $10 per user per month or $120 per year (excluding tax), plans.
Google has a rather simple pricing structure with only two plans. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a total of seven packages, for small and medium-size businesses to large enterprises. These plane range in prices form $5 per month to $35 per month, with yearly commitment.
Pricing is a very important factor but, for IT managers, other factors like security safeguards, features sets and user experience are equally important. The ideal cloud based platform should be secure, stable and easy to use for employees. When it comes to selecting a cloud platform, price is only one of many factors IT managers and executives have to consider.
For many managers it depends on what kind of apps their employees are already used to as many of them are reluctant to change the way they work. If your employees are heavily dependent on Microsoft Outlook, Word and Excel etc., it better to go with Office 365.
Where is Google for Work Falling Behind?
In many large organizations, it is common that their IT departments use Google for Work while rest of the staff use Office 365. Google for Works seems more like low-cost equivalent of Office 365 and best suited for startups and very small companies that want to limit costs while maintaining “good-enough” productivity. However, cost savings results in some down sides for large enterprises. Like calendar issues, compatibility issues and inability to transfer formulas directly into Google spreadsheets.
Google apps have been around for over six years now and this platform is becoming more and more enterprise every day. Google apps is used some of the largest organizations in the world. Its strengths includes a very simple licensing structure and a deeply integrated infrastructure.
On the other hand, Office 365 offers a continuity with legacy solutions that makes it easier to keep everyone happy with the apps they’ve been using for a long time, but it’s also evolving. Office 365 is built on Microsoft’s legacy products and is becoming more ‘cloud-enabled’ and easy to manage and use.
Both, Office 365 and Google for Work, have their own fans and evangelists. A person like me would be devastated if I’m forced to use Google sheets instead of MS Excel, which I’ve been using for so long. The same goes for Google users, they would prefer Google apps over Office 365.
It’s All About Preparation
Before deciding on any of these platforms, it’s imperative to gain deep understanding users’ needs and company goals. After all, adopting any cloud-based productivity tool is not just for the IT department, it’s for the entire organization. So, getting insights from users can really help in making that decision. More importantly, IT managers should try to make the decision about cloud tools as quickly as possible.
Whether an organization chooses Google Apps or Office 365, it’s getting a cloud office platform that’s going to fundamentally change the way business operates if it’s correctly implemented and thoroughly adopted.
People are still paying attention to Apple of course. When they stopped designing icons which closely resembled their real-life counterparts they launched a whole new wave of minimalist icons.
The new Apple Watch adverts are prime examples of a beautiful looking campaign that's just missing that Apple je ne sais quoi. You could replace the Apple Watch with a Rolex and it wouldn't look out of place. They have looked at the watch industry and mirrored what's already out there. Nobody is going to remember these ads in 10 years time - unlike the iPod ads. You could argue it's a different target market and that you can't do an iPod-esque advert for a high-end watch. But it doesn't need to be bright and childlike, it just needs some of that Apple ZaZaZoom!
Copying what's already in the market isn't new for Apple. They of course weren't the first to create a portable MP3 player or a tablet, both had been around years before Apple evolved and improved on the ideas, but to most, the MP3 player and tablet industries started with the iPod and iPad. The difference between iPods and what Apple is doing now is they did something really different, something we hadn't seen before, they took something already in existence and made it the best it could be - this is what Apple do, or should I say used to do?
