Google Apps Tool Eases Outlook Migration

Google started a new chapter in its cloud collaboration software battle with Microsoft on Wednesday, releasing software designed to help knowledge workers move their Microsoft Outlook information to Google Apps.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook lets Outlook workers shuttle their email, calendar and contact data from Outlook profiles, PST files and Exchange accounts to Google Apps.

Migration in three clicks

The real selling point is that office workers can migrate thousands of emails, contacts and calendar data in just three clicks without any assistance from their IT administrator. This will prove useful to small business users that don’t have or require a large IT staff to help manage their data.

The tool is also designed to complement to the Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange application Google released in March to help admins conduct large-scale migrations from Outlook. eWEEK detailed that process in this slideshow here.

We’re making it a lot easier for many end-users to move their old data themselves if their administrators aren’t planning server-side data migrations,” explained Google Apps product manager, Abhishek Bapna.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook works with Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, on-premise and hosted Exchange and legacy PST files saved on users’ machines. The tool is available free to customers who already pay for Google Apps Premier and Education Edition, which costs $50 (£34.29) per user, per year.

The offering is just the latest blow between Google and Microsoft in the competitive market for cloud computing collaboration software, which include IBM, Cisco Systems and several smaller players.