Microsoft Office 365 Nudges SMBs Into The Cloud

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Google Apps vs. Office 365

Ahead of Microsoft’s launch of Office 365, Google Apps product manager Shan Sinha wrote a blog post entitled ‘365 reasons to consider Google Apps,’ in which she highlighted some of the ways that Office 365 differs from Google Apps. We put some of these points to Jaffe, to see if he agreed with the analysis. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he did not.

The first point that Sinha made was that Office 365 is made for individuals, while Google Apps is made for teams. Apps lets you work with multiple people on the same document and see their changes in real time, without the need for additional licenses.

Jaffe pointed out that Sharepoint Online also now lets you do this. A demonstration at the launch event showed how documents could be co-edited, and that the names of collaborators would appear in a bar at the side, showing which part of the document they were working on.

Secondly, Sinha said that Office 365 is built for Microsoft and optimised for Windows-based PCs, whereas Apps is “built for choice” – running on any device and on any operating system.

“Cross browser is absolutely part of the experience that we deliver,” said Jaffe. “We’ve delivered Office on the Mac for years, so we very much believe in making productivity available across different devices, across different platforms.”

Sinha then made the point that Google Apps for Business is available from $5 per month, and does not require users to sign up to a long-term contract, whereas Office 365 offers 11 different plans, three editions and two tiers.

Jaffe explained that Microsoft is offering a wide range of plans in order to cater for different business needs. For SMBs of with more less than 50 employees, companies can get Office 365 from £4 per user per month, whereas large enterprises, that need greater functionality, will pay up to £17.75 per user per month.

“You have a choice, and that’s one of the things we deliver differently than perhaps some of our competitors,” said Jaffe.

Finally, Sinha made the point that Office 365 is about the desktop, whereas Google Apps is about the web. She said that upgrades and years of patience are not necessary to get access to the latest innovation. Users just had to click refresh.

Jaffe’s response was that Office 365 is about the desktop and the web. “It’s about PCs, it’s about phones, it’s about browsers, it’s about letting people be productive however and wherever and whenever they want to be. That’s what I think we’re delivering with Office 365,” he said.

Updates will be delivered to Office 365 products over the web roughly every 90 days, but Jaffe said that Microsoft will be very cautious about rolling out any major changes that might disrupt the customer’s usage.

“If the IT manager goes home on a Friday and comes in on Monday and their environment has changed, that’s not great. So we’re very thoughtful about that kind of update and that kind of environment,” said Jaffe. “But we’re really trying to be able to bring the best of both worlds which is the frequency, but also the manageability, depending on your customers.”

Integrating Skype and Microsoft Lync?

eWEEK Europe asked tentatively about whether Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Skype would result in the VoIP service being integrated into Office 365. Microsoft was unable to talk about the acquisition, but demonstrations showed that Skype would slot nicely into Lync Online, offering a more advanced and familiar communication experience.

“The ability to connect with people has always been part of what we’re trying to achieve,” said Jaffe. “What we’ve seen broadly over the course of the last several years is the ability to communicate with others in a more ‘face-to-face’ sort of way and a more personal way.

“The days of being satisfied with just being on a voice call with somebody on the other end – that’s becoming less and less popular. Now, through something like Office 365, we can make the web conferencing and the video capabilities much more robust.”