From Microsoft comes this highly snarky video, trying to convince businesses that a search company "moonlighting" a purveyor of productivity software is a bad choice for them. A few thoughts.<\/p>\n
1. Microsoft is hardly a disinterested observer here. Microsoft Office (et al.) is their biggest cash cow, and Google Apps is a direct and ongoing challenge to that. If it weren't, MS wouldn't be producing this sort of fluff.<\/p>\n
2. For all MS's FUDding about security and the cloud and all — they have their own cloud Office suite (and one which is multiple generations behind Google's).<\/p>\n
3. Google has been running Apps for quite some time. This is not beta software. What is new(ish) is Google marketing directly to businesses with it. <\/p>\n
4. Offlline access is an important point, but not necessarily a deal-breaker, depending on your business and where it works. Some companies are persistently online with their locations and personnel; for others, it's more of a challenge.<\/p>\n
5. Google is not, in my experience, a responsive company to what clients ask for. They have their vision, their roadmap, and they move forward with it. Microsoft doesn't create customized versions of their apps, either — but a lot more deployment flexibility is built-in, and there's large ecosystem of third parties willing to help with further features and so forth.<\/p>\n
6. Google's offerings aren't cheap. Neither are Microsoft's. I think Google per user is less expensive, but not as much as you might think.<\/p>\n
7. Google Apps are not as powerful as Office's analogous apps. The question is, how many of those features are actually needed by most users. Some organizations, for example, may be heavy pivot table users; others may well not be.<\/p>\n
8. Google Apps online, active collaboration abilities surpass anything Microsoft offers.<\/p>\n
So there are some reasonable strengths that Microsoft can bring to this particular discussion, and weaknesses or shortcomings on the Google side that they can point out. Unfortunately, this ad just comes off more as snark than anything else, a typical Microsoft FUD attempt, which doesn't help anyone. #ddtb<\/p>\n