Cloud Sherpas’ Top 10 Reasons to Choose Google Apps over Office 365: Reasons 1-5

In the wake of the debut of Office 365, Cloud Sherpas decided to take a closer look at the cloud solution offered by Microsoft. Here are our top five reasons to choose Google Apps when considering a true move to the cloud:

1. Price

The least expensive option in Office 365 is $6/user/mo, and this baseline subscription is only available to businesses fewer than 50 people. Furthermore, this subscription at $6/user/mo. does not include many platform essentials such as Office Web apps, which are required to take advantage of anywhere-access cloud capabilities within the suite.

Though Office 365 does tout their cost-effective $6/user/mo base plan, what they don’t say is that this plan is only available to a select number of people who will eventually find they need to pony up more cash to be able to use the suite in the way it was intended.

Once prospective users get past the initial $6/user/mo pitch, they’ll see that Office 365 offers four main pricing plans with options for add-ons. The plans and add-ons can be mixed and matched, resulting in dozens of plan options that can become unmanageable and, quite frankly, confusing.

Google Apps offers a straight-forward pricing scheme: $50/user/year. With this $50, users receive everything they need to be able to effectively and efficiently operate within the Google platform. Google Apps does not require any desktop software (unlike Office 365) or add-ons to function effectively and efficiently. When users purchase Google Apps, they know they’re receiving everything they need, and will not need to upgrade or purchase pricey add-ons in the future.

2. Extensibility

Because Office 365 is built on top of a legacy client-server technology, third-party or internal applications cannot be securely integrated.  This proprietary attitude will hurt Office 365, as Microsoft must be trusted to create all applications that users need.  Most organizations realize that email is the lifeblood of how office knowledge works, and there are strong needs to programmatically integrate this content with other systems within the organization.

Conversely, Google’s commitment to standards-based protocols, open data formats, and world-class security allows the Google Apps Marketplace to provide hundreds of integrated applications that can be instantly provisioned to your domain. Google Apps administrators can browse the Marketplace to find exactly what their domain needs, be it CRM, social collaboration or enhanced management tools such as SherpaTools, the #1 ranked admin tool in the Google Apps Marketplace.

3. Security

Office 365 is a hybrid cloud.  Information is stored in data centers and on local devices using legacy client-server technologies. As a result, information is all stored locally on users’ machines, and as such, administrators have little control over the data being lost, stolen or corrupted. In addition, all this user software must still be licensed, installed, patched, and upgraded on a constant basis.

Google Apps offers a true cloud model, and with this model comes the inherent security of the cloud. Google’s multi-layered security strategy keeps information safe at each stage of data storage, access and transfer. Data will never be lost because a user’s hard drive crashed, a computer was stolen or onsite data was compromised by fire or floods. Keeping your data in the cloud means keeping your data safe— 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

4. Mobility

Office 365 was designed to work primarily with Windows desktops.  As a result, its integration with other devices including iPhones, Androids and Blackberrys is poor. The so-called “cloud” solution lacks easy-to-use browser-based interfaces and is all together inaccessible from tablets. Office 365 requires plug-ins and software that make it virtually impossible to create a unified user experience across multiple platforms.

Google Apps has only one requirement: a modern browser. Whether you’re on your home laptop, work computer, cell phone or even tablet, the Google Apps user experience remains consistent. Google Apps is accessible from almost any device including iPhones, Blackberrys, tablets and, of course, Android devices.

5. Reliability

Because Office 365 is Microsoft’s first “cloud” venture, the reliability of the platform is still unknown. Furthermore, Microsoft does not make their uptime statistics available to the public and does not factor planned maintenance and outages into their promised 99.9% uptime statistic.

Google does include planned maintenance and outages into their 99.9% uptime promise and makes statistics public through the App Status Dashboard, which details all outages lasting more than 10 minutes.

Furthermore, Google recently announced on the Official Google Enterprise Blog that uptime in 2010 was 99.984%, which is less than seven minutes per month. This number contrasts greatly with Microsoft, as Exchange users experienced more than 300 minutes of downtime in 2010. Google’s transparency and proven reliability keep 3 million businesses happy on Google Apps.
You can view Cloud Sherpas’ uptime here.

Note: Supporting information for Reason #5, including the link to the Official Google Enterprise Blog, was added on July 20.

Check back soon for our next 5 reasons for choosing Google Apps over Office 365 later this week.