Nonetheless, with the production release of Office 365, the cloud era of desktop productivity software officially kicks into high gear.
With so many feature variables between the two products, blanket pronouncements don't make a lot of sense. To use a hackneyed metaphor, we're talking apples and oranges. Office 365 is meant to be used with a locally installed version of Office (preferably Office 2010), whereas Google Apps lives 100 percent in the browser. But it's by no means certain that the cloud can deliver in either department - and perform in a secure, reliable way.Ĭan your company save money by paying Microsoft or Google to take on what you'd otherwise attempt in-house? What kinds of problems can you expect? What benefits? Will either of these solutions make sense for you, or is the grass always greener on the cloudy side?Ĭlash of the clouds Before we attempt to answer those questions, one thing must be stated flatly: Office 365 and Google Apps are vastly different products.
There are also plenty of reasons to reduce the general level of expertise needed to keep your systems working. Given the current economic situation, there's lots of incentive to rent only what you need, rather than buy enough to handle the heaviest workload. Everything's going to the cloud, but only the hopelessly naïve would believe it's a stairway to heaven.