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Google vs. Microsoft: whose cloud(s) do you like best and why?
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- Igor Papirov
Both Microsoft and Google have fairly elaborate cloud setups that offer slightly different things. Google plays better with the OpenSource community and with business clients that have basic office productivity needs.
Microsoft has a much better tie to enterprises that are familiar with Office applications and office automation, and leverages the rich Win32 APIs in various forms. Microsoft also has the Azure platform which competes more with Amazon than Google.
For now, enterprises that are not heavy on the OpenSource model, and rely on vendor support, will be better off with Microsoft than Google. Google has proven that they are not afraid to try new things, and release code rapidly, but they don't have a strong background in providing technical support for businesses, and this will become more apparent as they expand their cloud initiatives. They are very used to interacting with hardcore developers, and that is the crowd (developers, consultants, large enterprises with OpenSource dependence) that they will continue to service well for the forseeable future.
Microsoft, for all the complaints it has received, is far more versed in corporate and consumer support, and will be seen as a better choice than Google for businesses who have privacy concerns. And they're going to do a much better job with integration of other enterprise class apps, such as SalesForce.com, etc.
Both vendors have enough revenue and clout to move their strategies ahead, but having looked at what it takes to move productivity apps into the cloud for most business, I suspect that quite a few of the people who move to Google will move back, because they were never a good fit for the model or for the feature disparity that they will find with Google's current offerings.
For now, as it pertains to enterprises, Microsoft is still ahead. In consumer land, Google continues to maintain an advantage.
imho web-based applications such as Google docs are simply another category of office programs; i seriously doubt they will replace microsoft office; people have spent years mastering microsoft office, and it significantly slows you down to have to query a help file every time you want to find out how to perform a function on a google spreadsheet that you performed without thinking on excel. i would recommend that google program the operation of google docs as similarly as microsoft products to ease web-based adoption.
i have worked with enterprise-level clients that have enough trouble working with microsoft products to try to work with quirky beta web-based applications they have to learn how to operate from scratch. it would be in google's best interest to continue to compliment microsoft products as they have been doing to allow for easy sharing of files and other networking features unavailable on a desktop. so, basically, i see most people creating their work on microsoft office and sharing it with Google.
It is a tough call, but I am certainly moving more toward the Google camp recently, even though I am a long time Microsoft user, and continue to be. So far the MS cloud offerings have been a bit cumbersome to deal with, and often require the latest versions of desktop software to utilize the cloud components effectively, which has halted some of my efforts in recent times. When you're on a budget, it can be a tough sell to upgrade to the latest version just to share a few docs in the cloud.
On the other hand, the SaaS model Google is offering certainly fits the new world model better, that being open source desktops, smart phones etc. accessing web apps that contain all of your files and data. For me, I have one business operating on SaaS platforms, and the document and email needs we have can mostly be addressed with Google apps, providing a full web based experience without any desktop software. Of course power users, data manipulation and graphics tasks still need local apps, but I have found a number of open source tools that can achieve that goal as well.
So to the original question, which cloud do I prefer? I’d have to say Google, because everything is contained in the cloud, and I can sit down at any machine and access what I need to, which can't really be said for the MS offerings, yet (though I am sure that will come). As always you have to consider your needs and risk tolerance, as well as security and privacy concerns when using a SaaS or cloud model, and make sure they fit your business needs.
Neither is ready yet. The network is just not there for mobile users to work with desktop tools that require network connectivity. I can't have executives on a plane without real office productivity tools. I realize connectivity is coming fast and laptops with 3G or even 4G built is are a major step in the right direction but there's needs to be a solution that supports off-line work for my company to adopt.
That being said I do think Google has the upper hand right now in the Cloud office productivity suite. Their tools were built for that delivery model from scratch and the features are getting quite good. Small businesses or companies with few travelers may find Google to be a solid solution today.
It depends on how organizations will evolve. If we will spend more time on more specific narrow issues, as it happends now, then we will need simple, straigth forward applications as google has. Then it will be easy to abandod Microsoft Desktop suites as unnecessary using vry specialised simple services.
On other hand if there will be demand for one person to do big variety of jobs, then to use the same big variety of network applications could become difficult. In this case Microsoft intergated desktop suites wityh ability to store information in MS cloud will win again.
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I've been fortunate enough to be an end-user and administrator for both Microsoft's BPOS service and Google Apps. Both are strong products, but I find myself preferring Google for a few reasons:
1. Ease of use
Google's apps are almost Apple-like in how they "just work". I'm particularly impressed with Google Sites and how easy it is to create a wiki site that both looks professional and is easy to add/update to. As an example, one of my colleagues who is generally tech-savvy but is not a Wiki expert created a polished site for a client project in about 2 hours, using widgets provided by Google for lists, graphics, tables, etc.
2. Empowering the end-user
The colleague who created a project site is not an administrator for the Google Apps account. I find that self-service is a great way to get people using the service and finding new ways for the service to add value to the business. Microsoft's service is more old-school in how much the administrator has to configure or change to meet an end-user need.
3. Empowering the administrator
Similarly, Google puts a lot more power in the administrator's hands than Microsoft does. As a case in point, I needed to open a ticket with Microsoft to change the outbound email disclaimer for the account. With Google, I was able to complete the task in a couple of minutes using the admin control panel. I also have the capability to more fully configure/customize the Google account through the Google Apps Marketplace, a function not available in BPOS.
I will be interested to see how the Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) battle begins to play out between Windows Azure and Google Apps Engine. I do like that Google Apps Engine already exists and integrates fully with Google Apps for Business, a major plus in the cloud.