Why Choose Office 365 Over Google Apps (G Suite)?

Word processing, spreadsheets, and other productivity tools have become so integral to daily workflows that most employees give them little thought. But that is not to belie their importance. In fact, as Microsoft has grown, surpassing 1.2 billion global users, more companies are looking to Office 365 for cloud-based resources with a familiar user interface.

Here Are the 5 Most Important Differences Between Office 365 and Google Apps:

Technical Security

While both the Office 365 and Google Apps suites offer protection for your company’s sensitive information, Office 365's productivity suite provides more stringent security measures to defend users against security threats. Office 365's enhanced security includes state-of-the-art data centers, premium anti-spam and antivirus protection, encrypted access to data, and seamless integration with leading multi-factor authentication solutions. Office 365 has a proven commitment to confidentiality, integrity, and availability, ensuring business continuity in case of a data breach or physical disaster. By contrast, Google Apps adheres to Google’s single privacy policy, which is shared across business and consumer applications. This means that Google's data protections may not address certain industry regulations or security requirements.

Reliability & Scalability

Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 is powered by email and collaboration tools that have been refined over decades of use. Microsoft is also one of the few cloud services providers that offer a financially backed service level agreement (SLA) when any Office 365 service drops below 99.9 percent availability. On-demand services scale up or down based on need; web-hosted services enable low-cost entry points without the upfront investments of traditional licensing, and fixed-price plans enable budgetary planning. Google’s reliability is not as transparent and combines uptime figures for its consumer and business services. In addition, it does not recognize service downtime until at least 5% of its user base is impacted.

2020 was a banner year for the cloud. Find out why below:

Familiar User Experience

Office 365 delivers a user experience and document view that are consistent across platforms and devices, both on and offline. This goes for the use of desktops apps such as Microsoft Word, as well as mobile apps. The familiar tools and interfaces are a top reason for Office 365’s popularity, enabling users to ramp up and be productive faster, anywhere, at any time. Google’s inconsistent user experience across services adds learning curves and slows users down. It has limited offline capabilities for its services which restrict “anywhere” productivity. Additionally, Google Apps does not allow you to share Office documents unless they’re converted to the native Google format, which leads to loss of file fidelity and formatting.

Office 365 ROI

Microsoft has been improving Office productivity applications for decades - and has a large network of Office 365 migration partners. Office 365 is a natural extension of this process, delivering the integrated functionality of Office along with other business-centric capabilities including instant messaging, Yammer Enterprise, real-time presence, video conferencing, cloud storage, and more. Google lags behind in terms of integrated functionality, and relies on third-party solutions for core features including mail merge and data loss prevention capabilities. 

Continuous Innovation

Innovation remains the core of Office 365's continued success. As Tim Campos, CIO of Facebook, explained in Microsoft's Office 365 blog “we’re not just buying the capabilities that Office 365 offers today. We are also buying capabilities that Microsoft will offer over time, and expect even greater things to come.” Google has yet to match Microsoft's investment in solutions, prompting many early adopters to switch from Google Apps to Office 365. For companies that are considering or have moved to Office 365, a trusted technology partner can ensure the process is seamless and optimized. With over two decades of experience, iCorps experts will tailor the robust functionality of this powerful, reliable cloud-based solution effectively to meet your specific business, security, and user needs. For more information, reach out to iCorps for a free IT consultation.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in October 2016 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness. As of April 21st, 2020 Microsoft Office 365 has been re-branded as Microsoft 365.