Started with people wanted to save and access their files from anywhere. So they started using Dropbox, Google Drive and One Drive. So basically, the remote capability drove people to first step towards cloud. When people started using it they figured that the files saved on cloud were more secure than ones saved on computes. If you look from end user point of view, over 900,000 laptops were lost or stolen on airports and other public places every year. Therefore, it has always been on priority for service provider to take care of security because the repercussions behind data breach could be significantly larger.  Now, when you consider your SaaS based model, alot of cloud vendors go to auto update platforms, like- Adobe or Microsoft office suite. They have that ability to strain those updates and notify you when they are ready which gives ease of updates option.

Now, that we have understood why and how, let's look at who are the leader in the cloud market share. 2013 graph looks pretty much fragmented as compared to 2015. There were lots of players in the market and at that point it was pretty much anyone's game. Now, as we move forward in late 2015, you would see those positions have changed drastically.

 

Both office 365 & Google have significantly taken a lot of these shares from other players in the market. Which has kind of made them the leader of the space. Therefore, we hear all talking about these 2 key players. From the table below, you can figure out the features they both offer are pretty similar, but the question is that does that actually satisfy the needs or that it is just a checked part?

Within Google you have Google docs the equivalent of Microsoft Word, Google sheets the equivalent of Microsoft Excel, Google Slides the equivalent of Microsoft PowerPoint and Of course Office Online.  

So, here are 8 key points:

1. 1) Familiarity:
       Your ECOSYSTEM

What do you use?
What do your partner use?
What will customers likely have?
What are your expansion plans?
What are your data needs?
Where do your users typically work?
What are the "Demos" of your staff?
How much capability do your users, partner and customers need?

1. 
   2) Plan Feature:

So, it comes down to what really fits into your way of working and of course which plan suits your budget?
Each plan come with something different.
 

3) Compatibility:

What are you using as day-to-day device?
Are you using a tablet or pc, is it an ipad or anaroid tablet? Knowing the compatibility with your device is another aspect you need to consider when you choose between these 2 service providers.
Also, compatibility with browsers is must. Office 365 is compatible with almost all browsers. Google does a great job centralizing on Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari which are quite popular browsers that are in the market right now. Office 365 have ability to work on SaaS model where you can work on online as well as offline. But for google it does require online connection.

 

4)  Compliance and Security:

Both are making sure that they are working with different agencies to obtain security certifications, running through audits just to make sure that they can serve everybody they can in the most secure fashion they can. Most recent certification that was obtained was FEC17A dashboard by Microsoft. But in one case Microsoft has gone one step ahead of Google; is the end user security platform. Example- right management which gives you the ability to control forwarding reply to all, somebody can save or download the same. This is the ability to control what's done with those messages.

Message Encryption Services- When you sign up for O365 your backend change online is automatically encrypted or any message you standout is our SSO port, so they are both high level of encryption.
Data Loss Prevention- It give you the ability to decide what is it you are going to allow in regard to what you do with those messages. So you don't want people to delete messages permanently. You want to hold it for a legal hold, you want to stick them in archive, so you can control the policy to make sure you are not losing critical data that you require to hold on to.
 

 

5) Set Up and Management:

Google is still expanding their partner eco system when it comes to that, you can have the administrative access you can have the administrative access to a google standards for your clients. It operates little bit differently from O365 where you have that full partner manage experience, where you are not actually giving someone account in your tenant, you are giving them partner delegated administrative access, you could do both but they give you the ability to manage that way. With O365 the encryption is automatic. Once you start up, it automatically enables those encryptions. With Google it doesn't have the encryption, it just means that there is additional required configuration and a lot of times depending upon what you are trying to encrypt. You may also need that 3rd party.

6) Migration Path:

If you already adjusting on-premise you are trying to move on cloud basic solution, so with O365 once you step up your tenant, they will add a connection to it and it will pull your data into your migration process. With google you are going to migrate your mail, calendar and contacts in single migration for each one of those items so it's really a minimum of 3 steps that you are utilizing for that. So it’s the same migration path that you will get through O365 where you are connected, you are pulling that data in but again you have to do that in 3 steps.



 

7) Support:

In some cases it is not a huge decision making factor for people but support is a key item. SLA for O365 covers all the service that come in O365.

So when you sign and if it is there, it is covered underneath your plan. With Google SLA covered all those services and for right now once that it does not cover google plus and hangout. Microsoft requires that you have a cloud productivity competency to be able to take advantage of the support services in that partner eco system. Whereas google just require that you just be google partner and then they want you to take those tests.

 

8) Alignment with future strategy:

If you are going with O365 you can actually extend your azure active directory into azure active directory into azure itself and tie all those component together. If you go with google infrastructure model and if you were either consistently azure or amazon, you now have one premise. You have your google and you have your infrastructure cloud you manage. Another question is are you going to need hybrid setup? So as discussed earlier with some, significant connections goggle doesn't have that ability to fully create that hybrid connection, so if you are going to need that where you want to put some expansion in the cloud O365 is going to be the way you want to go with because it gives you the ability to essentially expand your on-premise software solution into a cloud based scenario.