Feature Office

The end
365
of the
vs Google
net as know
Appsit

Office 365 vs
Google Apps
Mary Branscombe puts the two
leading cloud-based office suites to
the test, to discover which one is best
suited to business

few years ago, the suggestion

that Google could produce a
viable alternative to Microsoft
Office would have been laughable but
its Apps suite has become a valid and
useful business tool. But the release of
Office 365 has dramatically changed the
online apps landscape again.
Office 365 isnt a new version of the
Microsofts desktop suite: its a cloud
service that includes online versions of
the tools that IT professionals the world
over have come to love and, more
importantly, rely upon. Theres Exchange
Online complete with Forefront malware
and spam protection; SharePoint
document management; and Lync
Online for real-time communications
(think presence, instant messaging and
audio and video calls).
You also benefit from online versions
of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and
Outlook and some subscriptions
include the desktop-based Office
Professional Plus 2010.
Google Apps for Business provides a
similar suite of products and services.
Theres Gmail with Postini spam and
malware filtering, Calendar and
Contacts, Google Docs, Chat, Groups
mailing lists and Sites (for both intranet
and public websites).
So to the big question: which is best
for your business? Thats what this
feature aims to find out, as we put both
through real-world tests and pitch them
in battle in all the key areas.
18 PC PRO

Usability
As cloud services, both Google Apps and
Office 365 are managed online. Despite
the simple layout, the Google Apps
control panel is confusing until you learn
where everything is. Options are
scattered between Domain Settings,
Settings, Advanced tools and the various
links from the Dashboard tab. To make
matters worse, the Dashboard is
cluttered with adverts for optional tools
in the Google App marketplace, as well
as adverts for new features.
Office 365s admin console is much
cleaner, with a pane for switching
between managing users, services and
domains, plus clear explanations of what
the main management tools are for.
There are also handy shortcuts at the
bottom of the window, and links to
relevant resources and community
discussions.
Google Apps has two levels of
administration rights: the Super
Admin who has full access, and
standard administrators to whom you
can delegate administration tasks. You
can give different users a different mix of
rights, but you have to remember who
can do what.
Office 365 has five named admin
roles. You can give someone the rights to
manage billing, passwords, users or
services separately if you dont want
them to have full admin rights. If you
need more granularity, you can also set
up administrator roles for Discovery

Management, Records Management,

Unified Messaging Management and
other tasks in the Exchange control
panel. Its more complex than Google
Apps, but enterprises will welcome the
option.
WINNER: OFFICE 365. Microsofts
administration interface is better
organised, and easier to handle when
delegating management rights to others.

Setup and user management

Google Apps setup guide walks you
through tasks such as verifying the
domain youre using, creating user
accounts and changing your MX records
to point to Gmail (you need your own
domain to use Google Apps). Its mostly
clear and simple, but duplicated
instructions and a sometimes circuitous
interface make setup a fragmented
experience.
The Postini spam service setup
wizard tells you it may take up to an
hour, and again you have to change the
MX records to redirect mail to the Postini
service, and configure some settings in

www.pcpro.co.uk

The end of the net as know it Feature

Google Apps email by hand. It screams

for automation and indicates that Google
still hasnt fully integrated the Postini
acquisition with its platform.
Office 365s Forefront Online
Protection for Exchange, SharePoint and
Lync Online are running by default, so all
you have to do is create or migrate users.
You only need to configure settings if you
want an optional vanity domain, to get
finer control, or if youre integrating with
on-premises servers. Thankfully, the
guides to doing this are clear and
detailed.
You can create Office 365 users
individually assigning admin rights
and turning on services for them at the
same time or as a batch by importing a
CSV file. You can also connect to an
existing on-premises Exchange server
and migrate users and mailboxes, or
synchronise with your Active Directory
(AD) to manage Office 365 users with
roles and policies the same way you
manage existing users (so that you can
delete a user in AD and theyre removed
from Exchange Online). You even get
PowerShell cmdlets that let you
configure Office 365 from the command
line.
To create Google Apps users, you can
set them up one by one in the control
panel or import a CSV file, but most
enterprises will use Google Apps
Directory Sync to get user details from AD
or Lotus Domino (which the setup guide
doesnt cover). This is a one-way sync,
and you have to leave the tool running
on your local server, make changes to
users in AD and propagate them up to
Google Apps.
To migrate mailboxes, you have to
run an Outlook sync utility for each user
individually, and you cant migrate
distribution lists, so you have to recreate
them. Its initially confusing which tools
you need for synchronising and
migrating different information and
settings to Google Apps, especially as

the help pages often refer to old tools

that have been replaced.
What Google Apps calls groups are
merely mailing lists. To control who gets
what Google services, you need to set up
organisation units (OUs). These cover
both the core offerings, such as Gmail,
and the range of other Google tools
such as YouTube and Picasa. Note that
your business will be bound by such
services terms and conditions if your
users sign in with their work Google Apps
account, so OUs are useful for disabling
access if you dont want to accept those
terms.
You can also use OUs to restrict
which domains users can send email to.
You cant use them to control any other
settings, though, so theyre not as
powerful as AD groups. You cant delete
an OU without moving or deleting the
users first, but deleting a user does give
you the choice of deleting their
documents or moving them to another
user.
Both Microsoft and Google promise
single sign-on. If you have AD and
ADFS2, Office 365 users can use their
Windows login to sign onto the local
network (including any business apps
youve integrated with that login) and to
Office 365 services. Your Google Apps
login gives you access to all the online
Google services, plus services that arent
part of Google Apps, so long as the
administrator allows this.
WINNER: OFFICE 365. Microsofts
product is easier to set up and integrate
into your companys existing
infrastructure.

Mail server, malware and spam

Office 365 has a simple interface for
basic admin options, such as managing
passwords, but you can also use the full
Exchange Online interface. This is
identical to the web interface for
Exchange Server, so it will be very

The Google Apps admin page is cluttered with adverts for new features and
third-party tools

www.pcpro.co.uk

familiar to Exchange admins. You get a

comprehensive set of tools for setting up
features, such as role-based access
control, transport rules (such as adding
disclaimers to external email) and
reports to help you track down any
problems, along with auditing logs for
compliance. If you dont need them, then
you can stick to the basics and be set up
in minutes.
Gmail has vastly fewer options
because you dont control a mail server,
although you do have some control over
routing and mail gateway settings. The
options are mostly on the level of setting
up a custom URL for users, choosing
whether they can use Gmail Labs and
Chat, and allowing Docs results to show
up in a Gmail search. With Google
looking after the mail server, most
businesses wont need more admin
options.
Both Google Apps and Office 365
have a mailbox limit of 25GB. There isnt
an archiving option in Gmail, but with
Office 365 you have a choice between
third-party archiving services, or a
specific Office 365 plan with unlimited
storage for email archiving.
Google Apps for Business includes
Postini for spam and malware detection.
The Postini admin console is separate
from the main Google Apps console, and
has tabs for viewing messages detected
as junk or viruses in the past three days,
a week, or for as long as it keeps records.
The only option for virus blocking is
whether or not you get email
notifications that a mail has been
quarantined, so that you can check and
release it if its a false-positive.
For spam, you can whitelist individual
senders, domains or mailing lists, and
block specific addresses or domains.
You can also set up inbound and
outbound content filters for specific
words, phrases or patterns, and create
attachment filters by size or type. You
can choose five levels of spam blocking,

By comparison, the Office 365 dashboard is clear and well laid out; you can see
immediately what to do

PC PRO 19

Feature Office
The end
365
of the
vs Google
net as know
Appsit

from lenient to very aggressive, and use

category filters to put more emphasis on
blocking explicit, racially insensitive
and financial spam. Oddly, IP whitelists
to avoid spam filters are set up in the
email settings pane, not in the Postini
configuration page.
The Forefront admin console is
separate and has a very different
interface from the rest of Office 365; its
confusing for anything except checking
quarantined email. In return, you get the
powerful Forefront Online Protection for
Exchange tools. These not only provide
malware and spam filtering, but also
give options to whitelist-specific IP
addresses, options for auditing and
tracing messages, and extensive filtering
rules for both inbound and outbound
email. You can therefore write rules to
stop your users from emailing
confidential information, such as credit
card numbers.

where they can blog, share links and

documents, and access their files on the
move. The range of options is more
complex than Googles offering, but its
also far more powerful.
Google Docs has no direct equivalent
to SharePoint Online. Sites is a nice
simple tool for creating internal or
external web pages, while Google Docs
allows you to control whether users can
publish or share documents outside the
business, and whether documents
default to being private or public.
Otherwise, sharing is all ad hoc and
under users control.

WINNER: TIE. Gmail is perfect if you want

to get up and running as quickly as
possible, while Office 365 provides
fine-grained controls and capabilities
that will suit more demanding
organisations.

Google Chat is the same, simple but

powerful tool available to the public;
users can see presence for Google Apps
contacts inside Gmail and start a text,
voice or video chat from there, once
theyve downloaded the plugin.
Alternatively, they can use the
Windows Google Talk software for text
and voice chat or file transfer.
Management is minimal; you can block
chat outside the organisation or warn
users, but you cant block file transfers.
Microsofts Lync Online is more
powerful. The extensive management
options let you choose whether users
can transfer files, make audio or video
calls, and talk to colleagues or people
outside the business.
Users can see each others presence
and status in Outlook and Outlook Web
Access (including information from

Document management
SharePoint Online combines web page
authoring for external sites with a full
document management tool. This
includes libraries, lists, templates,
discussion tools, shared calendars, RSS
feeds, workflow, check in/out options
and version control plus powerful
search options. Its an instant way to
make your business more intelligent for
example, by avoiding such annoyances
as file duplication.
It also aids communication. Your
Team Site includes pages for each user
20 PC PRO

WINNER: OFFICE 365. This isnt clear cut,

however. Office 365 has much more
capable sharing features, but these are
correspondingly more complicated to
manage. Some will prefer Google Apps
simplicity.

Chat & talk

SharePoint
Online combines
workflow,
document
management and
web publishing
and it looks
professional from
the start

Exchange calendars), and in any Office

app where youre collaborating. Its
possible to start a chat, voice or video
call from there or from the Lync client.
Microsoft is also promising Lync clients
for a range of smartphones, offering IM
first and voice features later.
Lync Online automatically federates
with Windows Messenger and AOL for
instant messaging. It can also federate
with on-premises Lync servers, if
permitted by the server admin. Google
Apps can federate with any XMPP
service, but to make it work you have to
edit the SRV record in your domain by
hand (or ask your domain host to do it
for you). You then get federation with all
the services Google is connected to
you dont get to choose which are
allowed or blocked.
Lync Online also incorporates the
features of Live Meeting; you can switch
from an IM chat to an online meeting
with up to 250 people, with audio, video
and web conferencing, and you can
schedule meetings in advance through
Outlook. If you want to let people phone
into a meeting without needing Lync
(customers, for example), you can buy an
audio-conferencing service for Lync
Online from BT.
WINNER: OFFICE 365. Apps messaging
and chat features are fine for most users,
but for manageability, Office 365 is
better.

Online apps
Online apps are primitive compared to
the richness of the full Office suite. In
general, the features of the Office Web
Apps and Google Docs are broadly
similar, but while many like the sparse
interface of Google Docs for its simplicity,
the Office Web Apps have the edge in
sophistication.
Create a PowerPoint presentation in
the Office Web Apps and you get
good-looking themes, with the images
you place automatically sized to fit. A
Google Docs presentation starts out in
plain black and white, and the designs
arent as appealing.
Office Web Apps make inserting
images from your hard drive the same
simple experience that it is in a local
app. Google Docs gives you a wider
choice for inserting images from a URL or
a Google image search in a document,
but its overall a clunkier experience.
Sharing is better integrated in Google
Docs, with a big blue Share button on
the page that opens a pop-up dialog
box. The Office Web Apps make you save
the document and take you away from

www.pcpro.co.uk

the editor to choose who to share it with,

and take you back to viewing, but not
editing, the document. Updates appear
live in Google Docs; this also happens in
the OneNote Web App, but the other
Microsoft Web Apps make you save your
own changes to see edits by other users.
There are many features in both
Outlook and Outlook Web that are
missing from Gmail, from macros to
Quick Steps. Gmail equivalents tend to
have fewer features, which some prefer
because theyre simpler. Gmails stars,
labels and priority buttons let you do the
same things as Outlooks flags,
categories and folders, with the
advantage that a message can have
multiple labels instead of being in only
one folder.
Google Calendar can include shared
resources such as meeting rooms
which you create by typing in the details
one at a time. Oddly, there isnt a
dropdown picklist to ensure the
resources are given consistent names, or
a wizard to help with the complex
naming conventions, so you could end
up with six conference rooms and one
meeting room.
Exchange Online has templates for
creating resources such as rooms (as
well as equipment that isnt in a fixed
location); you can even say which users
can reserve rooms without permission
and how often.
The Google Calendar features for end
users arent as powerful or complex
as Outlooks, but you get the important
options, such as overlaid calendars and
recurring appointments. The Quick Add
tool lets you type in a sentence,
including the day and date of what you
need to do, which then sets an event on
the right day at the right time. This is a
phenomenal time-saver.

www.pcpro.co.uk

WINNER: TIE. Microsofts Web Apps are

more sophisticated than Googles
equivalents, but Google Docs has better
sharing and collaboration features.
Exchange Online has a plethora of
configurable options, but many will
prefer the simpler approach of Google
Apps.

The Office
365 Outlook Web
App has good
self-service
features for users
and you only
see the admin
links if youre an
administrator

Office & working offline

Depending on which plan you sign up
for, Office 365 can include download
rights for the Professional Plus version of
Office 2010, which includes OneNote,
Publisher and Access, as well as Word,
Excel and PowerPoint. You can load and
save documents from all of them into the
SharePoint Online site, included in Office
365, and use the online collaboration
features to edit documents at the same
time.
This is a huge strength: you get the
full power of Office and the back-end
servers that enable all the features, from
using Information Rights Management,

Apart from
creating
resources using
Googles complex
naming structure,
you have only a
few controls for
calendar sharing

to controlling who can distribute a file, to

asking people to update a database by
replying to an email. One great feature
for businesses is that you can host
PowerPoint presentations online and
present to a group of people on the web,
letting them ask questions and make
comments ideal for training or sales
pitches.
Also available are the publicly
accessible Office Web Apps: Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and OneNote. All but
PowerPoint let multiple users edit the
same document at the same time.
SharePoint synchronisation neatly takes
care of making documents available
offline, as well as accessing them from
anywhere online.
Although offline access to Gmail and
Google Docs is only available (for the
time being) to Google employees,
Google recognises that offline document
access matters. You can run software to
sync Outlook with Gmail, Calendar and
Contacts, and to move Outlook Notes to
Google Docs (although theyre read-only,
and it doesnt sync notes filed in
folders).
Theres a connector toolbar for Office
that lets you sync documents to Google
Docs, but it isnt as polished as the
SharePoint integration, and converting
files into Google Docs for editing online
doesnt preserve all document features
(the same thing happens when you open
an email attachment in Google Docs).
You cant edit watermarks, Smart Art,
charts or footers in Office Web Apps, but
you can see them in the read-only
viewer, and theyre preserved in the
document so you get them back when
you open it in Office 2010. Google Docs
doesnt show those details, and doesnt
keep them if you edit the document.
Even fonts and line spacing can change

PC PRO 21

Feature Office 365 vs Google Apps

Despite
frequent warnings
about a problem,
Apps didnt
record any
disruptions to the
service

when you move Office documents in and

out of Google Docs.
WINNER: OFFICE 365. Microsofts offline
support is far from polished, essentially
being dependent on SharePoint and
subscription access to the full Office
suite. However, it remains far more
capable than Googles crude offline
tools.

Service levels & support

The Google Apps dashboard repeatedly
told us that there might be a problem
with an unspecified Google Apps
service; whenever we clicked through to
the dashboard all the services showed
as having no issues, but seeing the
warning virtually all the time was
concerning. Office 365 has a similar
service health dashboard; neither
service had any major outages or failures
while we were testing them, but Office
365 didnt keep warning us of nonexistent problems.
Both services promise 99.9%
availability. Google Apps measures this
on a monthly basis, with a credit of three
days of service if the SLA isnt met in a
month; Office 365 credits 25%, 50% or
100% of the service cost if the SLA falls
below 99.9%, 99% and 95%
respectively.
Google Apps has no planned
downtime; Office 365 does schedule
maintenance when usage is likely to be
low for example, Lync might be
unavailable for five minutes at 1am on a
Saturday morning and dates and times
are listed five days in advance in the
support area.
Support is definitely better with
Office 365. You can request support via
the admin console and your requests are
managed there, but 24/7 phone support
22 PC PRO

is also available, with response times

from 15 minutes to four hours,
depending on severity.
Google Apps also has 24/7 phone
support, but only for critical problems
that involve more than half your users
and affect the Google Apps web services.
If the problem is with mobile emails
youre stuck with email support, which
doesnt cover weekends.
WINNER: OFFICE 365, but only just. Its
tough to judge how reliable a cloud
service is, but Microsofts support has
better availability.

Verdict
Google Apps has a flat price of 33 per
user per year; Office 365 has a range of
prices from 6.50 to 17.75 a month,
depending on whether you want Office
2010 Professional Plus, Office Web
Apps, SharePoint, Lync or archiving. As
such, it can be much more expensive,
but you can choose which services you
want to pay for and there are discounts

Issues with
Office 365 can be
broken down by
exactly which part
of the service is
affected

for volume pricing (including transferring

existing Exchange and SharePoint server
licences to Office 365).
Google Apps is in a constant state of
flux, not helped by the whole service
being migrated to a new platform.
Getting continuous, instant
improvements is one of the benefits of
using a cloud service, but if youre
supporting users you might prefer
Microsofts approach where updates
come at regular intervals, and you can
choose whether to adopt them
immediately or by a specific date.
This underlines one key difference
between the two services, which has
little to do with features: Office 365 has
the professional feel of a service planned
in advance and designed for
administrators; Google Apps has the feel
of a service that has grown by leaps and
bounds, but sometimes in a rather
haphazard way thats not always
consistent.
Both services are powerful but they
suit different audiences. If your business
already uses Microsoft tools, Office 365
is the logical progression, giving you
server workloads that integrate with and
make the most of your existing
investments. Its a comprehensive,
powerful, end-to-end cloud platform for
business that doesnt make you do
everything online, which many
businesses find a step too far. You can
have all the power of Exchange and
SharePoint without the bother of
configuring and running them.
Google Apps, meanwhile, is a better fit
for businesses starting from scratch
online, with no legacy systems, who can
benefit from its simplicity without having
to keep the service in sync with
on-premises tools. But, as weve seen
throughout this feature, it definitely has
limits.

www.pcpro.co.uk