Google for Work vs. Microsoft Office 365: A comparison of cloud tools

While Google for Work and Microsoft Office 365 offer many similar services, choosing between the two can be a significant challenge for CIOs. This comparison eases that burden.

CIOs and IT managers have many choices when it comes to cloud-based productivity tools for email, documents, calendar and file-sharing. The first two options that come to mind for most, however, are Google Apps for Work and Office 365.

The former packs all the familiarities of the Google Apps suite, including Gmail, Hangouts, Drive and Calendar, while the latter comes with the longer legacy of tried-and-true Microsoft Office apps, such as Word, Excel, Outlook and PowerPoint. The two options have unique strengths and weaknesses, and each is best-suited for specific types of businesses and users.
Google for Work vs. Microsoft Office 365: Price, simplicity and storage

Both services start at $5 per month. Microsoft requires a full-year commitment, which costs at least $60 per year, while Google's suite is available on a month-to-month basis. Google also offers a yearly discounted plan for $50 a year, plus tax.

Every Office 365 user gets at least 1TB of cloud storage, while Google's entry-level plan provides considerably less space: 300MB of online storage per user. However, Google provides unlimited storage for accounts with at least five users on its $10 per month or $120 per year (plus tax) plans.

Google also gets high marks for simplicity, because it offers two relatively straightforward plans.
Microsoft makes things a bit more confusing with six total packages — three for small and medium-size businesses and three for large enterprises — that range in price from $5 to $20 per month, with a yearly commitment.

Pricing is an important determining factor, but equally important for CIOs are the feature sets, security safeguards and user experiences of both platforms. The ideal cloud-based platform is secure, stable and simple for employees to learn and use. Cost is just one of the many concerns IT managers must consider when investing in cloud-based productivity platforms.

Eric Schlissel, CEO of IT consultancy GeekTek IT Services, says his company uses Google for Work, but more often than not he recommends Office 365 to clients because they are already heavily dependent and invested in Microsoft Outlook. Many business owners are reluctant to change the way their offices work, according to Schlissel.

"We tend to recommend Google for Work to clients with a younger and more tech-savvy workforce," Schlissel says. "CIOs should look at how their employees use technology and work outwards from there."

Where Google for Work falls short
At Creative Solutions in Healthcare, a company that owns and operates assisted-living facilities, the IT department uses Google for Work while the rest of the company relies on Office 365, according to CIO Shawn Wiora.

"In many ways, Google for Work is a low-cost equivalent of Office 365, and it's a great fit for startups and small businesses that need to limit costs while achieving 'good enough' status," Wiora says. "However, the cost savings come with a number of nuances that limit its fit for enterprise customers."

Wiora says there are at least four problems with Google for Work that can add up to a major burden for businesses. He cites "shared calendar issues, an inability to transfer Excel formulas directly into Google Spreadsheets, compatibility issues and vertical-specific decisions like Google's past refusal to sign a HIPAA BAA [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act Business Associate] agreement for the healthcare industry."

In Wiora's his experience, Google's suite keeps up with Office 365 about 90 percent of the time. It's that other 10 percent that "makes Google for Work a poor substitute for medium and large enterprises that expect to simply pick up in Google where they leave off with Microsoft."

BetterCloud, a company that provides security and management services for Google Apps and Office 365, also uses both Google and Microsoft's offers, according to Tim Burke, BetterCloud's IT director.

The company primarily uses Google for Work as the sole platform for its corporate calendar and conference room reservation system, but it also provides Office 365 accounts to users who work on its Microsoft-related products.

"We've looked into many solutions for coexistence between the two platforms (especially for calendar and contacts), but there's nothing mature yet that allows Google Apps and Office 365 to 'play together' well on a single domain," Burke says.

Both platforms are enterprise class, with almost identical offerings, according to Burke, who says Google's suite is becoming more "enterprise" every day.

"Many people don't realize [Google has] been in this market for over six years at this point, and Google Apps is used by some of the largest organizations in the world," Burke says. Google's strengths also include a deeply integrated infrastructure and a simple licensing structure, he says.

Office 365 provides a continuity with legacy solutions that makes it easier to keep everyone happy with the applications they've been using for many years, or perhaps decades, but it's also evolving. "Office 365 is based on Microsoft's legacy products and is becoming more 'cloud-enabled' and easy to manage," Burke says.

Google for Work vs. Microsoft Office 365: One size does NOT fit all
Many others familiar with Office 365 and Google for Work take a much less neutral stance than Wiora and Burke; both companies have dedicated users and evangelists.

Martin Milanov, a digital marketing specialist at Fair Point, a corporate travel management firm based in Germany, writes that he "will scream to the ends of hell if they take away my Excel and make me use the, let's face it, subpar Excel wannabe that is Google Sheets."

Kristin Bassett, corporate marketing manager at AppNeta, an application performance management provider, says her company recently switched from Microsoft to Google to get all employees on the same email system. The firm chose to migrate its entire staff to Google for Work because it preferred Gmail to Outlook and considered email its highest-priority tool.

Many of the engineers working for AppNeta had requested corporate access to Gmail, according to Bassett, and the switch improved the company's ability to hire and retain engineers, who are core to its business.

Regardless of platform, it's about preparation
Both Burke and Wiora encourage CIOs to gain a deep understanding of their users' needs and company goals before deciding on Google for Work or Office 365.

"We've worked with thousands of customers across both platforms, and the most successful deployments involved a highly democratic approach where they set up small pilot groups, talked to managers in different departments, discussed pros and cons for both platforms, and generally took the time to make sure they were making the best decision for their users and not for their IT department or existing infrastructure," says Burke.

For some CIOs, a hybrid approach will work best, according to Wiora. However, using both platforms can also lead to more work and potential problems for IT. "Each new service increases complexity for end users exponentially rather than linearly, so reducing confusion from having information in so many places will be critical for anyone using a hybrid approach," says Wiora.

Above all, CIOs shouldn't delay the necessary research and piloting, and they should try to make a decision as quickly as possible, according to Burke. "Whether your organization chooses Google Apps or Office 365, you're getting a cloud office platform that's going to fundamentally change the way your business operates if it's correctly implemented and thoroughly adopted," he says.

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Future-proof your IT career: 8 tech areas that will still be hot in 2020

It’s prudent for IT pros to cultivate skills that are in high demand. Even better are skills that will stay in demand. Here are eight key technology areas that show no signs of falling out of favor.

Wanted: Programmers, security experts, cloud capacity managers
More than 90% of U.S. companies are using some form of cloud computing, according to CompTIA's most recent Trends in Cloud Computing study. Moreover, the November 2014 report found that companies are moving infrastructure or applications between private and public clouds. IT leaders predict that movement will accelerate in the future, which will generate a host of cloud-centric jobs, including cloud security.

A related position will be dedicated to cloud capacity management. "We expect many [organizations] will operate in a hybrid environment, a mix of private and public cloud, so the question becomes how to dynamically switch demand for compute and storage from private and public clouds," says Mike Sutcliff, group chief executive for Accenture Digital. "That's going to require new techniques and disciplines that many IT organizations don't have in place today."

Programmers skilled in Perl, Ruby, Ruby on Rails and Python, Java and JavaScript, as well as those comfortable with API development and a DevOps environment, will also be in high demand, because cloud technology depends heavily on those disciplines. (See 10 hot cloud computing skills for details.)

Wanted: Data architects, integration experts, Hadoop pros
Cliff Justice, leader of KPMG's Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory practice, says organizational needs around analytics will be huge, driven partly by the sheer volume of data collected but also by the increasing number of applications (such as robotics) fueled by analytical output. As a result, companies are adding and creating IT positions to handle the work.

According to Barry Brunsman, principal in KPMG's CIO Advisory Management Consulting practice (pdf), you'll see roles like these: Data architects, who design the structure to support emerging needs; data integration engineers, who ensure that data solutions and analytics from any number of sources can be integrated; and IT planning analysts, who aggregate and analyze data from many internal and external sources to help IT know what its business partners are likely to need in the future.

Technical titles that are and will remain hot include Hadoop developer, data engineer, big data software architect and enterprise data architect, says Christian P. Hagen, a partner with the Strategic IT Practice at management consulting firm A.T. Kearney.

At the same time, organizational demands around analytics will create a new batch of leadership positions tasked with understanding how to use analytics to achieve goals and objectives. "Analytics won't mean just working with tools. Companies will need someone out in front, someone who can get at how analytics will transform the company and IT as well," Hagen says.

Hagen says leadership positions emerging in this field are chief analytics officer, chief data officer, chief digital officer, head of business analytics and vice president of enterprise data.

Wanted: "Digital artisans"
The pressure to be more than a pure technologist will continue in the upcoming years - and that means more than adding one or two business skills to your resume. Tech pros who successfully navigate the changes roiling the industry will be able to demonstrate business acumen across the spectrum, says R "Ray" Wang, founder and principal analyst with Constellation Research Inc. He calls these new specialists "digital artisans," explaining that they're "those who can balance right brain and left brain skills."

Middle-of-the-road products, services and solutions aren't enough to sustain companies in an increasingly competitive landscape, Wang says. To thrive in the next five to 10 years, organizations need to seek out talent "that can think outside of the box but execute within the system," he says. To deliver that kind of strategic value, IT pros need to be authentic, relevant, transformation-minded, intelligent, speedy, artistic and non-conformist. (Get it? A-R-T-I-S-A-N.)

Wanted: Hardware, software, analytics experts
The 2014 PwC report The Wearable Future (pdf) sees a world where wearable devices will be used to train new employees, speed up the sales process, improve customer service, create hands-free guidance for workers and improve the accuracy of information collected to serve the growing analytics movement at companies everywhere.

Jack Cullen, president of IT staffing firm Modis, predicts the move to wearables could spur as much, if not more, new development as did the move to smartphones. "By the time 2020 rolls around, wearable devices could be as common as the iPhone today, and that creates all new opportunities," Cullen says.

Cullen expects that organizations of all kinds will identify workers and processes that could benefit from wearables, which it turn means IT departments will seek out technologists with the ability to deploy, manage and maintain hardware as well as experts who can develop, customize and support the applications and analytics programs that will make wearables useful within their specific organizations.

Wanted: In-the-weeds tinkerers and big-picture thinkers
Research firm IDC predicts in its Worldwide and Regional Internet of Things 2014-2020 Forecast that the global IoT market will grow from $1.9 trillion in 2013 to $7.1 trillion in 2020.

"Technology is being built into almost everything we have," says David Dodd, vice president of IT and CIO at Stevens Institute of Technology. That means a bright future for technologists who understand the underpinnings of this kind of connectivity. Indeed, IoT could breed a new specialist who can combine skills in hardware, engineering, programming, analytics, privacy and security.

Dodd, though, believes the IoT skill most in demand will be in understanding what value comes from all this connectivity. Organizations are realizing it's not enough to simply connect items and gather data, they need to know how those connections and the data they generate can solve problems or advance organizational goals. Companies "want people who can understand and formulate the future of IoT," he says.

Position yourself for long-term growth
Smart companies have a corporate roadmap that spells out where they'd like to be three, five and 10 years out, how they're going to get there, and how technology fits into that vision. As a smart IT professional, can you say how your skills and position figure into your company's plans -- or the industry's as a whole?

Sure, organizations will still need programmers and developers, but they'll want (and pay better salaries to) programmers who know how to work with robots and developers who know how to apply their craft to wearable devices. So, yes, while labor market experts expect that IT as a whole will continue to add good jobs through 2020 and beyond, savvy tech pros are taking pains to ensure their personal roadmap is steering them towards concentrations with maximum longevity.

What follows are some specialties worth pursuing to future-proof your tech career.

Wanted: Tech experts to lay the groundwork for enterprise AI/robotics
Artificial intelligence and robotics have already moved from science fiction to reality, and soon they'll be coming to a business near you. According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report (pdf), these technologies "will permeate wide segments of daily life by 2025, with huge implications for a range of industries such as healthcare, transportation and logistics, customer service and home maintenance."

Not surprisingly, technologists skilled in this area will be in high demand, says KPMG's Justice. He notes that IT professionals will have roles to play in programming, integrating and building out the infrastructure for organizational applications of AI and robotics.

Wanted: Programmers to tap internal, external power of APIs
There's already plenty of buzz around application program interfaces (APIs) -- the sets of routines, protocols and tools that specify how software components should interact and facilitate access to Web-based applications.

Software vendors have been providing API for years, and now companies of all disciplines are making theirs public so other developers can design applications that interact with their original software. For that reason, the importance of APIs is about to explode. Companies will require more and more APIs to tap the power of emerging technologies, such as the Internet of Things, robotics and artificial intelligence, as well as maximize value for existing tech-driven trends such as mobile connectivity.

IT shops will need professionals to actively develop and manage APIs for use within the organization and to connect with outside users, Accenture's Sutcliff says. These technologists need to have strong development skills as well as an understanding of data sources, data structures and the organization's applications portfolios. Sutcliff notes that this position won't be about one specific language or API, but more about assembling pieces together.

Wanted: Broad and deep security chops
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates a 37% growth in information security analyst positions between 2012 and 2022 for good reason -- all these emerging technologies are requiring, and will continue to demand, even more attention from an organization's security program.

"For all the great opportunities that social and mobile and cloud and analytics and the Internet of Things are going to bring, any economic gains that will be realized by all these new technologies can be undercut significantly if there aren't really robust security programs and protocols in place," says Matt Aiello, a partner in the Washington office of Heidrick & Struggles, which specializes in recruiting CIOs and senior-level technology, engineering and operations executives. Aiello and others say the security expert of the future will need to ensure that security is embedded in all levels.
 

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Best New tools can detect hidden malware

We tested new security appliances from Damballa, Lancope and LightCyber that are designed to detect the latest cyber-attacks by monitoring network traffic and identifying when a piece of malware is communicating back to its command and control center. (Read the full review here.)

Damballa Failsafe
The Damballa Failsafe product was the easiest to use, had the best user interface and would be the quickest to deploy, an important consideration if an organization suspects that its network has already been compromised. Here, the Damballa Failsafe executive report shows at a glance everything happening of concern in the test network during the evaluation period. Widgets showing other information can be dragged and dropped to add them to the interface.

Damballa Failsafe
Individual assets that have been identified by Failsafe as infected can be examined more closely, including the rendering of a complete time-stamped evidence trail showing why a system generated a system alert. In addition to identifying suspicious activity, the MD5 hash of all malware programs are recorded so that they can be eliminated from an entire network, not just the computer where the infection is active.

LightCyber Magna
LightCyber Magna proved a perfect tool for detecting hidden threats that are trying to find specific data inside a network or elevate its privileges. It can also be useful in identifying insider threats. The main dashboard of the Magna interface shows all suspected and suspicious hosts at a glance, as well as how many have already been cleaned.

LightCyber Magna
Here Magna has identified suspicious lateral movement within a network that might indicate that attackers are attempting to branch out or elevate credentials before launching a full attack. Most perimeter defense programs would not care about traffic already within a network, which is why so many advanced persistent threats remain hidden for so long. Every incident of concern within a monitored network is explained to investigators. This can help humans determine if a suspicious process is legitimate or part of an attack.

Lancope StealthWatch
Lancope StealthWatch provided the most details about the communications going on within a network and the relationships between groups and devices, making it a useful tool for other things beyond security, such as network optimization or even capital planning. The top level StealthWatch interface looks rather intimidating at first. However, almost every single element within the program is clickable, making drilling down into problems easier than it would at first appear.

Lancope StealthWatch
The concern index panels tab is probably where security teams will likely spend much of their time. All suspicious activity generates demerit points which increases a system’s concern index, making it easy to spot the most dangerous threats. StealthWatch provides a very granular view of all network traffic. If an organization suspects that a trusted insider is doing bad things, a single click can show all of their activity in great detail. Relationships between users, groups and devices can also be mapped out and defined by StealthWatch, which can be a big help for organizations trying to implement communications-based compliance or regulatory issues.

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Update: A mobile payment battle is blazing

All eyes are on Samsung Pay and its embedded LoopPay inside the Galaxy S6 smartphone

Mobile in-store payments could grow dramatically in the U.S. as the result of a battle brewing among tech giants Google, Samsung and Apple.

In the latest development, Samsung today revealed Samsung Pay, a new mobile payment strategy, combined with its new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge smartphones. Samsung Pay relies on two technologies: a new magnetic transmission capability from startup LoopPay embedded as a copper ring inside the Galaxy S6 and the older Near Field Communications technology used in earlier Galaxy S smartphones.

The two phones will ship April 10 in 20 countries , including the U.S., but Samsung Pay will not go live until this summer, first in the U.S. and South Korea.

Having both mobile payment technologies embedded inside the Galaxy S6 will allow its users to make purchases at up to 90% of the estimated 12 million payment locations at U.S. stores. That's because the lion's share of the older point-of-sale terminals in use in the U.S. still have magnetic stripe card readers which support the new Galaxy S6 technology.

By comparison, Apple Pay and Google Wallet rely on newer NFC-ready terminals, which are gradually being rolled out in the U.S. and should reach about 50% of point-of-sale locations by year's end, according to estimates by credit and debit card companies. While NFC grows, magnetic technology could help fill the mobile payment gap.

"Samsung Pay certainly heats up the competition, and that's a good thing for mobile payment adoption," said Gartner analyst Avivah Litan in an interview. "But Samsung still has a lot of work to do to improve the user experience before it can effectively compete with Apple."

Informal field tests by Gartner of the magnetic LoopPay technology showed inconsistent performance when used with some magnetic readers on stores' point-of-sale terminals, Litan said. Gartner used LoopPay's magnetic technology incorporated inside its earlier phone cases and fobs, not the same technology embedded in the Galaxy S6. Embedding the copper ring inside the Galaxy S6 will hopefully reduce the inconsistent performance, she said, but LoopPay "is definitely not going to work at every magnetic-stripe reader."

Samsung and Visa were investors in startup LoopPay last summer, and Samsung on Feb. 18 announced it had acquired LoopPay for an undisclosed sum.

MasterCard confirmed that it will support Samsung Pay by deploying tokenization software for both magnetic and NFC transactions. Other credit and debit card companies, such as Visa and American Express, will follow suit with tokenization and will also support Samsung Pay, Samsung said. Major credit card companies and banks have backed Apple Pay with NFC, which rolled out last fall for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, and have already widely marketed the concept. Bank of America, Chase, Citi and US Bank are also on board with Samsung Pay, Samsung said.

Google Wallet, which first emerged in 2011, was slow to catch on, but Google on Feb. 23 announced a deal to buy technology and capabilities from SoftCard, another NFC-based mobile payment system. The purchase means that Google Wallet will be pre-installed on new Android phones at Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile later this year.

MasterCard said it agreed to support Samsung Pay with the LoopPay magnetic payment option only after setting up the tokenization security technology to support it. Tokens are crytographs, a kind of code, that are used instead of a customer's actual credit or debit card number to bolster security, and have been used with NFC payments in Apple Pay and other payment systems.

"Tokenization is how we got comfy with the magnetic secure transmission (MST) technology portion, and we wouldn't have supported [Samsung Pay] without [tokenization]," said Sherri Haymond, group head of MasterCard channel management.

When a MasterCard customer with a Galaxy S6 ready to make a purchase approaches a point-of-sale terminal equipped to handle either magnetic or NFC payments, the system is set up to give preference to NFC payments, Haymond said in an interview.

"We're viewing this MST as a bridge technology to enable consumers to take advantage of digital payments while NFC catches on," she said. "We do believe NFC is the wave of the future."

Mobile payment adoption is based on a complex set of technologies and business relationships. A major stumbling block in the U.S. has been the conversion of millions of payment terminals at U.S. retailers to more secure technology that supports smart cards and, usually, NFC. In addition to Apple Pay, Google Wallet and Samsung Pay, many experts are watching a consortium of large retailers called MCX that includes WalMart and Best Buy to see how MCX will affect mobile payment rollouts. MCX is not relying on NFC, at least initially, and may or may not support the LoopPay magnetic approach.

"How MCX members respond to Samsung Pay will be fascinating to watch," said Tim Sloane, an analyst at Mercator Advisory Group. The mobile payment space "is really getting interesting."

Unlike MCX, Samsung Pay will still rely on credit and debit cards and the banks that extend credit to consumers. Many merchants, including those in MCX, object to paying banks a fee of about 3% per credit-card transaction while also having to update their point-of-sale terminals to support smart cards. Merchants have an Oct. 1 deadline to upgrade their terminals to accept smart cards to avoid financial liability in the event of credit card fraud with older magnetic stripe technologies. Many of the updated terminals, estimated at about 80%, also support NFC payments with smartphones.

The technology changes have been a burden for merchants. "Merchants are really frustrated with all these mobile payments," Litan said. "The systems are opaque and banks are keeping information close to the vest."

What's apparent with Samsung Pay and other mobile payments is that the rate of adoption is not only about new technologies, but also business partnerships. So far, Apple has excelled in creating partnerships with credit card companies and major banks, as well as many large retailers. Apple and its bank, card and retail partners have aired a steady stream of TV ads and other promotions to show the ease of using Apple Pay with NFC for quick in-store payments.

"The path to mobile payments is not only in the technology, but how many partnerships you can form with financial institutions and retailers willing to accept your particular solution," said analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. "If Samsung can build an ecosystem that provides for its technology, then it can be a player. Apple, almost by default, will have such an ecosystem. Everyone seems to want to support whatever Apple does, because of its weight in the marketplace. We'll have to see if Samsung can bring the same weight with its payment technology."

Various things could happen to help Samsung with Samsung Pay. If, for example, Samsung decides to license the LoopPay magnetic transmission technology to other device makers -- even Apple and Google -- then Samsung could reap benefits. On the other hand, if Samsung Pay turns out to be highly successful, both Apple Pay and Google Wallet could ultimately be "marginalized," Sloan said.

While that scenario may seem far-fetched to many, Samsung Pay has opened a lot of eyes.

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