Customers often ask us why they should choose Microsoft Office 365 over Google Mail, which promises large storage and ease of use at a low price. We believe that currently, Google Mail is fantastic for home users and micro businesses, however for most businesses that have been sharing data using Microsoft Office, Exchange and Sharepoint, we believe that Office 365 is a generally a better fit for their requirements. Having said that, Office 365 isn’t suitable for every business and we’d love to talk about your requirements to determine the correct solution for your workforce.
Here’s what Microsoft have to say about Office 365 vs. Gmail. To read the full White Paper, click here.
1. Privacy matters.
Office 365 keeps customers’ data safe in state-of-the-art access-controlled data centers and secure mobile access for users. Office 365 customers know where data resides, who can access it, and what Microsoft does with it. Microsoft is focused on providing feature-rich, enterprise-grade productivity solutions, and enterprise software and services form the core of our business.
2. Serious about security.
Office 365 is designed to meet enterprise security requirements through strong governance and security-aware engineering at every step. Our industry-leading Security Development Life Cycle ensures that security best practices are followed at every stage of service development and delivery. We proactively monitor our services to protect from both known and unknown threats, and we approach security with enterprise businesses top of mind. Office 365 is hosted in Microsoft’s network of highly available data centers, built and operated with a defense-in-depth approach to people, processes, and technology. Microsoft Forefront™ Online Protection for Exchange, included with Office 365, protects organizations against viruses and spam and is highly configurable to meet business needs. User connections to the service are protected with 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) encryption. Office 365 natively supports additional security measures such as Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) for public key encryption and digital signatures.
3. Compliance leadership.
With Office 365, compliance doesn’t have to be a barrier between the business and the cloud. It’s the first major cloud-based productivity service to employ security frameworks based on International Standards Organization (ISO/IEC 27001:2005) standards and is ISO 27001 certified by independent auditors. Office 365 is also contractually committed to the EU Model Clauses and HIPAA Business Associate Agreements. Furthermore, Exchange Online includes comprehensive, integrated archiving and e-discovery tools, making it possible for many organizations to meet compliance and governance requirements within a single infrastructure.
4. Allow users to access their content anytime, anywhere.
Workers need to remain productive no matter where they are. Office 365 allows businesses to achieve this commitment to employees by delivering a consistent and optimized experience across PCs, mobile devices, and browsers. With Office on the desktop, users can get work done when they are offline. Archived emails and documents are accessible to employees, allowing them to work efficiently without Internet connectivity. Google Apps is accessible only via the web, so without Internet connectivity, employees do not have the same level of functionality for viewing or editing email and documents. Issues will arise for Google Apps users when they only have offline access, such as file fidelity loss of images, comments, and highlights when transitioning Google Docs on the web browser to the Google Docs offline client.
5. Rich set of capabilities.
No other cloud productivity service offers the richness of Office 365. It includes industry-leading email powered by Exchange Online, one-click voice and video conferencing with Lync Online, and flexible and powerful team collaboration with SharePoint Online. These online Office servers integrate seamlessly with the Microsoft Office desktop applications that users rely on every day. Microsoft has been perfecting Office productivity applications for decades, and Office 365 is a natural extension of that process.
6. Less training required.
When customers switch to the cloud, they want to give users a productivity solution that is minimizes ramp up time. Office 365 offers this experience, because the mobile, online, and desktop applications share a consistent experience with the familiar Office applications, giving users instant facility with the solution. Employees can use Office 365 almost immediately, because Office 365 is built upon the on-premises versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Lync, and Office. Companies get the simplicity and flexibility of the cloud while improving the functionality that users expect and need.
7. Deploy it your way.
A business may not be ready to move all its information to the cloud at once. With Office 365, customers can choose between a pure cloud environment, an on-premises solution, or a hybrid environment that integrates cloud services into an on-premises IT infrastructure. Customers can move some users to the cloud and keep others on-premises for compliance or operational reasons. This enables customers to move to the cloud at a pace that makes sense for their business. If they choose a hybrid infrastructure, users will likely never know the difference, and customers can use the same management tools across online and on-premises servers.
8. Rely on a financially backed, 99.9 percent SLA.
Customers need a guaranteed solution and something valuable in exchange if that guarantee is not met. Customers recognize that outages may occur, but when a business loses productivity, a responsible enterprise vendor should assume responsibility and help the customer. Office 365 is built for reliability, availability, and performance. Its proven service is powered by the enterprise ready email and collaboration products that businesses have been using for decades. Because of this commitment to businesses, Microsoft is 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.
9. Know the road ahead in order to plan accordingly.
Businesses cannot be hampered by the sudden disappearance or inconsistent delivery of new features. With Office 365, customers have advance notice of significant changes and clear offerings and can plan effectively. By helping businesses set their technical strategy, Microsoft helps customers understand the company’s vision and innovations.
10. Enterprise-grade support.
When customers call a company for support, they don’t want to be told that they’ll be called back. Office 365 Enterprise plans deliver multilingual 24/7 phone support for even single-user outages. Office 365 is there to help from licensing to deployment and daily use and has more than 42,000 partners ready to help evaluate or deploy Office 365. Customers can work directly with Microsoft to deploy Office 365 with the CloudVantage program, which provides the highest level of service and support.