I spend substantial amount of time dealing with a wide variety of business owners and employees, as well as involved in training them and provide appropriate tools and business solutions to address their needs.
Of course being an IT consultant for all these years requires one to know what one recommends and know it well. I use all kinds of software addressing a plethora of personal & business needs, and then translate my knowledge and time/effort spent learning the software into something more easily understood by people I consult & teach.
As with anything - there are good solutions, mediocre ones and downright lousy ones (which will never be a subject of my teaching, but I may point out something that you should definitely stay away from and not waste your time).
Here I'd like to address an issue of typical, every day software uses for business (and personal) purposes. Historically such software started with Word Processing, later Spreadsheets were added, then Presentation programs. This isn't a complete list of what everyone is using, but this is typically what small businesses use and that's why they start with Microsoft Office package, which contains all of the above categories of software.
Let's not forget another important category, likely overshadowing all of the above in terms of frequency of use and that would be personal and professional communications. E-mail, Instant Messaging, Collaboration Software, and lately Audio & Video Communications.
Microsoft Office provides some of these functions via their Outlook program, as well as MS Messenger.
Google is another company providing a similar set of software, including Gmail (Google's e-mail service), Google Docs (Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Presentations with collaboration) and Google Talk (for Instant Messaging, including Audio & Video), later referred to as Google Apps.
There are 2 major differences between Microsoft Office & Google Apps - Google Apps are FREE and MS Office isn't and Google Apps are web-based and Microsoft Office isn't (although a version is planned that will be, but it remains to be seen how it will compare).
With extensive usage of both software packages, weighing the pros and cons not in terms of features, but in terms of usefulness and capabilities - right now the winner is Google Apps and here are some of the reasons why:
- Gmail is accessible quickly and easily from any computer on the planet, which is connected to the Internet
- Gmail is fast, reasonably intuitive and provides a vast and growing amount of capabilities out of the box and using their simple Labs feature
- Google Docs allows for simple, yet effective collaboration without the need for expensive servers and server software
- Google Calendar is easily integrated with cell phones, it's embeddable with numerous calendars, sharing and display options
- Google Apps are tightly integrated with each other (for example if someone sends an e-mail with an event info in the content - Gmail will provide a single-click option to add the event to your calendar; any e-mail can be easily converted to a Word Processing document in Google Docs, with a single click; any e-mail can be tied to a task, with due date visible in the calendar and accessible via a single click)
- One can have an environment where a single screen provides the view of e-mail, calendar with upcoming agenda, chat for instant messaging, buddy list for instant messaging, and even ability to do a quick video/audio call - all from the same screen, without switching tabs or windows... and you can even see and access few of your latest Google Docs documents - all on a single screen (add up all of the time you spend switching windows and opening/closing tabs and you'll see just how much more efficient this approach is)
- E-mail messages (and documents) can be easily associated with multiple labels (similar to folders), providing a simple, yet far superior method of organizing information than the old folder model
- E-mails and chats are easily searchable regardless of labels use, using Google's simple search box, including web search initiated on the same screen
- Canned messages can be set up (aka auto-responders), based on custom filters, with relative ease, as well as vacation messages and planning
- Excellent SPAM filtering, using a global architecture far superior to anything anyone else offers
This is by no means an exhaustive list, and even though many features Google Docs provides are available in MS Office - one can't help but compare the price difference. FREE is a compelling argument for any business, with any budget. However, FREE means nothing if it means constant hassles, bugs, frustration, lack of speed & efficiency - that's too high a price to pay for FREE. Google Apps are very robust and do have the set of features that will satisfy the needs of any small business.
Is Excel more feature-full and capable of handling much larger spreadsheets? Yes, it is. However, the more relevant question, which nobody seems to ask when making such comparison, would be "Is Google Spreadsheet perfectly adequate for all my needs?" and the answer for 99.99%+ of you will be 'Yes'. Vast majority of small business users use nothing but a small subset of all of features available in MS Office.
Last, but not least there's the Going Green consideration. If your small business is running MS Exchange server, perhaps Small Biz or Windows Server - if you switch to Google Apps you'll be able to eliminate all of them. That's another substantial cost savings, in terms of buying and upgrading servers, both on the software and the hardware side. Also, there's less energy needed to run the servers, fewer UPS devices, and potentially savings in having smaller support staff and support expenditures. For some businesses this savings could be very significant.
Now that I've touched the surface of this comparison and my recommendation to use Google Apps - I'll also state that there are two main drawbacks that should be considered:
- Internet Connectivity (lack thereof actually)
- Change
With Google Apps being a web-based environment, you lose access to all your data and functionality if the Internet isn't available. Is that a big deal? If you lose Internet access frequently - it would be a deal breaker, in my opinion. Luckily, in most parts of the country this isn't an issue. Internet goes down infrequently and even when it does - it comes back to life relatively quickly. Google addresses such times with Google Gears - a special application that allows running some of its applications offline. This allows you to take Gmail or Google Reader (RSS feed reader) and others offline, with a single click, and then all of the latest content will be downloaded to your computer, allowing you to simply take it with you (on an airplane, for example) and consume content, write e-mails etc. When you get back online - all of the information will be syncronized and thus ensure that both offline and online content are the same. This isn't a perfected solution, but it does help when the Internet isn't available.
Change, in my experience, has always been a dirty word. People resist it, some actively fight it. If I had a dime for every person that mentioned something like "we've always done it this way" - I'd be a rich man (well, richer anyway). People seem to like new things, and prefer buying & using new things, but they don't like making changes to what they "know". With 80%+ of world market using MS Office applications, and for years, Google has a major challenge trying to change the status quo, but they are making some inroads in some academic institutions, businesses of various sizes, and even some governments around the world. So even though people resist change - they also know that it's inevitable and learn to adopt new things over time. After all, we're not doing much with horse buggies these days.
If you have any questions regarding your specific business and whether it makes sense for you to move to Google Apps and want to know the what's, the how-to's and probably more importantly - the why's - definitely contact us and we'll be happy to help.
I'm not an anti-Microsoft person at all and have a lot of respect for what they've done over the years and being in their back yard actually increases the respect. But I have to call things as they are and in my experience (and it's substantial at this point with both packages) - I recommend Google Apps for any small business, and without any reservations.
As always - your comments are certainly welcome.
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