When companies start moving files and their systems to the cloud, business owners are faced with one crucial decision: which platform is suitable for the business, G Suite or Office 365?
The answer to that question depends mostly on where the company stands. Depending on the size, expected growth, and technical needs one does look more appealing than the other.
In order to help you make the decision, we look at five key factors of each program: it’s security, collaboration, integration, functionality, and usability.
Security
With ransomware attacks occurring more frequently, security is becoming more important now than ever before. When looking at security performance, both administrators can easily customize security protocols. On top of this, Google and Microsoft both update their cloud suites often. The updates are so frequent and extensive that both provide equal amount of security these days.
That being said, Office 365 does have a minor advantage over G Suite. Office 365 has a multi-factor authentication while G-Suite only has a two-factor authentication. While these authentications are fine, the fact Microsoft offers further authentication means it has a higher level of security.
Another aspect to keep in mind is that G Suite is convenient but so much so that it can provide security issues. With the platform connecting to third party apps and extensions requesting permissions on it, you’re leaving yourself to further vulnerabilities if those third party apps ever get hacked in.
On the flip side, Office 365 doesn’t need extensions and already has many services that G Suite can provide from login.
Collaboration
A lot of G Suite’s reputation for collaboration services mainly stems from people being unfamiliar with Office 365 collaboration tools. Even so, G Suite does offer better collaboration tools, just maybe not as good as people think.
For example, G Suite users point to how Office 365 users can’t edit files in Excel or Word at the same time. This is a misconception. You can edit these files at the same time, the interface is just different from how G Suite does it.
Another misconception is Office 365’s offline capabilities. They believe that due to that, users will forego collaboration through the cloud. G Suite is cloud restricted while Microsoft still allows you to get desktop versions of their office programs, avoiding this issue entirely.
Integration
Even though both platforms are compatible with most other cloud services, you’ll find G Suite to encounter more issues with integration. Part of G Suite’s issue is through Gmail itself.
There have been many cases where Gmail will sometimes change image positions or font sizes for various documents. Those are prominent mostly in PowerPoint presentations.
You can also run into similar issues with Excel and Gmail too. Excel tables can lose formats when pasted to Gmail.
Furthermore, some operating systems like Linux don’t have an official client for Google Drive and you can see issues of that arise for browsers that haven’t paid for Google’s licensing.
You don’t run into any of these issues when dealing with Office 365.
Functionality
Office 365 is better in this regard as well thanks to SharePoint. SharePoint has an array of applications that Workflow created. These applications automate many business process – such as dashboards and tracking organizations KPI’s.
But what’s more important is that these features don’t appear on Google Suites. Their apps also cannot compare in terms of power to Office 365’s.
You see the power level differences in their Excel platforms. Excel in Office 365 has a multitude of data visualization tools, a robust capacity for handling large data and many mathematical formulas for advanced calculations.
You’ve also got Word’s myriad of ribbons and toolbars to offer more extensive features than what Google Docs could provide.
Usability
Even though Office 365 is known as the standard in productivity solutions, it still is confusing in terms of usability. G Suite is a lot easier to navigate and makes it better in cases of usability. The smooth interface makes it easy to use as soon as you get it.
This also applies to video conferences too. Google Hangouts have a smooth user experience and is especially easy on mobile. This is a stark comparison to the recent changes to Skype’s interface has done for Microsoft’s video conference platform.
Another aspect to consider is employee demographics as well. Older employees will be more familiar with Microsoft Office while younger generations prefer G Suite. This is also key to keep in mind as universities are relying more on G Suite services to collaborate with people. As such, millennials will be more attuned to G Suite features and may prefer more familiar platforms moving forward.
Conclusion
When looking at the overall aspects, Office 365 has a lot of promising aspects. It does provide a learning curve due to it’s tougher interface and other people preferring G Suite, but it could provide more benefits long term in terms of output.
On the flip side, G Suite is easier and familiar in many regards and it’ll put younger workforces more at ease. They’ll be restricted in certain areas, but it provides a solid foundation for people.
The choice is ultimately yours to be making depending on your business needs.