Microsoft Office 365 vs. Google Apps

Do you want a quick review of the difference between Microsoft’s newly released Office 365 and Google’s Offerings? I ran across a good feature showdown in Lifehacker that gives you a good overview between what the companies offer you. In summary, looking at the major differences includes a tiered cost system with Microsoft that allows you to choose the services that you want, Microsoft is more feature rich in many of their applications, you can incorporate office pro plus as part of your package for full featured document creation.

If your organization already makes heavy use of Microsoft Exchange for mail and Microsoft Office for productivity, Office 365 will appeal to those who want a familiar, robust tool. Google Apps, and specifically Google Docs, feels barren and plain by comparison, even if it's more accessible and open.

Lync, a feature rich communications program, in Office 365 incorporates a unified communications interface with desktop and whiteboard sharing.

Office 365 requires a little workstation setup to be used fully where Google just needs a compatible browser.

Microsoft centers it file storage around SharePoint. Depending on how you feel about this it is either a good thing or a bad thing. One benefit, Office 365 with Office on the desktop grants offline access whereas Google Apps with Google Docs does not. Google says that they will be turning this ability back on this summer but at the time of this writing it is not available.

I feel that Microsoft has made a good stab at being a solid competitor to Google with Office 365. I have signed up for the trial version and as I work my way through all of different offerings I will continue to write about what I find. Meanwhile, take a look at the Lifehacker article and at both Google’s and Microsoft's sites for more information.