Google: "...Not Appropriate for Business"

Today's post is the second of two guest posts this week by Julia White, Sr. Director of Microsoft Exchange Product Management. Yesterday I talked about the need to look at several factors when considering your next e-mail system, whether on-premises or in the cloud.  Uptime is important but control, predictability, and manageability are also important considerations that should not be ignored.

Today we’ll talk about flexibility and familiarity - related to cloud based email.  We know from working closely with our customers that many won’t deploy their entire organization to Exchange Online all at once.  Many will continue to have email on-premises for a variety of valid reasons.  For some, parts of their organization might be a perfect fit for online e-mail (manufacturing or retail floor workers, for instance), while other parts, like legal or human resource departments, stay on premises.  We see this frequently with our Live@edu customers in education; students have e-mail accounts exclusively in the cloud while faculty and staff are deployed on-premises. The school’s e-mail infrastructure is managed as a single organization, but different segments have different requirements and are deployed differently.

For example, Aston University in Birmingham, England, used open source e-mail for its students and Exchange for its faculty and staff.  Eventually, the university upgraded to Exchange Server 2010 for faculty and staff and moved its students to Live@edu, our online offering powered by Exchange 2010.  Aston University chose Live@edu over Google apps in part because Live@edu has better calendar sharing between students and professors on Exchange Server 2010 and it also provides better support and consistency across the university’s messaging environment.

“The ability to manage Live@edu e-mail with the same commands and interfaces used for our on-premises Exchange Server system was a huge bonus for us.” - Trevor Bayliss, Infrastructure Services Manager at Aston University

Many customers are considering a managed transition to cloud-based e-mail, instead of the ‘rip and replace’ method Google would have you follow.  We know our customers want the flexibility to have parts of their organization on-premises or online, while operating as a single e-mail system.  And for those organizations with the ability to go to the cloud all at once, isn’t it nice to have the option to integrate on-premises deployment in the future, if needed?  Google doesn’t provide that option.

In fact, many of our Exchange Online customers have tried Google’s service and decided to switch to Exchange Online because they ultimately didn’t see the benefits.  Google’s service didn’t perform as expected; Google Apps didn’t work well with Office documents and other applications; and the e-mail interface and management tools had a steep learning curve for employees, which they didn’t appreciate.

Here’s an example: Bradshaw & Weil, a small, independent insurance agency in Kentucky, first moved to cloud-based services with Google Apps.  They soon found Google couldn’t deliver solutions for their most important business needs.  Bradshaw & Weil employees couldn’t even sync their mobile devices back to Google Apps; technical support was non-existent; and Google Docs wasn’t always compatible with Microsoft Office Word documents.  Plus, Gmail upgrades would often knock out the company’s e-mail.

Bradshaw & Weil’s switch to Microsoft Online Services went a lot more smoothly.  Interoperability with Microsoft Office desktops, employee familiarity with Microsoft applications, and the absence of time-intensive Google Apps workarounds were just some of the benefits compared to the Google experience.

“It was so easy. We set up the Exchange Online account, we logged onto the website, and all the functionality we were looking for was just there. We didn’t have to sort through the various views and tags that came with Google Apps. Plus, we had the confidence of knowing the same company that created this reliable back-end system also created the Microsoft Office applications we use every day.” - Jared Morgan, Insurance Agent and Chief Technology Officer at Bradshaw & Weil

Another Microsoft customer, Aisle7, is a marketing services company in Portland, Oregon.  Its experiment with Google Apps didn’t go well either.  In the nine months Aisle7 was on Google Apps, it had daily issues with synchronizing e-mail to Outlook, and experienced disappearing meeting invitations and contacts.  Like many companies that try Google’s business offering, Aisle7 thought a good experience with Gmail (for personal e-mail) would translate to the workplace.  It didn’t.  Some Aisle7 employees even expressed concern before Google Apps were deployed.

Perhaps Jake Harris, Director of IT at Aisle7, said it best when he said:

“Some people warned that Google might be good for personal use, but it’s not appropriate for business. I think those people were the wisest.”

And after Google Apps was deployed, the complaints kept on coming.  Distribution lists disappeared; subfolders weren’t supported and were replaced with one long label; and no way to synchronize tasks.  And what did Jake think of the tools Google provided?

“The Google Apps Sync tool is simply a debacle.”

So what do you get with Gmail and Google Apps?  In short, not what you want and usually not what you expect when it comes to planning, reliable release of features, control, deployment choice, flexibility, familiar tools.  Make Google talk straight to you!  I urge those of you considering cloud deployments to take a look at the Office 365 website where you can also dive deeper into each of the products in the suite, including Exchange Online.

Julia White
Senior Director, Exchange Product Management