The GSA chose Google over Microsoft after a six-month bidding process. One indicator is the choice recently by the GSA (General Services Administration) to migrate all its employees in 17 locations around the world to the cloud for email and collaboration tools. Yet cloud services like Office 365 and Google Apps will continue to grow in the enterprise, adds Keitt. "But if your collaboration and communication apps are tied to a legacy system such as SharePoint server, then Office 365 may not be right for you at the moment." "If you're in a pinch to cut costs and more and more of your workforce is going mobile, then a cloud service like Office 365 is appealing," says Teitt. Whether or not an enterprise pushes all of their workloads to the cloud or stays completely on premise depends on the dynamics and behavior of a company's workforce and its financial position.
Google will offer you YouTube and Blogger as part of the Google Apps package, but enterprises don't want to use that stuff." For example, SharePoint sites are more sophisticated than Google Groups. "Google Apps offer a lot of features, but not as much as Microsoft. "At least Microsoft admits that an enterprise can't move it all - something Google does not do," he says. "We're happy to say that maybe the cloud is not right for you in this case, and that this particular workload or application is better off on-premise."Īnalyst Keitt commends Microsoft's pragmatic, piecemeal approach to getting enterprises to move to a cloud model. Koenigsbauer says Microsoft has a methodology it uses with customers to make sure the cloud is right solution for them. When customers have done lots of SharePoint customization with line-of-business data and have developed complex workflows, then SharePoint may be better suited on-prem." "I do think workloads like Exchange will go to the cloud faster than SharePoint. "We follow the mentality of delivering the cloud on the customer's terms," says Koenigsbauer. But the next three to five years will be a transition period. Kirk Koenigsbauer, senior VP of the Microsoft Office Division, says that someday 90 percent or 100 percent of the enterprise apps will be in the cloud. Microsoft is indirectly admitting the limitations of the cloud by promoting the hybrid method where a company can run, say, SharePoint on-premise and Exchange and Lync in Office 365, and have the two worlds integrate seamlessly - at least that's the promise. For SharePoint, it's more effective to have it on-prem because of all the customization that many enterprises do to SharePoint sites," says Keitt. "Every enterprise is different, but you'll mostly see Exchange migrations to Office 365 happening first in the enterprise. Slideshow: Google Apps for Business: 10 Powerful Add-Ons Slideshow: 13 Cool Features of Office 365 For an enterprise to take advantage of a cloud model like Office 365, it must take an extensive look at its inventory and its workforce behavior, and figure which workloads can go off premises. Nevertheless, enterprises should not dismiss Office 365 as just for SMBs, says Keitt.
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