Comments on: Why did Visy buck Telstra for Google Apps?

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:45:00 +0000

I dunno, the new OWA is actually pretty damn good — and it’s pretty hard to make an argument that Google Apps has more features than Microsoft’s alternative does. Having said that, I reckon 90% of features in Exchange/Outlook aren’t used by 90% of people, and I find the user interface in Google Apps so much better.

By: Jumbo jones

Jumbo jones — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 13:34:00 +0000

Nope, seen it and it’s horrible. Use it for more than an hour and it’s just so web 1.0 and really doesn’t ahve the feature set that Gmail has.

By: jakezbo

jakezbo — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 15:42:00 +0000

You seem to forget or are ignoring Outlook Web Access.

By: StartCast

StartCast — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 08:38:00 +0000

im all in for google apps, more please, I believe small to large businesses should at least give it a go. In my experience it really can fulfill most companies needs at tiny fractions of the cost.

By: Jimbo Jones

Jimbo Jones — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:28:00 +0000

The ability to do real time collaboration and sharing must of been key. Office 365 still relies on the purchase of packaged office. Maybe that just wasn’t acceptable given the logistics involved in bringing the entire sites across AU + Asia up to the most recent version of office (which is already a year old). MS will for the next ten years try to sell you office, it’s key to their business model but with Google their business model is advertising. So Google Apps is free to grow without fear of cannibalisation.

Maybe it is a mail offering. The Gmail webapp is so superior to 365′s web app it empowers all of Visy’s employees to have access to their mail no matter where they are, on any machine.

By: devilinthedetail

devilinthedetail — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:04:00 +0000

Freedom of choice?? You mean everything in the cloud with choice of a single browser (Chrome) and no offline client?? Fail….

By: Devilinthedetail

Devilinthedetail — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:02:00 +0000

Marcel, Microsoft were one of the first, credible organisations to provide cloud based services LONG before Google got to the table. Hotmail, Windows Live, Messenger……you can’t argue with that, and their numbers of users still leveraging this platform STILL outweighs those using Google’s Docs and mail platform, you can’t argue with that…..or you could try.

You mentioned the writer couldn’t have used Google Apps to have written such an article. My question to you is have you used Office365 with Web Apps, SharePoint Online and Lync Online??

By: Devilinthedetail

Devilinthedetail — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 04:02:00 +0000

You mentioned the writer couldn’t have used Google Apps to have written such an article. My question to you is have you used Office365 with Web Apps, SharePoint Online and Lync Online??

By: johan

johan — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:49:00 +0000

…except when it comes to collaboration. MSFT manage sharing well, but they do poorly when it comes to online multi editing collaboration. MSFT will continue to do well for companies where the boss just needs to push information down, but if you’ve got knowledge workers who need to collaborate internally and externally then MSFT just doesn’t have anything to offer. I can, with one license of Google Apps, invite all my colleagues and all my partners to read and edit any document I have. With MSFT I would have to buy one sharepoint license for each person I want to share it with and yet editing from tablets or smart phones wouldn’t be possible. Finally: The day the average MSFT employee is working on the 365 platform only, then I believe MSFT will be ready to push down Google, but until then Google Apps will be the only 100% cloud option in my view

By: Renai LeMay

Renai LeMay — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 23:31:00 +0000

Um … I don’t think things are quite that simple. Yes, Google Apps can do things which Microsoft’s offering can’t, but there is no doubt that Office 365 is way more feature-rich than Google Apps is. You can’t even compare the featuresets … Microsoft is way out in front in that area. The question of whether you would actually use all those features is a separate one ;)

By: the boss

the boss — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:29:00 +0000

RIchard Pratt was always one to pioneer and the legacy continues

By: Marcel J Bennett

Marcel J Bennett — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 07:39:00 +0000

They chose Google Apps over Office 365 because Microsoft just don’t ‘get’ cloud services. Office 365 is not even close to the service provided by Google, the writer must not have used Google Apps to ask such an obvious question to anyone who has used Google Apps.

The level of communication between departments and staff massively increases using Google Docs over Microsoft offerings, they just don’t share as well, GDocs allows 50 people to work on a spreadsheet at the same time and does it brilliantly.

By: charles sithole

charles sithole — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:41:00 +0000

Freedom of choice working at its best

By: Thateus

Thateus — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 04:14:00 +0000

Maybe they want to get out of licensing Microsoft Office products all together? If their needs aren’t advanced, then Google Apps does the job for office productivity.