We’ve been learning a lot at Cloud Hypermarket about what the main points of interest for business are when it comes to choosing between the main vendors of email based Software-as-a-Service suites - Microsoft and Google. On deeper inspection there is quite a disparity between Microsoft’s BPOS offering and Google Apps premier, each offering its own bonuses. As far as features are concerned you can compare Microsoft's BPOS and Google Apps on Cloud Hypermarket. However it seems to me that the main difference between the products has very little to do with functionality.The vast majority of IT managers I have talked to have grown an affinity with Google and have spent time focussing on that, whilst remaining fully blinkered about Microsoft’s offering (some seem to refuse to acknowledge its existence). In this case Microsoft’s familiarity seems to have been working against it. IT managers have had years of having very little competition to Microsoft when it comes to dealing with email. They’ve literally had to use Outlook and Exchange. In 2009, 36.7% of all email, both domestic and business, was used through Microsoft’s Outlook client (see chart Outlook 2000, 2003, Express and Outlook 2007). Source: Campaignmonitor.com

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