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
Why is Cloud email so confusing?
Further to my very simplistic view of the cloud in my previous post I thought it would be worth elaborating on what the concept of 'the cloud' would mean to small (non IT) business. I went to the world cloud forum in Kensington Olympia this week and also took part in ‘Cloud Camp’. The introductory speech was from Simon Wardley and it was excellent – something that anyone who doesn’t really know about the cloud should try and catch. There are versions of his introduction on youtube and I would suggest it is worth checking out if you want a good basic idea of what ‘the cloud’ is.
