Why Migrate from Office 365 to G Suite?
G Suite and Office 365 are at the forefront of business productivity applications and other players cannot keep up because of the effectiveness of these two. They offer almost similar functionalities, but on a deeper level, their differences are significant.
Different approaches
G Suite and Office 365 look alike at first glance and they both use the cloud. However, Google stores data in the cloud by fragmenting it into many pieces. You access your data by logging into the account, and this action brings all the fragments together. That is what makes G Suite fast.
Microsoft’s cloud service is a bit different as clients can choose to keep their data on a specific site and this is what also slows down the speed.
Google built G Suite to work online, so most of its features center on collaboration and convenience. On the other hand, Office is designed for both cloud and desktop deployment, and its architecture is heavy on features.
Office 365 comes with a complex variety of features that users rarely know about. The effect is an application that allows for a lot of customization. G Suite does not pack as many bells and whistles. It is a leaner package, but still allows for customization and keeps the core components that 365 users are accustomed too, as well as many others. It’s also gaining business users at an increasing rate.
Key considerations
Only one thing should guide the choice to migrate from Office 365 to G Suite: what you plan to achieve with the application.
The main factors that make G Suite superior include speed, easy collaboration, an email client, compatibility, and scalability.
SPEED
Both tools work in the cloud, so they seem like great options for collaboration, right? Consider teams collaborating on Google Sheets versus Excel. The changes in the document are visible to team members almost instantly with Sheets. The longest it might take for the changes to reflect is about 2 seconds.
Meanwhile, for Office 365, the latency can range from 5 to 30 seconds, and this can slow down operations when collaborating remotely. This is because G Suite was developed from a pure cloud philosophy where the product development and testing were done to enhance collaboration and productivity in the cloud.
G Suite apps like Docs and Sheets are faster because they are lighter on features. Word is slower because it sacrifices speed to include features like more detailed charts and smart art objects.
Office 365 was developed from an on-premise background. That is why it has all of those features; they are important in on-premise work. The issue is that these become a bit slow when deployed using more modern business approaches in the cloud.
EASY COLLABORATION
Almost everyone knows how to use Office products, so Google needed to come up with user-friendly interfaces if anyone was going to have a second look at their tools. That is exactly what they did.
G Suite enables easy operation and it merges changes easily. When working with an application like Sheets, users can see who is on what part of the sheet in real time and will know what areas they need to avoid working on in that exact moment.
Example
Consider teams working on Excel versus Sheets. The chat feature on Sheets allows members to discuss changes in real time from remote locations. These chats are live but do not save on the Sheets.
With Excel, the team will have to go out of the spreadsheet or make comments which will appear as a permanent part of the spreadsheet. Also, the syncing feature is not as reliable, and users can edit documents online and offline at the same time. This can cause mayhem when the documents sync again.
Add-ons
Office 365 is more feature heavy, so it might be a great choice when you need high-resolution PowerPoint presentations. However, G Suite has something that makes it more appealing: add-ons.
It is easy to include add-ons that provide specific required features for even better productivity without compromising the fast collaboration capability. The third-party add-ons also allow for better process customization and enhancement.
EMAIL CLIENT
G Suite and Office 365 offer email clients with different pricing structures, features, and packages. It’s worth seeing which works best for your company. However, it is clear that G Suite is fairly priced when looking at a large staff.
Google’s minimalist approach is also a key feature of their email client. The benefits include a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface. Office 365 is more cluttered, and its message retrieval is a bit messy.
The calendar feature is available in both Outlook and Gmail. Outlooks calendars pack heavy features but this comes with the usual drawback in that it is quite clunky and takes time to set up.
G Suite’s calendar is simple in line with Google’s minimalist approach to ensure ease of use. It is also easy to automate and is still probably the most advanced calendar out there.
COMPATIBILITY
Both offer options that enable users to work offline, but that is as far as the similarities go. For Office 365, the users need to install Microsoft Office. It comes with the purchase of the whole package.
G Suite tools like Docs and Sheets are available online in two ways - as file downloads and through the Chrome extension.
In the first instance, users can choose to download their files in formats such as pdf or odt. This allows users to access documents across a slew of devices without having to edit them for compatibility.
The Chrome extension also lets users access and edit documents offline. The changes then sync automatically once users go back online.
OFFLINE FILE AVAILABILITY
Microsoft’s One Drive and G Suite’s Drive Stream deserve a look because they are the ways that Office 365 and G Suite make files available offline. These tools do not take files from the cloud; they just create copies on the desktop.
Drive stream works by saving folders to the PC, but the files are not downloaded, although users can see them. This helps preserve storage space. It is only when users click on the files that they download into the PC. Microsoft’s One Drive downloads the files locally, which means you use up more disk space.
The other drawback with One Drive’s Files on Demand feature is that it is only available on Windows 10 at the moment. Many businesses use Windows 8, Mac OS, and other operating systems.
FEW DIFFERENCES BETWEEN G SUITE AND OFFICE 365
Drive VS One drive: Click Here
Gmail VS Outlook: Click Here
Hangouts VS Skype: Click Here
SCALABILITY
G Suite is often touted as a great tool even for small businesses, which is true. However, an interesting fact is that Office 365 supports a maximum of 300 users, which works well when a business is still small. G Suite supports an unlimited number of users, so it is appropriate for companies of any size.
Conclusion
Businesses cannot escape the fact that working online is the way to go. A mistake many make when deciding between Office 365 is to look for the tool they are more familiar with. Productivity tools should be measured based on whether they meet the user’s needs.
The future way of doing things demands more collaboration and speed, and G Suite has tapped into these while filling out their service with more features that improve the capabilities of their tools.
When looking at G Suite’s features, it accomplishes most of the tasks that were the preserve of Office. G Suite’s obvious advantage in collaboration facilitates the growing trend of remote work today. Many businesses realize this as work becomes more physically decentralized.
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