Comparing Office 365 and G-Suite in 2017

[gshaw]

Hi all, looking for some external opinions on the ever-changing battle between Office 365 and G-Suite. We use both, staff predominantly Office 365 users with G-Suite introduced not so long back mainly for Chromebooks.

 

However we need to start formalising where data is stored for GDPR and generally for good practice so it's decision time in some respect. There's no doubt both are very competent platforms and give us a level of tools, storage and feature sets that were a pipe dream 5-10 years ago. Here's a few of my initial thoughts as a starter for 10, please pitch in with your own experiences so I can get an idea of how things are going elsewhere:

 

• storage wise Google Drive appears to be easier to use than OneDrive *but* File Stream and OneDrive Files on Demand are going to make the web UI somewhat irrelevant and remove need for mapper scripts \ software
  
• Google give unlimited storage but realistically 1TB+ is more than most users are ever going to need
  
• Office 365 \ Outlook is a standard business tool and I'm not convinced Gmail is quite as feature-rich, also email migration between one cloud and another is a lot of pain for not much gain
  
• G-Suite I think works better if you create documents within it rather than keep creating in MS Office and uploading to Drive? Particularly complex spreadsheets etc?
  
• Google's videoconferencing tools keep changing with the wind, just noticed there's another new version of Hangouts after they discontinued the previous iteration with no roadmap for replacement earlier on in the year. Hangout Meets looks pretty enough though...
  
• GDPR wise Microsoft are pretty simple in terms of data in EMEA region staying there whereas Google quite happily ship it off to the US but via EU Model Clauses. OK it's compliant but not quite as convincing somehow.
  
• G-Suite Forms, Sites and Chromebooks are great features for curriculum and no real equivalent in O365
  
• MS Teams could be interesting but there's lots of overlap with Groups, OneDrive, SharePoint etc. and still a bit confusing
  

 

Overall it seems like continuing to support both makes sense but perhaps keep all our administrative data on O365 then make use of the Google side for curriculum use. Anyone else doing similar?

[zag]

Microsoft has caught up a lot with the recent Microsoft Teams for Education improvements.

 

Can't comment on much else as Office 365 fills our needs totally now. I'm pretty sure there is not much in it between the 2 products.

[FN-GM]

G Suite provides less features but the ones they have work well. For example there is no lag on sheets like there is to Excel Online. G Suite on the whole is much easier to use for the users and the Chromebooks are great. There also seems to be more 3rd party tools for G Suite, for both the end user and admin side. The support is better as well.

 

One big thing that Office 365 use to annoy me on is the features are not consistent across all client devices. With G Suite, if you're using a Mac, Windows etc you can do all the same stuff.

 

I recently moved from Office 365 to G Suite and wouldn't look back. It wasn't such a pain either, once I had done my homework.

[gshaw]

Microsoft has caught up a lot with the recent Microsoft Teams for Education improvements.

 

Can't comment on much else as Office 365 fills our needs totally now. I'm pretty sure there is not much in it between the 2 products.

I do get the feeling it's like comparing tomato ketchup with red sauce at times

[rogerdnixon]

My advice would be to do one or the other - but not both. Having everyone doing stuff the same way is very helpful. For what its worth, we have used G Suite for about 7 years now and run mainly ChromeOS (1:1 with students). Could not imagine switching to something else now.

Gmail + Groups for Business is very powerful and I'm very glad I never have to deal with Outlook - or any other local mail client.

[Michael]

One of my biggest issues it not being able to roll out OneDrive. You still can't use the 'source' as an existing mapped drive to sync up to OneDrive, yet you can Map OneDrive from the cloud. Makes absolutely no sense Microsoft!

[gshaw]

One of my biggest issues it not being able to roll out OneDrive. You still can't use the 'source' as an existing mapped drive to sync up to OneDrive, yet you can Map OneDrive from the cloud. Makes absolutely no sense Microsoft!

Windows 10 1709, tomorrow

 

Got Files on Demand running in a VM and it's doing the trick

[Michael]

Windows 10 1709, tomorrow

 

Got Files on Demand running in a VM and it's doing the trick

 

Hopefully they'll roll this out to all editions of Windows 10 - not just 1709.

[sted]

Hopefully they'll roll this out to all editions of Windows 10 - not just 1709.

 

i wouldnt hold your breath ms want everyone on the latest version of 10 by any means necessary so dont expect features to be available in older versions the answer will always be to upgrade

[welshman]

I'm NM at a school in Wales where government has done its best to ensure that as many schools as possible follow their Office 365 agenda. Having used both G Suite and O365 extensively, I would choose to use G Suite for two simple reasons: simplicity of management and Chromebooks. We do have some Chromebooks, and although their potential is severely restricted here because we don't actively use G Suite, staff still love to use them because of their speed and ease of use. I despair at the fact that we could be pushing educational boundaries and innovating our way to new heights if only SLT were to embrace G Suite. I genuinely believe G Suite has far greater potential in education than O365. Chromebooks are inexpensive, reliable, secure, quick and designed to operate with a cloud first mentality, which let's face it, is the way things are heading.

[Michael]

i wouldnt hold your breath ms want everyone on the latest version of 10 by any means necessary so dont expect features to be available in older versions the answer will always be to upgrade

 

Microsoft can't expect Education/Enterprise to update twice a year, it's totally unrealistic. Until the current day you can download the OneDrive client separately, so I'd hope it'd continue. It just means the Fall Update has it as standard, which would make sense!

[gshaw]

Hopefully they'll roll this out to all editions of Windows 10 - not just 1709.

Doubt it somehow, they're pitching it as a Fall Creators feature. This is why going on LTSB can come back to bite as the new features all go to CB versions.

[gshaw]

Microsoft can't expect Education/Enterprise to update twice a year, it's totally unrealistic. Until the current day you can download the OneDrive client separately, so I'd hope it'd continue. It just means the Fall Update has it as standard, which would make sense!

Interestingly I had to download and install OneDrive separately on the Insider Build so it seems the functionality is half and half between OS and client.

 

What's the betting there won't be any decent GPO templates to control the new features though (e.g. force online-only)

[Michael]

The GPOs are all 2008 R2/Windows 7 or later.

[maark]

I much prefer G suite for simplicity of use, google classroom, chromebooks and support but am stuck with 365 as this college has already gone a long way down that route.

[gshaw]

The GPOs are all 2008 R2/Windows 7 or later.

For OneDrive Files on Demand I mean

[bossman]

Google for Education here!

 

Never looked back since moving the school forward, Chromebooks just work extensively and so quick and reliable, only flaw is the online office package within Google obviously doesn't function as well as Microsoft's but will eventually be as good if not better!

 

This factor relies on the office package being installed locally for use with the Sims on admin workstations but once Sims goes Web Based then it should be an open format across the board and we will be nearly 100% in the cloud. Staff love the simplicity of Google Classroom plus the ease of Mail and Team drives, sync stream tool requires a little more work but will eventually get there..............so all in all a very good product Google!

 

Anyone else moving from 0365 to Google?

[TwistedHelixis]

Our LA basically forced all the schools to use Office 365, I say forced as no other options were given. The few schools I look after were given a demo of both and asked to make a choice. They all went with Google.

[Ditto]

Reminds me of the day when 'Nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM'! Those days are long gone. We're Google but have recently introduced for MS suite for staff and Computing curriculum. I still think we could have managed without MS for most staff. For education purposes GCSE onwards, I think it's healthy to expose the pupils to both,, especially for those studying Computing/ICT. Would be interesting to take their view as they will dictate what is used in the future.

[free780]

Microsoft can't expect Education/Enterprise to update twice a year, it's totally unrealistic. Until the current day you can download the OneDrive client separately, so I'd hope it'd continue. It just means the Fall Update has it as standard, which would make sense!

That's exactly what they expect. SCCM nightly task sequence. Once you've done it once it's less painful. You can also get WSUS to trigger out of hours. If you want the latest features you have to stay current.

[FN-GM]

That's exactly what they expect. SCCM nightly task sequence. Once you've done it once it's less painful. You can also get WSUS to trigger out of hours. If you want the latest features you have to stay current.

 

There is a big risk it will cause disruption to service, not work the risk in my opinion.

[sted]

There is a big risk it will cause disruption to service, not work the risk in my opinion.

unfortunately i dont think ms care about it. They seem to aim every new feature at byod group policies since xp tbh seem like an afterthought and you are expected to devise our own with gpp to a large extent. Ms as far as i can tell are looking at end user 1:1 devices as the end goal hence why if yo have an office 365 lic you can install office on 5 devices no need to ask it etc. Ms want to be apple where everything is done via the app store and windows/office are subscription services and the device dosent matter

[ITBadger]

We migrated from Exchange to G-Mail last summer and it was almost entirely painless. Far easier than i'd imagined. Having started off down the Google path some years ago I cannot really comment on how today's O365 compares, but I know that @FN-GM made the switch to Google and seems happy that he did so. He's no fool either so it must be good!

[gshaw]

Microsoft can't expect Education/Enterprise to update twice a year, it's totally unrealistic. Until the current day you can download the OneDrive client separately, so I'd hope it'd continue. It just means the Fall Update has it as standard, which would make sense!

Don't you reimage most of your stuff yearly anyway? Staff machines will need the update and we'll have to manage that but classroom ones get a refresh every summer in any case. Updating the image is a trivial process now as I build from the MS WIM so no capture work required, just slot in the new OS and carry on.

 

I get the feeling MS will end up having to backtrack on their MDM / cloud GPO vision in the same way they had to backtrack with the Start screen. Can't see many big businesses wanting to swap GPO for InTune / AAD Premium at double the cost.

 

The flip side will be if MS hike on-prem licensing hugely to force the change. That'll be a huge gamble if they do as I suspect many would rather switch to Google than pay a small fortune to run all their workloads in Azure.

 

The people I feel sorry for are those paying commercial rates for O365 base services. Recently I've felt like the standard plan almost feels like a "freemium" offering with MS pushing you towards upgrades e.g. basic anti-spam > ATP, Office 365 MDM > InTune, AAD Free > AAD Premium etc. Then I remember some people are paying good money to be shown "ah yes you can't see those stats without a Premium subscription... ouch.

Edited October 18, 2017 by gshaw

[Michael]

Not every year no - that's because I manage way too many devices.