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Leaving Google Apps for Microsoft Online – Two New Examples

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Today we've publish two more case studies that highlight how customers have answered the question "Why Microsoft?" Building on our previous post about customers 'Leaving Google Apps', both customer interviews both provide continued examples of why Google Apps doesn't really deliver the nirvana its creators claim.

China Navigation Jumps Ship from Google Apps.

China Navigation is a customer with 300 employees located throughout Asia in the shipping management industry. Email is the hub of their business to communicate with customers and partners throughout the world. Originally, they selected Google Apps but after issues with support and reliability they migrated over to Microsoft Online (BPOS).

"To us, email is a primary service and we viewed outage as somthing quite serious. Microsoft's financially backed SLA gave us a high level of confidence in addressing our enterprise needs We did not get that same level assurance with Google" Joshua Loh, IT and System Manager, China Navigation 

Intero Real Estate Vacates Google Apps.

The second case study highlights Intero Real Estate which is located literally a few freeway exits away from the 'Googleplex' in California. As a Silicon Valley company with close to 2,000 employees, the firm is a reflection of their clientele; innovative and 'out of the box' with their approach to IT. Initially the firm used Google Apps for franchise offices but quickly found that running the entire company on the solution created more problems than it solved. Similar to the findings of other companies I've highlighted, Google Apps could be simple to a fault, lacking table stakes type of IT features for Group Management etc.

"It was one thing to migrate a small team of 15 franchise users to Google Apps, but I suspected that it was another thing entirely to move the company's more than 2,000 users," says Eric Rees, Director of IT for Intero Real Estate Services.

If you are a customer who has migrated to Google Apps (or a partner who has done this already) and are considering a way to migrate to Microsoft Online, leave a comment and I will get in touch with you.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @mark - The Google Apps Dashboard is my source. www.google.com/appsstatus  click back, week over week and count.  I have not included Postini either.    No desperation at all.  Just writing a side of the story.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Ryan, - Please see this page for more customers.   sharepoint.microsoft.com/.../microsoft-over-google.aspx I don't get the 'self calculated' part. I am using Google's own service to show mintues?   I am happy to correct something that is factually inaccurate.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Mike C.  Since you appear to know so much about Google and quote the same as a Google Spokesperson in ZDNet..hmmm.... anywho.  ... Google has never (show me if wrong) ever showed anything on their dashboard but 'significant subset of users' for downtime. This includes widespread outages.   This isnt about the uptime is it?  This is about who is backing their service like a real partner or not.  So, you've ignored my points so we're even.   Don't count? Huh.  So customer sending money TO Google, no longer sending Google money doesnt count? Give me your criteria to slay the dragon for you and I will happilfy research.  So does Genentech with less than 50% using Google or City of DC not using Gmail count for them? ?  AHA!!!!!  (yes, I am poking fun at you, but your passion is good)  And when they do go google they still use MICrosoft Office or Active Directory or Exchange ActiveSync licensed from us. So your point is what?

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Steven  - Very good additional data point.  Thanks for reading.  Get's me thinking about doing some Azure:App Engine comparisons, thanks.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Now gone from the Google Dashboard. techcrunch.com/.../google-docs-just-picked-a-bad-time-to-fail-but-theres-a-fix

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @jeco  There is a variety of examples and detailed information on www.whymicrosoft.com/google  The instability is not a Ajax issue, it's due to the nature of their service and likely latency you may be experiencing.  

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Mike Vinci owner of Taylor Woodrow, moved 3k off.   my data for Google is their own apps dashboard  www.google.com/appsstatus  if go back over the 60day window across the Apps services, there is not 4 or 3 nines.  3 nines equal 45min of downtime in a month  Calendar was down for 80 mins on 6/9 and 53mni on 4/28 alone.   If you count all the incident times on their dashboard and come up with different figures, happy to correct myself.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    @Giulian  Thanks for the comment and reading the blog.  You may be interested in my comment response to Louis. yes, i do work for Microsoft which hopefully is clear in my Bio and the fact I am blogging on TechNet.   My bias is for customers who are all weighing in that Google's solutions arent working for them.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    Bpos has had over 20 critical outages already this year. Even with the financially backed sla, that's just too unreliable a platform. So no, I will not be moving my org anytime soon.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    It sounds like with 15 users, intero was hardly "on" google apps. Not quite sure that qualifies as a switch story.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    My DOS with Google is financially backed??

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    My SLA with Google is financially backed??

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    As always, I truly appreciate you reading the blog and leaving comments.  By the very nature of the content there will always be differences in how we view the details etc.   @Mark - Google has had more than 450min of downtime in the last 60days, so your SLA may be worth keeping around.   @Justin - We have company's ranging from 3, 30, 300, 3000+ that have left, so let me know what customer size you'll consider 'real' and I will highlight it. @Alan - Google's SLA is service credits based, not financially backed.  They tack on extra days to the end of your contract. They argue this has a financial 'value' but its not the same of money back.  I wrote a post about the differences in SLA's (With an easy to read chart) including Google's 'free 10min rule' that Mark may not even be aware of.  blogs.technet.com/.../the-importance-of-sla-s.aspx

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    @Andrew I run my business on Google Apps and trust me I have not seen 450 minutes of downtime - ever. I don't know where you get your numbers, but the last thing I would attack Google on is reliability. Check your own BPOS service feed. It seems like every other week you experience an outage. This blog reeks of desperation... the end of an era I guess.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    And just where is Microsoft's BPOS service feed/ downtime dashboard?? and what are the comparable figures?? MS has such a history of poor buiness practices such as wiping out mailboxes entirely if a domain is not renewed,, It would be hard to ever recomend them for anyone. My experiance with MS live Mail in terms of reliability speed and spam (the three things I cared most about) was pretty poor. The ad's were way more obnoxious that Google's..

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    Clearly a Microsoft attack piece.  FUD at its finest.  As a Google Apps user for the last two years, we independently monitor our Google Apps for uptime using Pingdom.  We have seen 4-nines consistently for the last 3 quarters -- not sure where you're getting your data.  On the other hand, the BPOS service notifications show a tremendous amount of planned and unplanned downtime.  rss.microsoftonline.com  Get your facts straight. Also, the title seems to indicate that entire organizations moved from Google Apps to BPOS.  In reality, aren't you talking about a franchise location?  Way to exaggerate the truth, Redmond. In your comments, Andrew, you spoke of a range of companies moving back to BPOS.  Can you share the name of a 3000+ seater that moved back to BPOS?  At retail price...

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    3,000 companies sign up every day for Google Apps, probably half from Exchange.  I'm not convinced by 2 companies switching to BPOS.... OR by bogus, self-calculated "minutes of downtime" statistics that any Google Apps customer will tell you aren't reality.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    The majority of outages on the Apps dashboard only affect a small subset of users, so you're math is nonsense- Google publicly states they've exceeded 99.9% reliability. What is BPOS reliability in 2010? I note you've ignored my point about your case study- how many employees at Intero we're actually using Apps regularly and switched over to BPOS?  you make it sound like it's 2,000- were any? According to your own case study, it was only 1,400 users and only because they were acquired by a larger MSFT shop, so that doesn't really count.  also, it was not to BPOS.  so i ask again- can you point us to a customer w/ 3K employees that has switched from Apps to BPOS-S (ie cloud). I know Google has dozens of that size and bigger who've switched from Exchange.

  • Anonymous
    June 22, 2010
    Interesting conversation... although all I see here are pretty blatant attacks at Andrew, when he's presenting clearly available information that's pretty easy to decipher. I know we've had lots of customers move to BPOS (admittedly generally from on-premise rather than from another cloud solution) and very few using G Apps. BPOS certainly has it's problems, and no question there has been frustrating downtime - but it's pretty hard to submit that either of those is more/worse than Google - especially when the data contradicts that. Anecdotal evidence like "bogus, self-calculated "minutes of downtime" statistics that any Google Apps customer will tell you aren't reality." don't do much other than suggest posturing. Anyway, looking forward to seeing the changes I've heard announced for BPOS, including better control panel integration for BES (would be great to not have to submit tickets for everything). At the moment, I can clearly see the value proposition, and I love this quote from BPOS customer Rexel: "Frankly, the Google value proposition is cost based, and once you take that away, what’s left?"

  • Olivier Baldassari, Chief Information Officer, Rexel