It’s a cage fight in the office productivity space. Google and Microsoft are in a battle royal to woe customers to their platforms, Google Apps and Office 365 respectively. And where battles occur in technology, marketing spin is sure to follow. That was allegedly the case at the recent
As expected, and after a period of time to fact find, Google came back swinging to add some color to the claims made at the event. Their spokespeople reached out with a carefully crafted message confirming that some 5,000+ companies sign up for Google Apps every day and that “thousands of those customers switch from Microsoft”.
The company helpfully pointed out some data from one of their resellers, Cloud Technology Solutions. CTS estimate that of 12M Google Apps users across 20+ countries, 48% were previously using Microsoft Exchange before they migrated to Apps.
Not content however to talk statistics, Google went one better and dug into the companies showcased on Microsoft’s slide. According to Google, there is some clarification required about the 15 companies Microsoft showcased:
- Smithfield: Smithfield is definitely still using Google Apps - they just renewed in March 2014.
- City of Edmonton: The City of Edmonton is definitely still using Google Apps. In fact, the CIO recently declared that they are staying with Google Apps after an exhaustive analysis by IBM and Deloitte
- University of Colorado Health: The University of Colorado Health -- the teaching hospital for the University of Colorado Denver -- was never on Apps. They had a few accounts provisioned but they have never paid for Apps. The University of Colorado Boulder is 100% Apps for all students. The faculty and staff still continue to use Microsoft on-premise but are considering moving to Apps in order to better collaborate with students. Additionally, many of the faculty and staff are currently using Drive.
- Arysta Lifescience: Arysta Lifescience was a Postini customer. They did an Apps trial but were never an Apps customer.
- Dixons: Dixons Retail was never a deployed Apps customer.
- Anhanguera Educacional: Ananhguera Educacional was an Apps customer, but they were acquired by Kroton Educational, which is standardized on Microsoft. Microsoft offered to provide all licenses and services for free to Kroton so they decided to move Anhanguera to Microsoft as well, and report these savings as a positive impact of the merger.
- Guardian Insurance: Guardian Insurance decided not to renew in March 2014. They are rolling out Office 365 to the corporate users and will then replace Apps for the brokers in a year.
That’s a whole lot of context that was missing from Microsoft’s slide In something of an understatement, Google finished up their note saying:
Moral of the story: Slides can be deceiving and we feel Microsoft is making misleading statements to the market.
I reached out to Microsoft in the hopes they could clarify. I thought maybe they’d take it on the chin and admit that in large, complex organizations, a range of technologies are in use. It took a lot of backwards and forwards and a fair amount of sweating from Microsoft's hard-working PR agency but the response was actually pretty positive:
We continue to see incredible momentum with companies in industries as diverse as education, healthcare, retail, agriculture and utilities choosing Microsoft. While the companies highlighted at our annual partner conference are Office 365 customers, they are at different stages of deployment with historically diverse productivity environments. The logos depicted are not all pure win-backs, but represent significant wins for Microsoft in competitive circumstances. Based on public records, the 785 customers moved some or all of their email solutions away from Google.
It seems to me that Microsoft was caught out on this one, and Google can claim the moral highground. That’s one point to Google. But that point is somewhat neutralized by Microsoft's eventual admission that not everything is black and white and that, to an extent, the slide didn't tell the entire story.
