Google Apps vs. Microsoft Exchange
Friday, March 18, 2011 at 2:41PM Google really seems to be pushing its Apps offerings with case studies of companies that have migrated their comms, CRM and other software to the Google cloud. They've also put up some online tools to demonstrate the cost savings that can be made. Of course, the data needs to be treated with caution but Google is being pretty transparent about the assumptions behind its online calculator.
You can enter how many employees are affected and the hourly rate for an IT manager and you get a table like this:
;)
I knocked up a graph of this data for between 1 and 10 employees - you can see the direction of travel. The high upfront costs of MS Exchange start to amortise as employee numbers grow but using Apps is still over 10 times cheaper than Exchange with 10 staff. Increasing the number of employees does bring the lines closer but they remain almost parallel.
;)
Security fears, a desire for control and inertia will keep millions on Exchange for the forseeable future but Google is slowly chipping away at the business and non-profit markets. How far they get into the enterprise sector remains to be seen.
google apps, ms exchange in productivity 
Reader Comments (3)
Hello Martin,
Did you do the same with Office 365 ? That would be interesting to compare the pricing.
you must be a mind reader - I was looking at the MS 365 pricing today - the per seat price for 365 is more than Google Apps - approx. twice the price for the 365 E1 service and more for the higher end 365 services. However, comparing the Google Apps and MS 365 is not that easy - although there are similarities there are also some big differences. I guess the main advantage of 365 is people's familiarity with MS office etc - most people associate Google with search and not applications.
How is Google going to tackle that?
Yes, you are right.
They will need to focus on the simplicity of their products (but yet with great extensibility thanks to the numerous API they offer), the simplicity of their pricing and their ecosystem.
They are also the alternative to the Microsoft empire that many people want to escape. But I think people who are really happy with MS products will naturally continue with Office365.
Let see if enough people will do the switch.