Microsoft and Google, never the best of friends, are starting to get nasty in their fight over whether enterprises should use Microsoft Exchange and Office, or move to Google Apps. Microsoft this week claimed that enterprises who move to Google Apps pay a hefty "Google Tax," while Google claims that businesses can save money and be more innovative by using Google Docs. Who's right?

Tom Rizzo, senior director of Microsoft Online Services, claims in his blog that enterprises pay a big Google Tax if they move to Google Apps:

No one would willingly give the IRS more than they owe, or submit to taxes they weren’t required to pay. So why is it that people and businesses allow themselves to be unfairly "taxed" by Google?

Rizzo claims that Microsoft recently surveyed more than 90 small and medium-sized companies who use Google Apps in five countries, and as you might expect, found problems with the use of Google Apps. Here's one of the key ones, he says:

For 9 out of 10 companies surveyed, Google Apps are used in parallel to Office. These companies have not replaced Office due to user readiness, productivity requirements, security concerns and the inability to work offline.

The survey also found that most companies only used Google Calendar and Gmail. In his blog, Rizzo lists a variety of "hidden" costs for the use of Google Apps, such as help desk support services (he claims it's $360 per year, plus a $30 one-time cost), $33 annual cost for Postini mail services, $36 annual cost for login services...and the list goes on from there.

His conclusion:

Once people see through the sales pitch, they realize just how poor the return on investment for Google Apps actually is, and why 750 million people have chosen Office to power their business.

As you might guess, Google thoroughly disagrees. Jay Remley, who is in charge of mid-market sales for Google Enterprise, gave a presentation at theMidsize Enterprise Summit East in which he argued that companies can save money and be more innovative by abandoning Office and moving to Google Docs.

According to Information Week, Remly claims companies can be more efficient and innovative with Google Apps than Office, because it offers far more collaborative tools than Office. In addition, he says that Gmail can be used as a "communications hub" that can be integrated with cloud offerings from other companies.

Beyond that, he says that by moving to the cloud, IT staff can be freed from the drudgery of applying patches and maintaining hardware and legacy systems.

Who's right?

Both companies have good points, but I side more with Microsoft on this one, but not because of any "hidden tax." Instead, it's because Microsoft Office is simply better than the Google Docs productivity suite inside Google Apps. Office is far easier to use and offer much more sophisticated capabilities than does Google Apps. You also need to be connected to the Internet to use Google Aps. Even though it's nice to think that you'll always be connected to the Internet, wherever you are, that's not quite the case yet. And even when you are, connections are sometimes flaky.

Google Apps is superior for real-time collaboration, but how often do you need to collaborate in real-time working on a Word document or a spreadsheet? Not often. For most purposes, Microsoft Office markup mode works just fine.

Office is one of Microsoft's cash cows, so expect the war of words between Google and Microsoft to get nastier in the future. But you'd do best not to trust what either company says, and do your homework yourself.



What do you think about this. who is right tell us.... here we have a big discussion on this topic..... need your support also.