Comments on: Google Apps vs. Exchange Server: and the winner goes to…

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:19:06 +0000

Google apps seams the perfect solution.
Google is growing and i believe it will become even better.
Easy to set up, friendly and low cost

Thanks for the review

By: azsdfg

azsdfg — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:47:02 +0000

so wat’s up guysssss

By: Bob Gaudy

Bob Gaudy — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:42:46 +0000

Message tracking is terrible. If you support a medium sized business with users who are less than savy and “lose” email all the time or report odd behavior like email was delayed, etc. It’s really hard to track messages with Google Apps compared to Exchange as of right NOW.

By: yoan

yoan — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:59:50 +0000

I had migrated from exchange to google apps. There are some features from exchange that google doesn’t have. If you decide to move to google, you just need to learn and adjust to google apps. The good thing about google apps is that your emails cannot be lost due to a hardware failure and downtime. Trust me when when exchange crash and that you have over hundred of user on shoulder. There’s alot of pressure coming from those top dog.

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 19:30:27 +0000

All,
I have tried to move to Google apps with a lot of frustration. The lack of real folders is tough, so we did a workaround with labels and Google Labs nested folders, but this only works for the main user. I share (delegate in Exchange terms) my email, contacts and calendar to an assistant. In Google apps the calendar works ok, but the email with the nested folders is a mess and the only way my assistant can move email from her inbox to my folders is to forward them to me and then label them! The same with contacts. With hosted exchange she can view both her contacts, folders and calendar and just drag entries to mine!!!! Sounds like most people using Google Apps do not work with a team or an assistant. I am on a Macbook and still run a virtual machine to use outlook, because I have yet to find anything close.

By: Harish Pavithran

Harish Pavithran — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 19:23:28 +0000

Hi, while i like google apps, I think some of the people commenting here are right – you have to compare the whole stack not just. The Microsoft BPOS solution is 10 bucks a month per seat for SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Web Conferencing (ala Webex) along with Secure dedicated instant messaging and online presence anywhere (in email, document sharing etc.) This is huge difference between Google and Microsoft Solutions. The Google solution is great for someone that needs a point solution for email, does not need conference room booking or does not need web conferencing solutions. In other words good for the really smally businesness that needs a plain vanila solution with no frills and is cost effective. For a more wholesome solution with a more mature offering look to Microsoft.

By: JP Ren

JP Ren — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:30:56 +0000

Thanks Jim. What Jim’s referring to here is a “universal address book”, where private contacts for all users are automatically synced with the server — so everyone has access to everyone else’s contacts.

Exchange Server delivers this “universal address book” type functionality through a separate service called Active Directory. Active Directory is basically Microsoft’s proprietary server-based address book similar to LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), which is the industry standard. Outlook also supports LDAP.

Google Apps does have a feature called “Contact Sharing”. Warning: this is NOT THE SAME as universal contacts. “Contact Sharing” enables the sharing of all internal contact entries (i.e. contact info for everyone within your organization). More details here: http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47926

So far, Google Apps’ answer to the universal contacts question has been creating a link to your company’s existing LDAP servers. This isn’t elegant, because most companies turn to Google Apps because they don’t want to run any email or contact related servers.

As Jim mentioned, there isn’t an easy way to achieve the universal address book right now — but Google should already be working on this, as It’s probably the last major hurdle preventing some large corporations from switching to Google Apps.

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 15:36:02 +0000

Google’s lack of a functional Shared Contacts service is a deal breaker. I have a small business and have been migrating a small business with 8 users from exchange to google apps. Not having a universal contacts list is killing the plan. I am not excited about being gouged for $100s from some opportunistic developers offering third party addons for what should be CORE functionality. The Goggle Rep assured me they supported this function…bull. Anything other than having a central and shareable management of these contacts seems curiously absent from google.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 20:11:52 +0000

Good analysis JP. The cloud is giving us lawyers some interesting new and complicated options.

By: JP Ren

JP Ren — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:15:35 +0000

Pete, totally agree that Google wins out in terms of breadth of features. I neglected to mention Google Talk, Sites, etc as those weren’t “must-haves” features when we were choosing an email service.

Most companies, for better or for worse, are still running on Outlook (even if they have Google Apps serving up the back end). I think Google Talk, Sites, etc will be more compelling for this audience as it makes its way into everyday workflow at the workplace.