Office 365 is intended to improve not replace the desktop.
In the endless comparison between Google Apps and Office 365 something that is often misunderstood is that the two cloud offerings are not the same. Surprise!
It doesn’t help the confusion that Microsoft’s cloud productivity offering follows the same name as the desktop productivity suite. It makes sense that it does – for those who know that Microsoft has more products than just Windows and Office.
However for the average SMB owner it gets a bit confusing. Especially when you start looking at the Office 365 E3 plan, which includes Office 2010 Professional Plus for the desktop. This is in addition to what you get with the E2 package which already includes Office Web Apps (basic online versions of Word, PowerPoint and Excel).
Yes, I’ll admit it’s confusing. Often when I speak to customers they already have product name confusion. The most common variants I hear are “Microsoft 365” and “Office 360”.
Part of the problem with the naming is that customers think the Office suite and the cloud are the same product – that Office 365 gives you the full version of the Office desktop suite accessible via a web browser. This is where Google trumps Microsoft because Google is purely web based and has no desktop component. Hence their frequent mocking of Microsoft when saying that Office 365 is not a true cloud solution.
The problem here is the branding and the messaging around it.
A long time ago Microsoft bundled several of its server components (Windows, Exchange, SQL and several others) into a server package called “BackOffice”, also known as “BackOffice Server”. This later went on to become Small Business Server, a product line which is now being eaten away by Office 365.
Why do I bring this up? Because Office 365 is not really the Office desktop suite in the cloud. Office 365 is made up of Exchange Server, SharePoint Server and Lync Server so it is more akin to the BackOffice Server product. The comparison is more relevant because without those server-type elements in Office 365 many of the features within the Office desktop suite remain dormant.
The way I usually explain Office 365 is not that it is a desktop in the cloud but a tool for enhancing the desktop experience. Connecting Office 365 to Microsoft Office on the desktop lights up a great many productivity features in the desktop software that are otherwise unavailable.
The functionality of Office Web Apps is impressive but they are not as feature rich as the Office desktop suite. This is something that Google Apps marketers and partners latch onto.
In calling a spade a spade – Office 365 is not really Office in the cloud, but it is generally the most cost-effective way for SMBs to unlock all the features of their Office desktop software.
Unless a SMB buys Office 365 or spends lots of money on on-premise servers, they may as well use a typewriter as that’s comparatively the same level of functionality as running Office on the desktop without any back-end servers at all.
Loryan Strant is a Microsoft Office 365 MVP (Most Valuable Professional). Follow him on Twitter @TheCloudMouth.
