All the traditional enterprise system vendors (e.g., SAP, Oracle, Salesforce, IBM) have a cloud strategy and product offerings. But not all vendors have the same vision. Recently, Google and Microsoft announced enterprise-focused offerings to lure clients to their cloud-based suites. Google and Microsoft will be fierce competitors in this space, but coming from differing backgrounds, they have divergent offerings.Google for its part has always been a massive cloud player. But its focus on the consumer -- even as it tried to lure businesses over the past couple of years to its web-based Office competing product, G-Suite, and its collaboration suite, Hangouts -- has been limited in success. This is primarily due to the fact that its enterprise-focused features and functions were modest at best, and the appeal for its solution was most notable in SMB. And Google lacked a true client app, relying instead on Chromebooks as a delivery mechanism.But in the past 12-18 months, Google has … [Read more...] about While Microsoft stacks the cloud, Google readies its next play
Migrate from google apps to office 365
Microsoft targets Box, Dropbox and Google customers with OneDrive offer
Microsoft is ramping up efforts to win over customers from its cloud content storage rivals, offering free usage of OneDrive for Business platform in a new promotion.Under the deal announced Tuesday, current customers of Box, Dropbox or Google can switch to OneDrive and use the service for free for the remainder of their existing contracts. The offer is valid until June 30 and is available for organizations that are not currently OneDrive for Business or Office365 customers. Those making the switch must also commit to moving a minimum of 500 users to the platform.“We want new customers to be able to experience OneDrive without incremental costs above and beyond what they are paying for today,” said Seth Patton, OneDrive general manager of product marketing at Microsoft. Forrester principal analyst Cheryl McKinnon said the cloud content platform market is “rapidly consolidating” into a handful of large providers, and the Microsoft move could entice customers … [Read more...] about Microsoft targets Box, Dropbox and Google customers with OneDrive offer
Inside Facebook’s Two Years of Hell
One day in late February of 2016, Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo to all of Facebook’s employees to address some troubling behavior in the ranks. His message pertained to some walls at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters where staffers are encouraged to scribble notes and signatures. On at least a couple of occasions, someone had crossed out the words “Black Lives Matter” and replaced them with “All Lives Matter.” Zuckerberg wanted whoever was responsible to cut it out. “ ‘Black Lives Matter’ doesn’t mean other lives don’t,” he wrote. “We’ve never had rules around what people can write on our walls,” the memo went on. But “crossing out something means silencing speech, or that one person’s speech is more important than another’s.” The defacement, he said, was being investigated. All around the country at about this time, debates about race and politics were becoming … [Read more...] about Inside Facebook’s Two Years of Hell
Microsoft is trying to poach Dropbox and Google customers with free OneDrive deal
Microsoft is trying to court business customers of competing cloud services by offering its own products for free in a new promotion starting today. The deal, which remains active until June 30th of this year, will let corporate customers of competing enterprise software suites from Box, Dropbox, and Google switch to OneDrive, with Microsoft waiving the bill until a business pays off its existing contract with a cap set at three years. Microsoft also says its dedicated FastTrack team will work with any new customers to help migrate businesses to OneDrive and Office 365. The deal is only valid for businesses that are not currently customers and are willing to commit to a 500-user minimum. It’s a solid promotion, and it’s sure to lure some customers away from storage, productivity, and other cloud computing providers, with Microsoft eating the short-term contract revenue in hopes of gaining a long-term subscriber relationship. The broader strategy here is one many people are … [Read more...] about Microsoft is trying to poach Dropbox and Google customers with free OneDrive deal
Why G Suite may be right for your small business
With technology increasingly intertwined with all aspects of business, [email protected] can help you -- from prosumers to small businesses with fewer than five employees -- get started.For Todd Spodek, the decision to equip his New York law firm with Google's software applications boiled down a single need: collaboration."We settled on Google because it was at the forefront of cloud-based tools," said Spodek, who heads Spodek Law Group P.C. "We have three offices, so syncing information is key as it allows us to do everything remotely."It's really a streamlined process, and everything is easy to manage," he added. G Suite, as Google's Apps for Work was rebranded last year, was built for the internet -- no surprise there, given Google's post-PC heritage. That approach has informed its applications, which work on the cloud. It also means that your company won't ever lose data or documents because all the changes on Google documents get automatically saved and backed up to a Google cloud. All … [Read more...] about Why G Suite may be right for your small business