Microsoft SaaS vs. Google Apps on College Campuses
If you want to see how Microsoft and Google are competing in the software as a service (SaaS) market, head back to college. As I’ve written here a few times, Hofstra University, the University of Phoenix and several other large colleges have embraced Google Apps to manage student email, alumni email and collaboration. Now, Microsoft is taking steps to more actively promote its rival offering: Live@edu hosted applications.
Indeed, Microsoft says it is adding “no-cost Microsoft Exchange Labs e-mail for students and alumni to ites Live@edu platform.”
Microsoft claims Live@edu offers four key benefits to students and alumni:
- Reliable, hosted email featuring up to 10GB inboxes and 20MB attachments. The software giant is quick to note that students can access hosted Exchange from non-PC devices, such as smart phones.
- Shared calendars for improved collaboration.
- Message tracking and content filtering to block questionable content.
- School branding for all inboxes, and those inboxes can follow a person from student life to post-graduate and alumni status.
Frankly, Microsoft’s approach sounds similar to Google Apps deployments at Hofstra University and other locales. I don’t know whether Google or Microsoft has the better hosted collaboration solution, but that’s not the point of this blog entry.
Back to School
Rather, here’s the key takeaway: Managed service providers should be engaging with university CIOs to learn how Microsoft, Google, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Cisco Systems and other big IT providers are serving the higher education market.
Often, next-generation IT solutions — including hosted services — land on college campuses long before they reach other vertical markets. Also, students are among the most demanding customer base in the world. As students adopt new types of smart phones and Internet-enabled devices, they often invent new uses for hardware, software and SaaS that vendors never considered.
With college-centric SaaS, Google and Microsoft are battling for the hearts and minds of tomorrow’s workforce.
A lot of universities had open source or unix oriented email systems from Sun. I don’t think Exchange Server is as dominant in higher ed as it is in the business world, so i do believe universities will be inclined to test google apps. and don’t forget that the google brand is very strong with students.
Google’s play will be much stronger because the licensing burden and patching issues won’t be hanging over their as would be the case with Microsoft. If anything, Google will focus on an affordable subscription model and seek to grown share. Thus far, as with Sketch-up, Google delivers very good product and service without all the inherent Microsoft overhead.
But the $1 million question: Will Google push all of its SaaS and managed services offerings directly, or will MSPs play a role? So far, it seems to be mostly a direct sales play…
Google Apps only reduce the cost for schools to manage their system but not necessarily provide a feature rich application set to the students. Why would students use half-butted Google Docs / SpreadSheet while they could use Open Office (which is significantly better) for free.
Parley @4: OpenOffice is a nice option but isn’t quite ready for prime time on Macintoshes (at least, it wasn’t the last time I tested it in the fall of 2007). I’d like to see Sun Microsystems get much more vocal about its strategy for OpenOffice, especially in college settings.
In the meantime, I keep hearing about more Google Apps deployments…
Um seriously… NO ONE needs a word processor with 10,000 features. At most, all you need is 10.
As for spreadsheets, let’s get serious again. Most college students just need to be able to plot linear or quadratic graphs as well as have linear regression and quadratic regression.
Is Google Apps adequate for this?
YES!
Regicide: I think you’ve just pointed out the difference between a microwave and a full-blown executive chef kitchen. In many cases the microwave — fast, quick, simple — is fine. But I don’t think one solutions (Google Apps) fully replaces the other (MSFT Office).