Google Apps vs. Hosted Exchange

Cloud applications are increasingly seen as a way to save on IT infrastructure and labor costs. With low bandwidth requirements and high scalability, perhaps no application is better poised for complete migration to the cloud than email. Email management is a onerous time sink for most companies. A host of fixed costs, including hardware management, patches, SPAM filtering, mobile access, storage, backup, and a plethora of other issues can be eliminated by getting an email system out of the computer room and into a data center. By spreading these fixed costs across thousands or millions of email accounts, the cost per account is drastically reduced, resulting in savings for everyone in the value chain.

Two email systems that are making waves in the cloud are Google Apps and Hosted Exchange. Like any good competitors, both systems have their merits and both should be considered when evaluating cloud strategies for email.

* Best price we’ve found from Sherweb. Other providers may charge more or less

Hosted Exchange is currently more expensive than Google Apps. This is the premium you pay for full integration with Outlook. I’ve been a Gmail user for years and I prefer the Gmail web interface to Outlook. If your users are already familiar with Gmail and willing to give up Outlook, Google Apps is very attractive. If Outlook integration is required, Google provides an Outlook plugin that makes Google Apps act like Exchange, but it has some limitations:

• Google uses labels, which get correspond to folders in Outlook. Unfortunately labels and folders don’t always play well together. In Google, you can have multiple labels attached to a single email. An email can’t live in multiple folders in Outlook.
• The Google Outlook plugin works fairly well, but it provides very little information as to what is happening. This can be frustrating if something goes wrong and you’re trying to debug it.
• Not all Outlook features work through the plugin. For instance, away messages and email delegation cannot be configured through Outlook with the plugin. The user must go to the Gmail interface to configure these settings.

These limitations are usually not show stoppers, but it’s good to be aware of them before undertaking a migration to Google Apps.

If you choose Hosted Exchange, it’s critical that you choose your hosting company wisely. Exchange hosting has low barriers to entry and a company can be setup with minimal capital investment in a relatively short period of time. Consequently, some companies are not on the best financial footing and if you choose poorly, you my find your host closed and your email inaccessible. Do your homework when choosing a hosting provider.

Google Apps has the Google brand and company reputation behind it. With over three million businesses already on Google Apps, you can be confident it will be around for the foreseeable future.

Finally, before transitioning email to the cloud, make sure your existing systems will integrate with a hosted solution. Integrating a cloud solution with your Active Directory environment is critical to a successful transition. Without proper integration, users will have password synchronization issues, resulting in headaches for users and extra work for sysadmins. Both Google Apps and Hosted Exchange provide tools for synchronizing with Active Directory. Make sure you test this functionality before deployment.

Integration requirements with other Microsoft products may eliminate Google Apps as an option. Companies heavily invested in SharePoint or MS Project may find that Google Apps does not work with the email functionality of these products. For companies with very basic SharePoint setups, Google Sites (included with Google Apps) may be a valid substitute. A company called LTech has a piece of software that migrates from SharePoint to Google Sites called CloudMove. We have not tried it, but it may be worth looking at.

Email migration to the cloud is here and widespread adoption is already happening. Cost savings realized from infrastructure and labor reductions are compelling and IT managers will be hard pressed in the coming years to justify maintaining email systems in-house. For more information or help in your email to cloud migration strategy, contact us today.