In the modern workplace, there are two main options for companies who want a full-featured cloud productivity suite: Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace (previously Office 365 and GSuite respectively). They have their pros, cons, and quirks, but ultimately, they both provide a similar offering at a conceptual level. There are other players in the field that provide some of the offerings of 365 and Google Workspace, but none truly provide everything as an inclusive, cohesive package in the way that these two titans do.

With the right deployment, management, and training, either of these cloud productivity suites will serve as good choices for an organization. With that being said, I think there is a case to be made that one of the two will make more sense for a given organization based on their needs. I've had to make recommendations for and against both systems and have spent time managing both. Let's dive into the use-cases that make Google Workspace or 365 the better solution for an organization.

Why Choose Google Workspace

Google Workspace (G.W.) is an easy choice for any business that needs to establish a presence in the cloud quickly and easily. Many people will feel at home using G.W. because Google has offered a free, personal use version of its tools for many years. Google Workspace has a strong presence in public and private education alike, and also has a widely used personal-use offering. This means many people have used G.W. already outside of a corporate environment and would have an easy learning curve picking it up for use in the workplace. It is entirely browser based and there are no desktop apps that need to be installed. This means company devices are free of cumbersome and heavy applications that use large amounts of memory and processing power. However, this also means that an internet connection is a requirement for usage of the platform.

Google Workspace is a great choice for smaller businesses without a dedicated IT team that need to get off the ground quickly with access to productivity tools and email. However, when the business starts growing, Google Workspace begins to show some flaws. It lacks some key features such as the ability to (easily) synchronize with an on-premises user directory, options for desktop apps that can be used offline, and user management tools from the administrator console can be lacking or missing altogether. Google Workspace's admin console lacks the ability to setup email forwarding for users, create and manage shared/team drives, and does not allow administrators to easily reset end user's MFA options. There are ways around these limitations, but the workarounds can make IT administration challenging and these problems will continue to grow alongside the company.

Why Choose Microsoft 365

Microsoft 365 is considered to be the gold standard for office applications (word processing, spreadsheet management, etc.). While Google's cloud collaboration suite has been around longer (released in 2006), Microsoft has been creating their Office suite of applications since 1990. Microsoft introduced their current cloud offering of 365 later in 2011, but unquestionably has more total experience in the office productivity field compared to Google. Microsoft offers many different tiers of service, many with access to both desktop and browser-based versions of their productivity tools. Most people in the workforce have used a Microsoft Office product at some point, making it an easy choice for many organizations. However, there are plenty of flaws within the 365 suite. With over 30 years of development of some of their tools, there is a lot of feature bloat that causes many people to find Microsoft's applications hard to navigate and generally slow. While 365 offers browser-based versions of many of their applications, they do not all have feature parity, or even design parity with their desktop equivalents which frustrates and confuses people who are used to the desktop versions.

365 is a great choice for larger, established businesses that need a powerful office productivity suite and can handle the more involved administration of the tools. While Google Workspace may be missing some features in their administration console, at least there is only one primary console. IT Admins managing 365 need to be familiar with numerous, often changing and overlapping administrator consoles. While there is far more flexibility when managing 365 compared to Google Workspace, it comes at the cost of complexity. 365 administration is simply not intuitive, especially for teams without dedicated IT personnel. To single out a few products: SharePoint/OneDrive and Exchange Online are more mature, business-grade offerings compared to Google Drive and G-Mail respectively. The power of these offerings and their maturity comes at the cost of multiple admin portals, confusing permissions structures for SharePoint, complex licensing requirements and numerous other pain-points. Microsoft's 365 comes with many of its own nuances and problems from both an IT and end user's perspective, but it is often the best choice for larger companies that are comfortable navigating its quirks.

What Did I Select for My Own Use

While I have worked in and administered Google Workspace, I've spent a greater amount of time managing Microsoft 365 and am more familiar with its quirks. Because I'm an IT guy myself and am already comfortable administering Microsoft 365, that is the system I choose to use. I was able to select a basic license since I'm okay with only using browser-based apps and don't need the functionality of the desktop versions. It's not a perfect system, and there are aspects of Google Workspace I personally prefer over Microsoft (Google Docs > Microsoft Word in my opinion), but as a cohesive whole, 365 makes the most sense for me.

Closing Thoughts

Google Workspace is likely to be easier to manage and get off the ground. 365 is generally a more scalable and powerful option long term. At the end of the day though, it boils down to what you and your users are most familiar with. There is no perfect solution provided by either product, and there will always be some amount of learning curve to working with your tools instead of against them. For me, I'm more familiar with 365, so it was an easy choice to make when selecting a cloud productivity suite for my own use. For others, the best thing to do is evaluate what you and your team need from these tools, determine how much effort you're able to put into the initial setup and ongoing management, and make the best decision for your organization.