Effortless computing

A useful summary from Tim Anderson of the differing strategies of Microsoft and Google in the email/document space. If I knew the winner, I’d place my bet in the stock market… but the collaborative power of Google Apps and the functional maturity of MS Office mean that both are compelling and neither is likely to beat out the other for some years.

Microsoft is pursuing its “software plus services” strategy, which means desktop applications still play an important role. The email is Exchange-based, so you can use other email clients, but only Outlook on Windows will deliver full features. Document collaboration is based primarily on cloud storage rather then editing, though when Office Web Apps appear next year users will have some lightweight editing tools.

Google on the other hand is primarily web based, with desktop support as an add-on. Google has the lead when it comes to online document editing, since it has had Google Docs for some time, whereas Office Web Apps are still in beta. Google has no bias towards Windows and Office. With Google, a document’s primary existence is in the cloud, although you can export and import with possible loss of data or formatting.

Something else I noticed is that Google has big plans for integration with mobile devices, whereas Microsoft seems mainly concerned with Exchange synchronisation.

Microsoft’s pitch is that if you live in Windows anyway, with Exchange and SharePoint on the server, and Windows and Office on the client, then its cloud service integrates nicely. Google on the other hand is more revolutionary, not caring about what you run as long as you can connect to its services.

Although the software plus services idea has attractions, it sounds more like a transitional strategy than one for the long term. Over time, as the web platform gets more powerful, and as rich internet applications take over from pure desktop applications, the services part will grow absolutely dominant.

A guide for those considering switching from Windows/Outlook to Mac for accessing Exchange email, contacts and calendar – focussing on the differences and shortcomings of the Mac. I’m updating it as I find more.

The major business news in Apple’s Mac OS X Snow Leopard release is proper support for Microsoft Exchange. Until now, using Exchange’s mail, calendar and contact suite has been painful and deficient on a Mac – only Entourage worked, and badly. Conosco’s IT support service has tried hard to keep clients away from the experience…

And – a threat for Microsoft in Snow Leopard – Exchange support is free. The necessary desktop programs are built in so Mac users don’t have the fat expense of Outlook. (Factor this into a Mac vs Windows cost comparison and Microsoft is no longer clearly the cheaper option. MS can’t easily respond – Outlook is a key part of Office which is one of its greatest moneyspinners…)

So a breakthrough moment – but does it work? Here are my experiences using Mac Mail, iCal and Address with Exchange. NB this is a switcher’s guide – I’m comparing them with Outlook 2010 on Windows 7 and ignoring the (vast) majority of functionality that works fine on both platforms. If you see any more, let me know.

Calendar

The most complex area of Exchange – managing multi-user invites causes havoc with every piece of desktop software that’s tried to work with them (except Outlook; most smartphones including the iPhone use MS Activesync and manage fine).

iCal is very slick to use and falls short only in some minor areas. Should be fine for most people.

iCal cons

1. When you invite groups of people (e.g. ‘Sales’) to an event, iCal shows them only in rolled up form; Outlook allows you to unroll them and see the status of the individuals in a group.
2. When you add a person to an event and ‘autopick’ the next available time for a meeting with them, iCal assumes that they are unavailable after working hours; Outlook let’s you schedule evening meetings.
3. iCal shows other people’s busy time as ‘busy’ in the availability picker window; Outlook tells you what they’re doing (as long as you have permission to see their calendar and the event isn’t marked ‘private’). However iCal let’s you view their calendars overlaid on yours with all the non-private details.
4. iCal doesn’t have categories for events, but you can have different calendars (work, home, etc) which provides a different way to achieve a similar effect.
5. iCal doesn’t seem to understand ‘new time proposals’ – when an invitee reponds with a different time for a meeting. You can see the proposed time in the email you get, but you have to manually change the meeting.

iCal pros

1. Multiple calendars – you can overlay work and personal calendars from Exchange, Apple, Google, Yahoo! and more, allowing you to manage complex family lives more efficiently. Exchange and Outlook don’t let you do this. (I don’t have personal experience of this, but plenty of people seem to make it work.)

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Microsoft has announced a new version of Outlook for the Mac – for late 2010. This is good news for many Mac users, irrelevant for many others and might indicate some desperation at Redmond.

It’s good news because Mac users have never had a good way to connect to MS Exchange, the dominant mail/calendar server for businesses. MS dropped Mac.Outlook after 1998, offering OS X users the Entourage program – which was and still is a dog: it lacks many Outlook features and is horrible to use. The new Outlook promises to have the same features as Windows.Outlook whilst being a true Mac application – e.g. storing data in files rather than a huge database (source of most Outlook problems).

Why did MS hobble Outlook/Entourage for the Mac? Presumably because Exchange has been essential for most businesses, so this would keep business users on Windows and perpetuate sales of MS Office. Indeed, Outlook is theirreplaceable part of Office – powerful, effective and unrivalled. Up to now, this has worked – at Conosco we’ve discouraged our customers from Macs for good practical reasons.

So why this change of heart and why announce it now, more than a year before it’s due? FUD – the old MS trick of spiking the opposition. Within a month Apple releases the Snow Leopard upgrade to OS X, which makes the Mac’s native mail and calendar apps work properly with Exchange. And many are now moving to web-based services such as Google Apps and Zoho anyway.

Too little too late. MS has probably lost the Apple community now – if you can drop Entourage/Outlook, you can drop MS Office (there are already good alternatives to Word/Excel/Powerpoint). Macs are eating into the PC market – in the last few months we’ve suddenly started selling a lot of Macs at Conosco. The best hope for MS is that their new software+service version of Office can outflank the competition – but it’s not even in beta yet.

Finally, Apple’s Mac OS X operating system should be easily usable for the vast numbers (50%?) of businesses with Microsoft Exchange servers – the soon-coming Snow Leopard OS X upgrade has Exchange support built into Mail, iCal and Address Book. Not before time.

Apple has even allowed you to use Exchange calendar’s room availability and scheduling features – showstoppers for many of Conosco’s IT support customers… at last we won’t have to waste time vainly dissuading execs from buying themselves beautiful Mac laptops, and then screaming when the syncing breaks.

Due out in September for $29 (upgrade).

UPDATE: is this the moment when Microsoft’s hold on personal computers in business is released? Until now, using a Mac with Exchange has been painful – you have to use Entourage, which is a dog and lacks some features. OS X is much easier to use and much slicker than Windows, even W7, and at last there’s nothing left to stop business users switching to it. MS’s hold on the server remains – Exchange rules, especially in its Activesync software that is the only personal-info sync technology that never seems to trip up.

Google Apps just won the Valeo account (with 30,000 users) for document storage and editing, with mail and calendars to follow later in the year. That’s a lot of lost revenue for Microsoft Office and Exchange… and MS’s web-based Office applications are still not even in beta.

Google are naturally crowing -

This deployment across Valeo’s distributed workforce of 192 business entities in 27 countries and five continents demonstrates the vast scalability of Google Apps. Whether your company has just five employees in a single room, or tens of thousands of people scattered around the globe, Google Apps can easily provide powerful messaging and collaboration tools.

Despite its bugs and shortcomings, Google Apps is using the recession to oust Microsoft with a stripped-down service that does just enough.

At Conosco, we’ve seen a sudden pick-up in new customers since March – and many are startups using Google Apps, which we’re happy to support.