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UC Berkeley chooses Google apps over office 365 based on this analysis
- keke_ta 15y agoFinally, educational organization chooses Google Apps!
- cyrus_ 15y agoSeems that they found Google to be a better end-user experience for email and for casual calendar users, but Microsoft won out on power calendar users and in terms of legal/compliance issues. Doesn't seem clear to me why they chose Google here -- costs?
- Karunamon 15y agoNotice the priority column at the far left. Legal and compliance issues were ranked far below integration.
- jcampbell1 15y agoIt strikes me as accurate. Google apps is better for mail, and Microsoft is the cats ass when it comes to calendaring. If you are the secretary who must schedule 20 execs for a meeting the first Wednesday of every month, then there is nothing better than Outlook/Exchange. Thank god I no longer live in a world where I am tied to my calendar. As google gets bigger, google calendar will get better, and the worse it will be a place to work. Understanding the need for a great calendaring app requires a company that has lost its soul.
- sliverstorm 15y agoDoes Google really make its employees depend on Gmail and Gcal?
- redwood 15y agoYou have NO IDEA. In many ways they are the Googler life
- m0th87 15y agoYes, they do. But that shouldn't be surprising.
- sliverstorm 15y agoWell, I mean I know they are Google and all- but I can't imagine Gmail and Gcal supporting a corporate user very effectively. I use it for my personal stuff, but I am extremely appreciative of Exchange at work.
- bsk26 15y agoWorks pretty well, actually. Calendar isn't perfect, but I personally prefer the UI to exchange.
- libraryatnight 15y agoI enjoy Calendar, and my company uses their own but provides a link so that I can have it automatically imported to my Google Calendar. So my work, family, and personal calendar are all on one happy color coded page, and on my phone a simple widget.
- jrockway 15y agoCalendar seems to have a similar featureset to that of Outlook. You can put appointments on other people's calendars and you can schedule rooms, anyway. And, at Google, the conference rooms have motion sensors that allow the room reservation system to "garbage collect" unused rooms. (You also get an LED indication of whether or not you'll be running into someone else's time if your meeting runs late. Gotta love the hardware support!)
- rat87 15y ago> It strikes me as accurate. Google apps is better for mail, and Microsoft is the cats ass when it comes to calendaring. If you are the secretary who must schedule 20 execs for a meeting the first Wednesday of every month, then there is nothing better than Outlook/Exchange. Really? A bunch of things about Outlook calendering drives me up the wall. I can't find a way to tell it that I've attended an event just dismissing the late notice. Also just the other day it prompted me with a late notice about a cancelled weekly meeting.
- jsight 15y ago> Also just the other day it prompted me with a late notice about a cancelled weekly meeting. Isn't that just user error (failure by someone to send out a cancellation notice)?
- tsunamifury 15y agoPretty well known ux flaw, when someone forwards you a meeting in outlook, then cancels it, none of the forwarded attendees receive notice.
- jrockway 15y agoAnother fun fact is that when you forward someone a meeting and add a snide comment to it, your snide comment gets sent to the organizer. I always wondered why people stopped liking me suddenly, then I realized that my private commentary about stupid meetings wasn't actually private.
- heyrhett 15y agoThe report says this: Limitation of Liability: "Google does not limit their liability in regards to its confidentiality obligations and includes Customer Data in definition of Confidential Information. Google is responsible for any actions of its employees and agents." "Microsoft caps its liability for "free" services at $5K including any damages related to Institution Data short of Gross Negligence or Willful Misconduct." Google is far superior. But http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/user_terms.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/user_terms.html says this: "YOU EXPRESSLY UNDERSTAND AND AGREE THAT GOOGLE AND PARTNERS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ..." Am I looking at the wrong TOS?
- dangrossman 15y agoJust by the URL, that's probably the agreement between the end user (the student) and Google, not the Apps customer (the school) and Google. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/education_terms.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/education_terms.htm...
- lambda 15y agoYes, I think you're looking at the wrong terms of service; you're looking at their ordinary end user terms of service, not their educational terms of service. The educational terms of service, http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/education_terms.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/terms/education_terms.htm... say: > 12.2 Limitation on Amount of Liability. NEITHER PARTY MAY BE HELD LIABLE UNDER THIS AGREEMENT FOR MORE THAN THE AMOUNT PAID BY CUSTOMER TO GOOGLE DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS PRIOR TO THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY. > 12.3 Exceptions to Limitations. These limitations of liability apply to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, but do not apply to breaches of confidentiality obligations, violations of a party’s Intellectual Property Rights by the other party, or indemnification obligations. So, they put a cap on liability of how much they've been paid in the past year (which in most cases for their educational program is nothing), but do not limit liability for breaches of confidentiality obligations.
- heyrhett 15y ago
- redwood 15y agoGlad to see Cal quitting MSFT. Perhaps they're looking for a donation from Schmidt (alum). Gates hasn't given to Berkeley afaik while he has to Stanford. Yes I acknowledge this is a cynical perspective but perhaps makes sense considering public universities are so strapped for cash while privates keep on getting donations.
- tikhonj 15y agoOn the other hand, they just signed a contract providing Microsoft licenses to all the students, which is unfortunate. Earlier they did the same with Adobe. This is their solution to lowering costs--lets provide Microsoft and Adobe products to everybody! I, naturally, disapprove, but that has never mattered...
- rbanffy 15y agoTheir students are smart. The'll figure out there are better solutions. And having seen how not to do it is also an invaluable lesson. ;-) (Burn, karma, burn)
- tikhonj 15y agoI don't think most of the people taking, say, a class on Nabokov will complain much about needing Microsoft Word. In fact, I suspect the only inconvenienced person will be the lone EECS major using Linux (me :)). As long as professors want hard copies, it won't be an issue. (Using MLA format with LaTeX is really, really easy.) However, some do expect digital copies for whatever reason. I've seen them ask for docs uploaded to the internal class website system, which is itself pretty horrible. I just hope I don't have to deal with it--even opening LibreOffice is more annoying than one could hope.
- rbanffy 15y agoIt could be worse. The class website could be a Sharepoint portal.
- gammarator 15y agoGlad they're changing: the homegrown Calmail system had ~5 consecutive days of downtime this November alone.
- colton36 15y agoI am surprised they haven't evaluated the office apps that are associated with the suits. As a long time Google Docs user, I was stunned by how superior the online version of Excel is to Google's offering.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- nhebb 15y agoThey're not migrating the other apps. From the FAQ [1] - Q: Is Microsoft Office being replaced by Google Docs? A: No, Microsoft Office will continue to be a desktop standard at the University. ... Nice Freudian slip, btw. [1] https://kb.berkeley.edu/jivekb/entry.jspa?externalID=2980&categoryID=107 https://kb.berkeley.edu/jivekb/entry.jspa?externalID=2980...
- tikhonj 15y agoIt's really unfortunate that they insist on using Microsoft office. Happily the rational departments--the ones I usually deal with :)--don't expect office docs, but I wouldn't put it past my future literature (or whatever) professors to expect them. And that would suck.
- tikhonj 15y agoFor one, as I mentioned elsewhere, they have a site-wide license for actual Microsoft Office products (unfortunately). Here they were probably primarily looking to replace Calmail which is not brilliant.
- tldrtldr 15y agoI think they got it wrong, Google offerings SUCK (REALLY BAD) when it comes to collaboration. In a large organization like UCB, I wonder why they don't use any collab tools? "Both Google/Microsoft offerings were NOT reviewed" "These applications were not extensively reviewed during this process, but are already used in other departments for teaching and learning purposes." "Office 365 comes with its Office online apps and the option of deploying SharePoint Online and Lync* (which were not reviewed)." I want white-boarding in GMAIL!!!
- tingletech 15y agoI thought research hub had collaboration spaces for labs https://hub.berkeley.edu/ https://hub.berkeley.edu/
- andreaja 15y agoIsn't this a red herring? They stated they were evaluating Email/Calendering solutions.
- tldrtldr 15y agoSure. I am just frustrated with Talk/Docs. Talk, a bare minimum IM client. Docs, are we in 1999?
- Andrex 15y agoIsn't Gmail white boarding the same thing as Google Docs Drawings? Except Drawings are vector-based, obviously.
- rafadc 15y agoThis should teach you: "do an analysis before choosing" ;)
- mbreese 15y agoAt least they aren't doing what Indiana University did - use both and let the students decide which system they want to use. Now they can choose between Imail (Microsoft) or Umail (Gmail). But on the administration side, IU is still pretty much a Microsoft shop though with the faculty having an Exchange setup.
- richardburton 15y agoI am Google Apps addict but they still don't have a web-based Excel-killer. I think that when bankers and corporates start using Google apps to build their financial models then Microsoft should worry.
- ig1 15y agoEven for startup business modelling I'd rather use a fifteen year old version of Lotus 1-2-3 than Google Apps. Their spreadsheet is definitely a second-tier product.
- chollida1 15y agoThis is true. I've seen entire hedge funds run on excel sheets. Our traders do alot of trading right out of excel sheets with custom C# addin's.
- jrockway 15y agoThis is not the intended use case for Excel. Rather, it's a product of 10 years of bad decisions leading to more bad decisions. (Someone I work with created a "market data bus" using Excel. It had the side effect of preventing Outlook from receiving email while it was running, so you had to have two machines if you wanted to read email AND get market data via this method. Now that's shoddy software engineering.)
- chollida1 15y ago> This is not the intended use case for Excel. Rather, it's a product of 10 years of bad decisions leading to more bad decisions. This is true :)
- centur 15y agoHuh, there is some points to check : Points 2.Location of Data 3.Data Management and Transfer have exact same description (copy-pasted?) but have different advantage results. For 2.Location of Data advantage goes to "Microsoft (slight). Google has more qualifications on U.S. data storage obligation in minor respects." For 3.Data Management and Transfer it suddenly become "Draw"
- moontear 15y agoThe "analysis" seems to be strongly favoring Google products in the Email/Calendar Cloud/Local Solution section. - Integration with Collaboration Tools: SharePoint Online is all about collaboration. As they want to continue using Microsoft Office, there is no better way (at the moment) than SharePoint. Google's cloud connect Add-In for Office is the first try at this, but it is still rather ugly (who wants a large bar on all documents, what about using the ribbon?) They also misspelled Lync, which is the Google Talk of Microsoft, goes much further than GTalk and integrates in ALL Office applications. You can chat with the people currently editing the same document you are editing on your local computer. - Ease of Tools Development: "Google has a more robust and documented API" - NO, simply not true. "aligned with the skillsets on campus" is a valid argument. But saying it is easier to develop for Google products than for the MS stack is a stretch. - User Familiarity: They say, that they use MS Office. Familiarity therefore is high with Office 365.
- jroseattle 15y agoI've always found these large organizational analyses to look completely sound and well-reasoned on paper, yet never really align with reality when deployments start going up. IIRC, the City of Los Angeles did a similar evaluation, yet they shuttled a migration to Google due to security concerns. In less-public implementations, I've seen planned migrations from MS to Google Apps dropped after pilot tests, mostly due to user complaints about usability. I don't fault MS or Google in any of these areas, but rather those conducting the analysis.
- dminor 15y ago> IIRC, the City of Los Angeles did a similar evaluation, yet they shuttled a migration to Google due to security concerns. Actually most of the city is using Google Apps and the contract has been renewed. The LAPD decided it wanted additional security and hasn't migrated yet.
- kenjackson 15y agoTo be clear it's more than just the LAPD. From http://informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/232300646 http://informationweek.com/news/government/cloud-saas/232300... The amendment will remove the LAPD, portions of the city attorney's office, the Los Angeles Fire Department, Department of General Services, and Department of Transportation from the contract Only a little more than half of the expected number of users have been migrated. Still a nice win for Google, but also a cautionary tale.
- sunchild 15y agoSo what are the excluded departments using? Hosted Exchange? I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that whatever solution they're using isn't any more secure. Even if you host your own mail servers inside Fort Knox, and hire and vet everyone who goes near those servers, you still have all the same trustworthiness problems. On the other hand, I'm probably missing something there, since Google somehow failed to convince them to stay on board.