Google has removed add-on fees for Gemini in Workspace, though the firm is upping the price of its plans to reflect the addition of this offering.

Gemini will be built into Workspace’s business and enterprise plans without the need to purchase pricey plan upgrades, which previously could add an additional $20 per user per month.

For example, a customer using the old annual ‘Business Standard’ plan with a Gemini Business add-on paid $32 per user, per month, compared with $12 per user, per month for the default Business Standard plan.

The new annual price of the Business Standard plan will increase by $2 though, from $12 per user, per month to $14. Google called this a simplification of the old price plan to bring the “added value” of Gemini to all Workspace customers.

“We believe AI is foundational to the future of work and its transformative power should be accessible to every business and every employee, at an affordable price,” Jerry Dischler, president of Cloud Applications, wrote in the announcement.

The pricing will take effect for new customers and on March 17 this year for those on monthly subscription plans. For those on annual and fixed-term plans, pricing effects will take place on renewal dates, unless renewal dates are earlier than March 17.

Small business customers will not be subject to the pricing changes at this time, Dischler said.

At the start of 2024, Google rolled out price changes specific to its monthly subscription-based plans, upping the cost of ‘Starter,’ ‘Standard,’ and ‘Plus’ business plans by $1.20, $2.40, and $3.60, respectively.

New pricing gives Google a competitive edge

Google’s decision to do away with add-on pricing is a bold move according to Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder, and may put the firm in a stronger position to compete with productivity suite rival Microsoft.

“Until Google’s announcement, embedded solutions required expensive add-on licenses. Google’s bold move here reminds us that products can evolve into features; viable offerings seek monetization in other ways; and tempts us to say Google failed, but it could be a competitive boon,” J.P. Gownder told ITPro.

While it may not be time to switch from Microsoft 365 to Google Workspace, Gownder said Workspace will now be more competitive with Microsoft 365.

“Attractive pricing matters. Especially when, at its new price, Google brings credible performance, a small but non-trivial roster of enterprise clients, and also some differentiated generative AI features, including the innovative NotebookLM and Vids, a video-creation generative AI tool,” Gownder said.

“Despite Google’s appeal, Microsoft 365’s ubiquity and quality remain hard to dislodge. Migrating M365 documents, SharePoint sites, and macros to Workspace remains a monumental effort. Microsoft will, however, feel pricing pressure,” he added.

Zoom has unveiled its first collaboration tool, Zoom Docs, as it turns to AI in the hopes of expanding its business beyond video meeting software. 

Zoom was little known before the pandemic struck in 2020, but the ensuing rush to work from home amid lockdowns propelled it into the mainstream, posting 355% growth that summer.

However, the company's growth has stumbled since, sparking layoffs and causing its market capitalization falling from $139 billion at its peak in 2020 to $17 billion this year.

To battle that, Zoom announced a shift beyond meetings into AI-powered hybrid working tools. Zoom has now unveiled a key piece of that, Zoom Docs, a document writing and collaboration tool using AI Companion to automate basic tasks.

Zoom pointed to research that suggests 59 minutes of every day is spent looking for information across different applications — so, the argument goes, using a single platform for meetings and documents can help streamline that.

"With AI Companion available every step of the way, Zoom Docs is purpose-built to empower people to ‘work happy’ and give them more time back in their day," said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom.

Zoom Docs for meetings

Practically, that means Zoom Docs has co-editing tools for collaborating at the same time including the ability to vote or react to items, makes it easy to embed online content with a few taps of the keyboard, and uses generative AI to translate, rework content into new forms (such as notes into an agenda), and summarize a page.

"Zoom Docs is our first Zoom Workplace product with generative AI built in from the ground up; it effortlessly transforms information from Zoom Meetings into actionable documents and knowledge bases, so teams can stay focused on meaningful work," said Hashim.

For example, information from Zoom Meetings can be used to create documents such as meeting summaries, automatically sharing them to meeting attendees and translating them into different languages, or converting the content into agendas, newsletters or other templates, the company explains on its website.

Pay for AI

Whether any of those tools will be enough to shift users away from Google or Microsoft remains to be seen — though the recent attention with Zoom call rallies from US presidential candidate Kamala Harris might help. 

However, bundling Docs in with paid-for Zoom packages may encourage some companies already paying for the conference tool to give it a go.

Indeed, Zoom Docs comes free as part of Zoom Workplace, which are its paid-for packages. 

The free Basic package — the one that cuts off meetings after 40 minutes — will allow ten documents to be shared as part of Docs Basic, a more limited version of the package that doesn't include the AI tools.

By stepping up to a Pro or Business account (£12.99 monthly or £17.49 monthly), users will also get access to the AI companion as well as unlimited access to the full-version of Docs.

Editor's note: Google Workspace review

Original review date: 14 April 2023

Generative AI is now ubiquitous and no more so than within productivity suites. Following the likes of Microsoft 365 and Slack, at Google Cloud Next the tach giant introduced a host of new AI capabilities for Workspace. ITPro will test and review these new features later in the year when they become available. 

Workspace previously used the 'Duet AI' label for its generative AI functions, but that has been binned off for the 'Gemini' banner where every feature will be tagged 'something for me'. This will be used across the most popular Workspace apps with features currently in preview and coming soon for Gmail, Meet, Docs, and Chat in 2024. 

The previews include a 'take notes for me' feature in Meet which allows users to fully focus on their meetings without having to type or write anything. A similar feature is also coming for translations in June that will automatically translate captions in Meet. 'Translate for me' will have support for up to 69 languages, according to Google. 

Original article: When Google launched its G-Suite productivity suite in 2016, it instantly positioned itself as a key challenger to the dominance of Microsoft. Fast forward to October 2020 with its notable rebrand to Google Workspace, and it became evidently clear that Google intended to cater to a remote and hybrid workforce. 

Google Workspace is a valuable productivity suite for businesses of all sizes, ranging from large, multinational enterprises to small businesses. This collection of cloud-based tools can, at first glance, appear quite daunting. 

But once up and running the benefits of platforms such as Gmail, Google Docs, synchronized calendars and more proves hugely beneficial to communication, collaboration, and overall workforce productivity.

Google Workspace offers three distinct Business plans: Starter, Standard, and Plus. Two Enterprise-grade plans – Standard and Plus – are also available. In this instance though, we'll be looking at the Business plan options and their respective pros and cons. 

Google Workspace review: Deployment

Google provides a comprehensive and easy-to-use deployment guide for its Workspace Business packages in addition to administrator training and certification courses. To start this 10-stage process, administrators will want to open the Admin console and run a pilot, which is optional but recommended. This will enable you to try Google Workspace with a selected number of users to evaluate Gmail, test data migration, and assess mobile access. It's worth noting that this does not affect your current mail service. 

If you chose to run a pilot (or skip), the process of adding users accounts is fairly straightforward. Admins can add users individually, or upload via spreadsheet. Google provides a raft of admin tools to synchronize user accounts with Microsoft Active Directory or another LDAP server. 

Activating Gmail for your domain is the next advised step in the deployment process, and again, this is an easily traversed process for admins, making migration or initial deployment convenient and smooth. You will be required to change your domain MX records to direct mail to Google servers, however. Google also recommends admins add an SPF record to your domain settings during this stage of the process. 

Migration tools are provided by Google to import existing emails, calendar events, and contacts to Google Workspace. Data can also be migrated directly from Microsoft Exchange, HCL Notes, or any other IMAP server. Alternatively, Google allows individual team members to import their data by themselves. 

To Google's credit, Workspace deployment is a rather smooth process for admins, but the support doesn't end there. Once deployed, it offers a raft of training guides and resources featuring real-world customer examples to get users started with its suite of applications. 

Google Workspace review: Pricing 

The new AI capabilities will be an extra consideration for businesses, largely because they will come at an extra cost. For businesses starting or migrating to Google Workspace, there are four different packages to select – Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, and finally Enterprise – with different monthly costs for each. 

Workspace is free for 14 days, then after that, you will need to pay $6 per user, per month for the entry-level Business Starter package, $12 per month for Business Standard, and $18 a month for Business Plus. Enterprise customers will have to talk to sales to haggle their exact pricing. For the Gemini extras, Google has said these will come at an extra cost of $10 per user, per month. At face value, it looks like a considerable fee for smaller businesses to accept annually. 

For an SMB with a workforce of 200 people on the Business Standard edition, this would cost approximately $2,400 per month, or $28,800 annually.

It is worth noting that all three editions require a one-year minimum commitment. With this in mind, we recommend a thorough assessment of whether Google Workspace is the 'right fit' and catered to your individual needs.

Google Workspace Business review: User interface

Google Workspace boasts a slick user interface that is easy to navigate. While G-suite had its limitations and at times felt cluttered and obtrusive, Workspace has certainly improved.

Users can easily traverse through the Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet applications via the toolbar situated on the left-hand side of the screen. This makes the process of switching between your email correspondence and workplace chats far easier and keeps your staple applications conveniently at hand to ensure staff are keeping up to date and communicating effectively. 

Google recently issued an update to "simplify" the Workspace user experience across a raft of applications, including Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drive. These changes, which Google said aimed to "streamline the daily flow of work" have most certainly added a fresh new appearance. Google Docs, for example, now features a more simple and easy-to-navigate toolbar at the top of every document with updated command groupings that stand out more from a visual perspective. 

Google Workspace Business review: Applications

Google Workspace provides a range of applications as standard. Most of these you will be familiar with, such as Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Drive, and Slides, as well as a dedicated Calendar, Chat, and Meet application. 

These core apps are the heart of Google Workspace and are available in both a browser-based and mobile version. Notably, these aren't available as desktop apps, which is slightly inhibiting. However, users can use applications such as Google Docs and Sheets in an offline mode which offers users the chance to still use them if they're on the move or unable to access the web. 

Workspace also has a range of fantastic third-party app integrations for businesses. These can be downloaded via the Workspace marketplace. Accounting software Xero, for example, integrates seamlessly with Workspace apps including Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Drive.

Other third-party applications that can be integrated with Workspace include: Asana, Okta, DocuSign, Trello, and Copper CRM.

Google Workspace Business review: Starter vs Standard vs Plus

The tiered system under which Google Workspace Business packages now operate can be a tricky process to navigate. But it's worth bearing in mind that these options will be based entirely on individual business needs. While all three offer services for up to 300 users, there are limitations with the two 'lower' tiers – particularly with regard to storage capacity for each individual user.

The Starter edition provides a rather basic office suite with up to 30GB storage for each user in addition to custom email address options and Business editions of Gmail, Google Docs, Drive storage, Calendar, Meet video conferences, and a suite of other useful apps. Under this plan, video meetings with up to 100 people are also available. Administrative controls are also included, such as controls over user access, service policies, and mobile devices. 

Given the price range for this package, this makes for a rather valuable suite of tools for an SMB. But compared to the other tiered options available, it could be argued that this is lacking in certain key areas. 

The Business Standard edition of Google Workspace offers everything available in the aforementioned package, albeit with additional storage options and 'enhanced meeting features'. With 2TB of cloud storage for each user, this certainly provides far greater storage bandwidth for SMBs. Video meetings are also expanded to 150 people and, under this package, the option to record meetings and directly save them to Google Drive is included. 

On the topic of Google Drive, this package also includes shared team drives, making it a far more viable option for teams aiming to create a more unified and collaborative workforce. 

As the name suggests, the Business Plus edition provides the most comprehensive suite of tools available to users, with the addition of advanced controls and archiving capabilities for admins. 

With 5TB of cloud storage for each user, this offers far greater storage bandwidth for organizations on this plan. Similarly, video meetings under the Business Plus edition can be expanded to up to 500 people, making it a viable option for both SMBs with large workforces and enterprises. 

Premium analytics features, security controls, automated mobile device controls, and tracking features make the Business Plus edition a popular choice for larger SMBs seeking a deeper insight into workforce behavior and productivity. 

Google Workspace review: Workspace vs Microsoft 365

The 'great other' to Google Workspace is Microsoft 365. While there are advantages to both, and the decision to opt for either can be wholly dependent on your individual business needs, we found that Google Workspace had a number of key advantages. 

In particular, pricing could be an issue when comparing the two office suites. While this is a marginal difference, for SMBs specifically the overall costs can begin to add up. To add to this, Microsoft offers a far broader range of plans, meaning the process of choosing what's right for your business can become rather complicated. 

Microsoft 365's Business plans are ideal for SMBs and comparable to the business packages offered by Google. These also come in a similar multi-tiered system, starting with Business Basic for £5 per user per month. 

Meanwhile, Business Standard and Business Premium stand at a rate of $12.50 and $20 per user, per month respectively. The Microsoft 365 for Apps package available for businesses is also priced $8.25 per user per month. This includes desktop versions of the staple Office apps. 

Although Workspace offers clear advantages with regard to price, Microsoft 365 does have its own distinct benefits - particularly with regard to storage capacity. Users of Microsoft 365 are offered 1TB of cloud storage capacity for individual users across all of its plans, giving it a notable edge in comparison.

Similarly, Outlook email storage stands at 50GB as standard, compared to the 30GB Google offers through its basic package. Additionally, email storage is separate from overall capacity with 365, meaning that email correspondence won't clog up space in OneDrive. 

Core applications such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are also available in browser, mobile, and desktop versions. If you're keen on using desktop applications and avoid operating entirely on browser, then this might be a key differentiator for your business.

Google Workspace Business review: Making your decision

Ultimately, the factors which lead you to choose Google Workspace over Microsoft 365 will be dependent on a number of reasons - be it pricing, functionality, or ease of use.

Google Workspace is simplistic in both its design and functionality, making it easy to use for SMBs in the long-term. It is this simplistic design that gives it great charm in comparison to Microsoft, however, which has often been noted for its overwhelming UI and cluttered appearance. 

Google has introduced new Workspace features for Android tablets that allow users to share more across Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Keep apps.

The announcements are part of Google's plans to make Android easier to use on tablets and it follows the introduction of Android 12L earlier this year. Many of the announcements were teased at Google's I/O developer conference back in May.

All the new features and capabilities are aimed at improving the experience of Workspace on tablets. One of the most notable new features is the ability to drag and drop text or images across apps in split screen mode. For example, users can take text from Chrome or Sheets and drop that straight into an existing document or spreadsheet. Users can even upload links to Drive files simply by dragging and dropping them over.

Slit screen mode will also now allow for two Drive windows to be open side-by-side. To do so, users need to select the three-dot menu on and Drive file and tap 'Open in a new window'. This lets users access information from other Drive files without having to click in and out of different tabs.

For people that use physical keyboards with their tablets, Google has also added a range of keyboard shortcuts. These are things like select, cut, copy, paste, undo and redo and they aim to help users navigate around Drive, Docs, Sheets and slides without having to take their hands off the keyboard.

The new updates will roll out to Android tablets over the next few weeks, according to Android senior director of product management, Scott Blanksteen.

"And stay tuned for more updates as we continue to add new features for Google apps on Android's larger screens," Blanksteen said in a blog post.

Google has announced a spate of new features for Workspace to make it a more "equitable and productive" experience.

The changes include new encryption options on Google Meet and an integration of the video conferencing platform for services such as Docs and Sheets.

Many of these changes are aimed at improving the experience of Workspace and Meet for remote workers, with an emphasis on inclusion. They range from "fun" additions, such as new emoji reactions during calls to more substantial features to bring dispersed workforces closer together.

Starting with collaboration updates, in the coming weeks users will be able to make calls with the Google Meet app directly in Docs, Sheets, or Slides. So when collaborating in Docs, for example, users can instantly start a meeting without leaving the tab they're in and speak to and see their coworker.

While presenting, users will also be able to see their audience while they navigate different tabs like Sheets or even Gmail with a new 'Picture-in-picture' feature that runs on the Chrome browser. This will allow up to four video tiles of meeting attendees to appear in a floating window that can sit on top of other applications. So users can still send messages in Gmail while talking to teammates.

The calls themselves have also had a security boost, with an option for client-side end-to-end encryption, a feature that is currently in beta but should be fully available in May. The aim here is to give users direct control over encryption keys and there will be an option for end-to-end encryption for all meetings, later in the year.

There will also be updates to Spaces, which is Google's Slack-like chat app. 'Inline threading', which Google says has been a "top request" from enterprise customers, will allow users to respond to specific comments and keep dialogue separate from the main channel, similar to how Slack's chat functions work.

Last week, Google launched a feature that enables users to invite others to join a Space via a shared link, but later this year it is upgrading this functionality with a search function. Users will be able to search across their organisation for a specific Space to join. What's more, there will also be an increase in team size limits, which will be going up to 8,000. Later in the year, that number will be pushed even higher to 25,000, the company said.

Content moderation features will also be coming in the next few weeks, such as the ability to designate managers and guidelines for specific Spaces as well as capabilities for administrators to delete unwanted Spaces.

Microsoft is looking to tempt disgruntled legacy G Suite users with a “special offer” that includes a 60% discount on year-long Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, or Business Premium subscriptions.

Last month, Google announced that it would give those with free G Suite accounts until 1 July to upgrade their plans to a paid subscription, after which point they will lose access to most of its services. The move could be especially detrimental to small businesses that were able to save up to £13.80 per user per month by not paying for a G Suite, now known as Workspace, account.

Microsoft has seemingly decided to capitalise on Google’s decision, identifying a new group of potential customers who could be seeking a new email account provider, allowing them to also benefit from Microsoft Teams, cloud storage, as well as a suite of Office apps.

“If you’re a small business that’s relied on G Suite legacy free edition, we couldn’t help but notice you might be in the market for a new solution. We’ve got news for you: today, you can get a 60% discount on a 12-month Microsoft 365 Business Basic, Business Standard, or Business Premium subscription, along with the help you need to make the move,” Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, announced last week in a blog post.

Small businesses that decide to migrate their data from legacy G Suite to Microsoft 365 will be able to benefit from Microsoft’s Business Assist, which provides expertise and advice for those who are new to the service, ensuring that they make the most out of 365.

Google has since backtracked on its decision to shutter legacy accounts, adding a section to its support page that promises more options for people to keep the data stored in their accounts for free. Although the options won't include premium features like custom email or multi-account management, this could potentially be subject to change “in the coming months”, the tech giant added.

The company was not immediately available to comment when reached by IT Pro.

Google has announced a new free tier of its Workspace platform that lets companies that have existing email systems use its collaboration apps.

The Google Workspace Essentials Starter edition will work similarly to a personal Google account, though having an official package is likely to make it easier to use and deploy within a team.

Users will be able to sign up for Essentials Starters using their existing email accounts - whether with Google, Microsoft or any other provider - and then invite colleagues to work on projects with Google Docs or Sheets and so on.

The package will come with 15GB of Google Drive storage for each member, and users will be able to communicate remotely with services such as Chat and Meet, despite Google not offering an email service within the tier.

This latest offer comes just a week after Google announced it was killing off free legacy G Suite accounts. However, the exclusion of Gmail from the new package is a completely different offer; until now, the only way to have a Workspace account with a non-Google email address was to sign up to the Business Starter tier, which costs £8.29 per month. That is still an available option, but with the 'Essentials Starter' users just need to sign up with their work email and no credit card information is needed.

Along with the storage limits, there also appears to be a user cap of 25 per team account, however, there is no stopping companies from getting around that by setting up multiple accounts.

"Essentials Starter helps employees and their teams break down silos and work together in new ways, even if their organisation still relies on legacy productivity tools that weren't built for the hybrid era of work," Kelly Waldher, Google Workspace VP of marketing wrote in a blog post.

"There's no need for a new email address, file conversions, new plug-ins, or desktop software. All of the tools in Essentials Starter will work quickly and easily within your existing environment. And because we designed Google Workspace to operate on our industry-leading cloud foundation, Essentials Starter provides encrypted and secure access to files, helping keep users safe and their information private."

Google has said it will give those with free G Suite accounts until 1 July to upgrade their plans to a paid subscription, after which point they will lose access to most of its services.

Announced in an email to customers on Wednesday, the policy will not apply to those businesses in the non-profit and education sectors, which can continue to use the services free of charge.

The announcement comes a decade after the tech giant suspended the free basic tier for access to Gmail, Calendar, and Google Docs.

Prior to this, between 2006 and 2012, the tech giant allowed business users to create their own custom domain account for free, as opposed to using the gmail.com email address.

The service has been a paid privilege since 2012, yet legacy G Suite users have been able to continue using their custom domain accounts for free for ten years.

However, based on emails sent to account administrators yesterday, Google seems to have had a change of heart.

“We are writing to let you know that your G Suite free edition will no longer be available starting July 1, 2022,” the email, seen by Google9to5, reads.

The message warns account administrators that, in order to maintain their services and accounts, they will have to upgrade to Google Workspace, which was launched in 2020 as a fully-integrated productivity platform containing widely-used G Suite apps including Gmail, Calendar and Drive, among others.

Users that upgrade to a paid business tier by 1 May 2022 will be able to use their new subscription for free until “at least” 1 July, the tech giant stated.

Meanwhile, those who don’t select a tier and have their billing details available will be automatically upgraded to a paid subscription by Google. If no billing information is available for an account, Google will suspend the account for up to 60 days, after which users “will no longer have access to Google Workspace core services, such as Gmail, Calendar, and Meet”.

However, they “may still retain access to additional Google services, such as YouTube and Google Photos”.

In order to restore their suspended account, users will have to provide a valid form of payment.

Google’s most basic tier, the Business Starter, costs £4.60 per user per month, and is currently discounted to £4.14. However, the tier only allows 30 GB cloud storage per user, with users wishing to upgrade their storage having to pay twice as much per user per month.

Threat actors have found an exploit in a Google Docs comment feature that uses Google's own automated email notification function to send malicious links.

Email security specialists Avanan said it had notified Google of the flaw on 3 January after noticing a spike in usage over December 2021.

The attack involves hackers using their own Google accounts to create a Google Doc, to which they simply invite a target using the comments section with the '@' function. This automatically sends a notification email to the intended target's inbox, informing them that another user has commented on a document and mentioned them. The email is from Google, and so it is difficult to tell whether the message is malicious.

However, the comment on the email can be loaded with a malicious link for phishing sites or malware, and there appears to be no filtering mechanisms in place, according to Avanan. What's more, the hackers email address isn't shown in the notification; the recipient will only see a name, making it very easy to impersonate a victim's colleagues or friends.

The exploit is very simple to execute and has been available since the Autumn of 2020. Google has attempted to mitigate the problem but are yet to fully close it off, partly due to the fact it requires its own email service to work.

Attackers also aren't required to share the document with their targets, as simply messaging them is enough to trigger the email alert. Avanan suggests that the same techniques work on Google Slides and other collaboration tools within the Google's Workspace suite.

Outlook users appear to be the favoured targets, according to Avanan, but it's believed the exploit has used over 100 Google accounts and has already attacked 500 inboxes across 30 different organisations.

To protect yourself, and your organisation, Avanan recommends avoiding clicking on links in emails, deploying stricter file-sharing rules across Google Workspace, and using an Internet security service from a trusted vendor, particularly one that features phishing URL protection.

Google has announced plans to move users from its Backup and Sync file-syncing services to a new unified desktop app for Drive.

Onboarding for the Drive for Desktop app will start on 19 July, with Google recommending users make the switch by the end of September before they're locked out on 1 October.

The transition is just for Backup and Sync users, however, as business clients who are already using Drive File Stream - the enterprise name for Drive for Desktops - should already be set up.

The aim of moving to a unified desktop app is to create "a powerful and unified sync client", according to Google, with the best features from both consumer and enterprise services that should be more straightforward to use and easier for IT teams to manage.

In a blog post, Google suggests the new app will be pretty familiar to anyone who used its previous file-syncing services. Drive for Desktop will offer easy access to files and photos stored in the cloud, and will sync files in the background to keep them up to date.

Google also suggests the app can sync external storage devices like flash drives to Drive, mirror files between Drive and local files on a desktop computer, and let users choose whether they store individual photos and videos in Drive or Google Photos.

The launch of Drive for Desktop coincided with a few announcements from the tech giant, which included changes to services that helped many through the pandemic. In April 2020, for example, Google Meet was made available to all users with day-long group calls, but that has been switched to an hour as of 1 July. As such, free Gmail users will now have to make do with calls with three or more participants at a limit of 60 minutes.

Futurex‌‌ ‌‌has‌‌ ‌‌announced‌‌ ‌‌support for Google Workspace’s latest feature: Client-side encryption.

According to Google, client-side encryption renders customer data unreadable, boosting security. A user’s organization retains sole ownership and control over the cryptographic keys employed to encrypt files and documents on Google Workspace.

With Futurex's key management solution supporting Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides, enterprise users of Google Workspace can now enjoy unparalleled control over sensitive data, right from their browsers.

FIPS 140-2 Level 3-compliant, Futurex's key management enterprise server (KMES) series 3 is an all-in-one platform featuring symmetric key lifecycle management capabilities, code signing, data protection, and vaultless tokenization. Supported key types and protocols include DES, Triple DES, DUKPT, X.509, AES, RSA, and EMVCo.

Users can also leverage Futurex's VirtuCrypt cloud service to track and report suspicious activity. Aside from meeting SSAE (SOC 1, 2, and 3) standards, TIA-942 Tier 4, and HIPAA compliance, VirtuCrypt data centers support dual control environments backed by multi-tiered identity verification systems. In addition, integrated hardware security modules (HSMs) from Futurex simplify installation, eliminating the need for third-party services.

Commenting on its solution, Futurex said it only provides client-side encryption but also supports enterprise-wide data protection through public key infrastructure (PKI), certificate authority (CA), cryptographic key lifecycle management, and integration with third-party applications.

"Google Workspace client-side encryption advancement marks an exciting time for encryption innovation," said Ryan Smith, vice president of global business development at Futurex.

"Our robust FIPS 140-2 Level 3-validated HSMs not only handle all the key management on the client side — making it easier for organizations to manage their cryptographic keys and retain better control of their data security — but deliver data protection across the enterprise."

Google is aiming to broaden the appeal of its online productivity suite, Google Workspace, by making it freely available to anyone that has a Google account.

This means that all of the company's three billion users, from enterprise to education, can access the full Google Workspace platform, and apps like Gmail, Chat, Docs and more, without the need to pay for a subscription. Some paid-for tiers will remain, however, along with a new tier designed exclusively for sole traders.

There are also new features for the free tier that address specific challenges workers will face with the switch to hybrid working, These include updates to Google Chat, new subscription offers and greater security across the platform.

"Collaboration doesn't stop at the workplace - our products have been optimised for broad participation, sharing and helpfulness since the beginning," said Javier Soltero, VP and GM, Google Workspace.

"Our focus is on delivering consumers, workers, teachers and students alike an equitable approach to collaboration, while still providing flexibility that allows these different subsets of users to take their own approach to communication and collaboration."

The biggest change for free users is that Google Rooms has evolved into 'Google Spaces'. This is effectively a private chat area, similar to those found Slack or Microsoft Teams, where groups of users can chat and collaborate via text or video call.

There are a range of new functions within this, such as 'threads' and presence indicators that let users know if participants are free or available to talk. Users can also pin messages to Spaces so that important announcements don't get lost amongst the general chatter.

Google is also adding a Companion Mode to Google Meet which it claims allows everyone to continuously contribute to meetings, no matter if they are in the office or at home.

For the paid-tier, Google has added client-side document encryption which will allow businesses to use their own encryption keys.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a slew of new updates and features on Tuesday as the tech giant made a return to in-person events with its I/O conference held at the Mountain View Campus.

The announcements included a complete design overhaul of Android, more collaboration features for Workspace and a prototype for a 3D video conferencing booth.

"The last year has put a lot into perspective," Pichai said. "At Google, it's also given renewed purpose to our mission to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. We continue to approach that mission with a singular goal: building a more helpful Google, for everyone. That means being helpful to people in the moments that matter and giving everyone the tools to increase their knowledge, success, health and happiness."

Android 12

Android 12 boasts the biggest design overhaul in the operating system's history, according to Google. Compared with Android 11, it does indeed look drastically different with new layouts and colour schemes, many of which will be automatically changed to match the user. For example, the OS will highlight colours that are best associated with the user's wallpaper to create a personalised theme.

Google suggests it will 'feel' different too, with more responsive touch functions and smoother motion and animation thanks to a wholesale change to the underlying system. Further under-the-hood improvements also include a reduction of CPU usage that saves core system services by up to 22%.

As expected, there are more privacy controls in Android 12 that focus on data sharing with apps. This includes a new Privacy Dashboard where users can set data sharing permissions and a new indicator that lets users know when apps are accessing the microphone or camera.

Workspace

Workspace, formally known as G Suite, also got some new features, chiefly the addition of 'Smart Canvas'. This is an established product that Google is integrating into Workspace to boost collaboration in the cloud.

Users have already been able to use it with '@-mentions' within a document that sees a smart chip offer up additional info, such as a person's name, location, job title and contact details. From now, however, the smart chip will also be available in Google Docs for recommending files and meetings. The collaboration functions will also include emoji reactions which will be added in the next few months.

Docs will also be available in a new 'pageless' format, where boundaries can be removed to create a surface that expands to fill whichever device or display is in use. This should make it easier for those working with wide tables, large images or when giving detailed feedback in comments.

There will also be more interoperability with a function to view and share Docs, Sheets and Slides directly from Meet, and content from Docs can be collaborated on from Google Chat.

LaMDA

Pichai also revealed the company's latest research within natural language processing with a new language model for dialogue applications called LaMDA. It has an open domain, which Pichai said means it can converse on any topic, such as the planet Pluto, for example. This was showcased with pre-recorded examples, but the model should be able to give sensible responses to make learning more fun and engaging.

Google said that LaMDA was a huge step forward in natural conversation, but it's currently only trained on text. When people communicate with each other they do it across images, text, audio and video, so the plan is to improve LaMDA by building multimodal models that allow people to naturally ask questions across different types of information.

3D video chat booth

Google is also looking at ways to improve video conferencing with a 3D video chat booth called 'Project Starline'. This is only available within some of Google's offices at the moment as it is built with custom hardware and specialised equipment. It uses computer vision, machine learning, spatial audio and compression technology to transmit a live call in a way that feels more personal.

"We believe this is where person-to-person communication technology can and should go, and in time, our goal is to make this technology more affordable and accessible, including bringing some of these technological advancements into our suite of communication products," Pichai said in a blog post.

Until now, Google Photos has been free, but it’ll soon limit free storage and start charging for additional storage space.

More than a billion people rely on Google Photos and Google Drive. They upload more than 28 billion photos and videos every week on top of the more than 4 trillion already there.

The free ride is over in a month, though. As of June 1, Google Photos will start charging a monthly fee for storing more than 15GB of photos.

Starting in June, when you upload new high-quality content to Google Photos, it’ll count toward the free 15GB storage cap. Once you reach the cap, there will be three pricing tiers to store more data. The limit will also apply to files users keep on Google Drive, including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms.

Luckily, Google will grandfather in andy images and videos you upload before June 1 -- as long as you save them at the “High Quality” setting. Images saved in the more data-heavy “Original Quality” will count toward the 15GB cap on free storage.

To upgrade to a larger storage plan, you must sign up for the Google One cloud storage platform. Google One runs $1.99 per month for 100GB of storage, $2.99 per month for 200GB, and $9.99 per month for 1TB.

When Google announced this change in November, it framed the plan as a way to continue providing users with a good storage experience while keeping pace with the growing demand for its free services.

“For many, this will come as a disappointment... We wrestled with this decision for a long time, but we think it’s the right one to make,” Google Photos product lead David Lieb said in November. “Since so many of you rely on Google Photos as the home of your life’s memories, we believe it’s important that it’s not just a great product, but that it is able to serve you over the long haul.”

Files created through Google’s productivity apps, photos smaller than 2,048 x 2,048 pixels, and videos shorter than 15 minutes won’t count toward the cap. Under the new storage guidelines, “High Quality” will include photos larger than 16 megapixels and video resolutions over 1080p.

Recently, Google rolled out a host of new tools, which it hopes will help justify the new cost. Among these tools is software that makes it easier to identify and delete unwanted content, such as blurry photos and long videos.

Google has built an AI-powered app that lets users scan physical documents and automatically organise them into Google Drive.

"Stacks" can analyse bills, receipts and any paper documents you have laying around the house and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan and categorise before turning them into a PDF.

Users only have to take a photo of their document as the programme can automate the rest. It identifies important information within the document, such as a "due date" or "total amount due", and these bits of information can then be used to help store and search for the documents, with the app auto-generating names based on its content.

The idea comes from Christopher Pedregal, whose ed-tech startup Socratic was acquired by Google back in 2018. Socratic used Google's computer vision and language understanding to make learning tools for high school students. The project was developed by Google's in-house incubator, Area 120, and pulled in members of the tech giant's DocAI team - which has AI programmes for analysing documents.

The app is currently available on Android - free and without in-app purchases - and Google will wait to assess user feedback before launching a version on other platforms, such as iOS. Currently, the Android version can scan a range of different sized documents, such as utility bills, shopping receipts and even identification papers.

Stacks was not the only new AI-based tool Google is showed off on Wednesday as Google Maps has also added a slew of new features. The first is 'Live View', which uses augmented reality to help users navigate indoor spaces such as airports or shopping centres. It uses 'billions' of Street View images to provide live information for a user as they walk through a building, and graphics will mark out where toilets are or the path to the check-in desk.

Maps can also now offer up 'eco-friendly' routes for motorists that optimise fuel consumption based on factors like road incline and travel congestion. Currently, the map updates are available in the US only.

Two months ago, in PC Pro, I advised newly homeworking readers to “Get a Google account and a Chromebook”. This off-the-cuff suggestion made me realise how far I’ve drifted from the original personal computer revolution. That was about everyone having their own CPU and their own data, but I’ve since sold my soul to Google and I can’t say I miss it. When first turned on, my Asus Chromebook C301 sucked down all my personal data within five minutes, because I’d already placed it in Google Keep or Google Drive. I still have a Lenovo laptop but rarely use it, except via those same Google apps, and I don’t miss the excitement of Windows updates one bit.

My love for Google Keep is no secret and it only grows stronger as features such as flawless voice dictation and pen annotations get added. Previously I had spent over 30 years looking for a viable free-form database to hold all the research data – articles, pictures, diagrams, books, links – that my work makes me accumulate. The task proved beyond any of the database products I tried, with Idealist, AskSam and the Firefox add-on ScrapBook lasting longer than most. Those with long memories might remember how Microsoft promised to put the retrieval abilities I need right into Windows, via an object-oriented file system, but it eventually chickened out.

Keep’s combination of categories, labels, colour coding and free text search gives me the flexible retrieval system I’ve been seeking, but it still isn’t quite enough on its own: While it can hold pictures and clickable links, they’re not as convenient as actual web pages. For a couple of decades, I religiously bookmarked pages, until my bookmark tree structure became as unwieldy as my on-disk folders.

Nowadays, I just save pages to Pocket, which is by far the most useful gadget I have after Keep. A click on Pocket’s icon on the Chrome toolbar grabs a fully formatted page, complete with pictures and a button to go to the original if needed, making bookmarks redundant. I use the free version that supports tags similar to Keep’s labels, but the paid-for Premium edition has a raft of extra archival features for professional use. And, like Keep, it’s cross-platform so I can access my page library from Windows or a phone.

Does the cloud make stuff easier to find? To an extent, yes. Save too many pages to Pocket and, as with bookmarks, you’ve merely shifted the complexity rather than removing it. Sometimes I fail to save something that didn’t feel important at the time, then discover months later that it was, at which point Chrome’s history function comes in handy. I use it most to reopen recent tabs closed by mistake (I have an itchy trigger finger) but by going to myactivity.google.com I can review searches years into the past – if I can remember the keywords. Failing that, it’s plain Google Search or the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, recently released as a Chrome extension.

My music nowadays comes entirely from Spotify. My own photos remain the main problem. I take thousands and store them both in the cloud and on a local hard disk, organised by camera (Sony A58, Minolta, Lumix), then location (park, Italy, Scotland). I’ve tried dedicated photo databases that organise by date, but find them of little help: place reminds me far more effectively than time. My best pictures still go onto Flickr, tagged thoroughly to exploit its rather superior search functions (it can even search by dominant colour). Pictures that I rate less Flickr-worthy I sometimes put on Facebook in themed albums, which also helps to find them. The technology does now exist to search by image-matching, but that’s mostly used by professionals who need to spot theft or plagiarism. I can only express what I’m looking for in words, such as “Pip fixing the Gardner diesel engine”.

What’s required is a deep-AI analysis tool that can facially identify humans from their mugshots in my contacts, recognise objects such as tables, chairs or engines, can OCR any text in a picture (such as “Gardner” embossed on a cylinder block), and then output its findings as searchable text tags. It wouldn’t surprise me if some Google lab is working on it. I realise that if Google went bust, or the internet closed down, I’d be stuck with local data again, but if things get that bad then foraging for rats to eat will probably be a higher priority.

So, while I still stand by my original answer recommendation to buy a Chromebook, my more thoughtful advice would now be this: keep your feet on the ground and your data in the cloud(s).

G Suite is increasingly the cloud service of choice for firms pursuing digital transformations. While Google is able to protect data on their side of the equation, it may come as a surprise to learn that on your side - shared folders, calendars, and so on - vulnerabilities do exist that Google cannot touch.

Due to these vulnerabilities, companies that use SaaS applications have actually been found to lose data on a regular basis, because of human error, insider threats, or cyberattacks. Fortunately, countermeasures are available to keep your data secure.

This whitepaper explores the need for a cloud-to-cloud backup solution that supports your existing infrastructure, and highlights the key attributes to look for when sourcing a partner.

Digital transformation is one of the biggest trends in business today, as organisations try to reinvent their tools, processes and procedures in order to exploit the benefits of modern technology.

For many companies, the first step in this process is moving from company-wide email to cloud collaboration platforms like Slack, Google Hangouts or Microsoft Teams, and it's easy to see why; platforms such as these promise increased agility, greater flexibility and integrations with a wide variety of modern SaaS tools.

However, while in theory these platforms may sound like an appealing proposition, the practice of rolling them out across an entire organisation often proves far more difficult than first thought. There are numerous challenges to contend with, such as picking a platform in the first place, as well as getting users on board with a new set of tools.

We spoke to some of IT Pro's expert panellists to find out what it's really like playing the collaboration game.

The collaboration situation

To understand the realities of deploying these platforms, it's worth examining why they're so attractive in the first place. As we've already noted, the benefits offered in terms of third-party integrations and business mobility are numerous, but all of our panellists cite the same reason for wanting to roll out a collaboration platform.

"The IT department was looking at ways to promote collaboration as a way to reduce the use of email," says Patricio Colombo, founder of CIO on Demand; "That is always a complaint people have, but they never stop using it."

Colombo often works on a freelance basis, acting as an interim CIO while companies are looking for a full-time replacement or for the duration of a specific IT project. After working for clients who were using more advanced file-sharing platforms, he says that "sharing documents via email is one of the most painful things I had to go back to."

Richmond Events IT Director Liam Quinn agrees, saying that "email can be slow and sharing files without a proper solution is difficult and cumbersome". The 120 or so employees that make up Richmond Events are spread out across four countries and, while the company has experimented with a number of platforms, staff still rely almost exclusively on group email chains.

For Dominos UK CISO Paul Watts, another benefit is the immediacy that a unified collaboration platform can provide, which helps bring teams together - particularly through the use of video and audio technology.

"The ability to see and hear offshore workers makes the teams more relatable and sociable, and the advances in network and communications technology actually makes this a pleasant experience - remember the old days of trying to use NetMeeting over an ISDN or dial up link? And the ability to work on a document together in real time, or exchange ideas on an interactive whiteboard is fantastic, although I'll admit it takes some getting used to."

Slack is arguably the most visible example of this kind of software; its 'freemium' model has encouraged widespread adoption, particularly among startups and smaller teams. In fact, this is often how such tools are first introduced to the company, as an example of shadow IT. This, Watts explains, was what happened at Dominos.

"Our developers are innovators with brains the size of planets, and their adoption of Slack as a mechanism for collaboration was not something I wanted to block arbitrarily as an unsanctioned shadow application. In fact, it was a great way for us to learn how a more broad rollout of online collaboration tooling could work within the confines of our security policy and processes, and the varied skillsets of our entire business community."

Dominos eventually decided to adopt Microsoft Teams as its company-wide collaboration platform, predominantly because of its strong integrations with Office 365, which Watts says worked as part of a broader digital strategy.

"Teams is a more rounded mainstream collaboration platform for our needs and more easily lined up with the rest of the business' use of Microsoft tooling. Our devs respect that and have adopted Teams alongside the rest of the business whilst continuing to leverage Slack for their own niche needs, and I use CASB to keep an eye on things."

This is the same reason that Quinn also wants to roll out Teams across Richmond Events, despite previous unsuccessful experiments with Yammer, Microsoft's earlier attempt at corporate collaboration software. "It ties into everything else we use," he says, "even if it doesn't deliver everything we would ideally like".

Colombo, by contrast, is not as big a fan of Microsoft's platform, arguing that Microsoft is building more superfluous tools when it should be focusing on improving the collaboration aspects of Office itself.

"Every time you share the document, unless you do so from Office 365 and not from the desktop, you create a different link," he notes, "so you have different people accessing the same document from different links. It's slow and clunky, and it works in the end, but it takes ages to get there.

"For me, that's the heart of collaboration, and G Suite did it very well, and Microsoft could go further than [Google] because it has the desktop product as well, but it doesn't. Why do I need then to keep downloading different tools to do the same?"

Collaboration consternation

Of all of the potential issues that can impede the rollout of collaboration software - compatibility issues, interoperability with other services, migrating users - the biggest problem reported by all of our panellists was a lack of adoption by the wider business.

Both Quinn and Colombo report that when staff have been asked to use a new platform such as Yammer or Facebook Workplace, uptake and engagement has been low, with many people simply defaulting back to email chains.

"Overall, the people I tried these with considered they had yet another environment to use and remember, and there was no uptake," Colombo says. "Mind you, it might have been a failure of implementation, but still, there was no appetite for it then. If people are happy using a specific platform, and it's useful for them, it's very difficult to move them elsewhere."

"I think users are becoming really tired of having thousands of systems to use," Quinn agrees. This is one reason, he says, why he thinks Teams could work for his organisation, as it's effectively an extension of the company's existing systems. When previous systems have been tried, he says, "they always migrate back to email".

Even Watts' developers, who were the ones who introduced Slack to Dominos in the first place, have proved somewhat unwilling to fully migrate to the company's Teams platform. Watts notes that "Slack use is dying out", but it's still in use within the company despite the fact that the developers aren't using it for anything radically different than what they use Teams for. "I suspect it's just a case of 'old habits die hard'," he notes.

Business versus IT

Another frustration reported by our panellists was the level of active resistance received from other areas of the business outside the IT organisation. Much of it, they said, tied into the age-old gulf between IT and other departments, and the new platforms were often seen by other teams as an unnecessary tool being foisted upon them.

"The platforms were seen as 'an IT 'thing'," Quin explains, despite business stakeholders specifically asking for them. He also notes that management staff were among those who quickly went back to email threads. "The business asks IT to look into how to resolve an issue and when they do, it's 'IT imposing something'."

Colombo has also experienced this, and argues that the most successful way to avoid it is to ensure that any widespread platform rollout is supported by a 'business sponsor' - something that Watts agrees with.

"The secret to adoption is for these initiatives to be driven by the business, owned by the business, and for IT to become the servient partner," he says. "Many Office 365/G-Suite adoption projects fail because they are completely IT-led."

For Watts and Colombo, this is a perfect illustration of the continuing animosity that often exists between IT and other business units. "For some reason, we are still seen as outsiders to the core business," Colombo says, with Watts adding "you'd think IT would have learnt the whole 'stakeholder management' thing by now!"

"The importance of strong business partnering in technology functions cannot be understated in this day and age," he says, "otherwise those technology functions become largely redundant or ineffective."

According to our panellists, the resistance largely stems from a fear of change. Watts revealed that once business stakeholders had the chance to actually get to grips with the new platforms, obtaining buy-in was quite straightforward, saying "a lot of the problems were not problems at all; they were pushback due to fear of the unknown, i.e. poor stakeholder and change management."

"Absolutely," Quinn adds; "No technical issues, just resistance and/or fear of change."

So what does the future hold for collaboration software in terms of adoption and uptake? Well, while it's fairly clear that email isn't going anywhere any time soon, Watts thinks that the arrival of younger staff in the workplace will slowly soften resistance to newer tech and working methods.

"In my opinion, this will change over time," he argues. "Newer generations show signs of being much more accommodating of business change, and adapting more quickly to technology evolution and innovation."

Without exploring these platforms, businesses run the risk of missing out on opportunities such as stifling nascent digital transformation efforts, which Quinn believes his company has, to a certain degree. "Unfortunately, we'll never know," he says. "My gut feel says yes... but how do you prove it?"

If you're a senior IT decision-maker and you'd like to apply to be part of the IT Pro Panel, please email panel@itpro.co.uk.

Google has been a "disruptive" company on many levels since its inception. Gmail changed the way we used email by providing an inbox size that kept growing ahead of user needs. When the company began also offering competent office software via the browser, for free, it seemed like Microsoft Office had a real challenge on its hands.

Now, around a fifth of businesses use G Suite, which is less than a third of those that use Office 365. But this is still a significant figure, making G Suite the second most popular office suite, and the obvious one to consider instead of Microsoft's. So to accompany our review of Microsoft Office 365, here we look at what G Suite has to offer in comparison.

Google G Suite review: Options

Everyone with a Google account can access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive (including 15GB of free storage), and numerous other Web-based Google applications. But if you want more cloud storage and a professional email address that doesn't end in gmail.com, then you will need one of the paid subscriptions, of which there are currently three. Unlike Microsoft's subscriptions, these are true monthly prices that you don't have to pay for annually upfront, and the number of users you can have on any of them is unlimited.

The Basic subscription costs 3.30 per user per month and increases the online storage to 30GB across mail and files. It also gives your company control over employee accounts, which you won't have if they all use their own Gmail accounts. This means you can change their passwords when they leave, and take away access to their Google Drive storage at the same time. You can also restrict collaboration access to within your organisation, and create group email addresses, as well as have multiple email versions that end up in the same mailbox.

The Business edition of G Suite costs twice as much at 6.60 per user per month, but has significantly upgraded features. For fewer than five users, each one gets 1TB of cloud storage, but for five or more users the capacity is unlimited, which is a distinct advantage over Microsoft's alternatives. There is also an easy environment for creating Web apps for your organisation, and much more sophisticated search, security and e-discovery features compared to the Basic version. Above this, there's the Enterprise edition for 20 per user per month, which further enhances security management features and e-discovery.

However, it's worth noting that in April 2019, Google plans to increase the prices of the Basic and Business accounts by $1 and $2 respectively, although the company hadn't announced what this will translate to in the UK at the time of writing. There are also separate versions of G Suite for Education or Government clients.

Google G Suite review: Office Applications

One very clear distinction between G Suite and Microsoft Office 365 is that there are no installable desktop versions of the G Suite applications. However, a G Suite administrator can enable offline file and app access for their users within the Chrome browser. Similarly, Chromebooks already work in this way, so you can load locally stored documents into Docs, Sheets and Slides within the Web browser, whether or not you have a working Internet connection. Your edits will then synchronise back out to cloud storage when connectivity is available again.

For general document creation and editing, Google's offering is very serviceable, and there are clear advantages from the native online nature of G Suite. The various applications also have the ability to import and save back to Office file formats, amongst others - although not always faultlessly, with the formatting compatibility of the Slides to PowerPoint translation being particularly suspect in some cases. In the last year or so, G Suite's version control facilities were enhanced so that different versions can have different names. This also enabled the ability to suggest changes from the smartphone versions.

Gmail is the granddaddy of G Suite applications, and its biggest strength is its Google-powered search, which is as fast and capable as you would expect. A lot of extra features can be added with third-party augmentations. However, by default you can't sort email or group it, which may lead users to turn to a standalone email client such as Thunderbird or (perish the thought) Microsoft Outlook, particularly if they need to access email offline.

The Google Docs word processor is perfectly capable at the core functions of document creation and formatting, but lacks special capabilities such as Word's SmartArt insertion. Some people might prefer the cleaner, simpler interface compared to Word, although this is in large part thanks to having fewer features. There are also more subtle deficiencies that put it behind Microsoft Word. For example, whilst you can easily call up a word and character count, the rolling count in Word's bottom left corner is more streamlined as it doesn't require a menu click.

However, you can extend the capabilities of all the Google Apps via Add-ons, many of which are free. For example, Docs doesn't come with a table of contents facility as standard, but you can add one via an Add-on. There are numerous free Add-ons for bibliographies and citations, which again aren't included as standard. The sophisticated mail merge capabilities of Word don't seem to be replicated, however, although there are Add-on options that will mail merge with an address database held in Sheets.

Whilst word processors reached the point years ago where few people cared which one they were using for basic writing, Google Sheets poses a viable challenge to Excel. It includes capable PivotTable features and lots of functions that parallel those in the Microsoft competitor, although not always with the same name, which will be a bit confusing if you're already an Excel function whizz. The extremely useful VLOOKUP works in a very similar way, however. You can create a similar range of charts, including some of the recent Office additions like waterfall visualisations.

Sheets gains extra power thanks to being hosted online. You can connect other applications to a Google Sheet and draw data from it via an API to use elsewhere. Equally powerful is the ability to set up a Google Form that feeds straight into a Sheet, so you can get users to enter data and have it automatically appear in a handy spreadsheet format. This can allow Sheets to form the hub of a database-driven survey app that outputs dynamically to a web page, for example.

Google Slides is perhaps the weakest of the G Suite apps. It has all the basic needs and again has some benefits from its online nature with the ability to search YouTube directly and insert videos into your presentation. However, the theme and animation options are considerably more pedestrian than PowerPoint's and Apple Keynote's. However, it is now possible for third parties to add custom templates, which improve the design capabilities.

Google G Suite review: Cloud Services and Smartphone Apps

Google was obviously a search company to start with, and the enterprise iterations of G Suite include a Custom Search that places an Explore button at the bottom of application interfaces that provides useful tips but also searches across related documents in your Drive and the Web, allowing you to drag elements into the document you are working on.

There are site-building tools such as My Business that allow you to quickly create a web presence for your company. The Google App Maker, available with Business and Enterprise Editions, takes this further, letting you develop software to automate business processes. Again, Add-ons and extra apps integrate with the main software to provide extra functionality. For example, you can plug in Apogee Leave Management to stitch this conveniently into the Calendar, so any leave booked shows up automatically.

Google's mobile apps provide easy options for working on documents offline and on the move. You will have to tag the files you want to work on offline, so they can be downloaded and stored locally, but after that you can work on them with your smartphone or tablet when there's no Internet connection. The changes will be synchronised back to the cloud next time you have a connection. Like Microsoft's smartphone apps, the features are reduced over the Web-based apps.

Google G Suite review: Verdict

The choice of Google G Suite really depends on how your organisation can work with the need to be online most of the time, and also how much you will need authentic Office-format documents. Switching to a model focused around the cloud is a big cultural change, which could be uncomfortable if your staff tends to work away from reliable network connections.

For some businesses, however, the online aspect has a bonus -- your software is entirely managed, and your technical support needs thereby dramatically reduced. You can get a similar experience with the Business Essentials version of Office 365, which only provides the Web-based software, not desktop. With G Suite, however, all your users need is a working computer running any operating system with an Internet connection and a browser, (which can even be Internet Explorer 6) so there's no software to install. This has made G Suite particularly attractive for education, where the low cost of entry of Chromebooks is an added bonus.

The live collaboration aspects of G Suite are mature and seamless, too. It's very easy to set up a document and have umpteen users work on it together, with their changes reflected in real time as they work. This is something that won't be anywhere near as easy to accomplish with the desktop editions of Microsoft Office applications, despite the recent cloud editing enhancements. However, not all companies need or want to work this way, and the majority are likely used to operating in a more standalone fashion, as they will have done for decades.

In summary, whilst Microsoft Office applications are unquestionably more powerful and fully featured than their G Suite equivalents, the Google alternative has the edge when it comes to uncomplicated cloud-based collaboration. So it's really a matter of "horses for courses" as to which is best for your company. More traditional businesses pumping out Office-format documents regularly will want to stick with the Microsoft choice. But if your employees regularly work together on documents, and particularly if you have a lot of remote workers, G Suite makes this simple to achieve.

Verdict

Google G Suite provides a wealth of cloud-based office software and functionality, particularly for collaboration, but is more problematic if you need to work offline on a regular basis.

Google has announced it'll launch a fundamentally revamped version of Gmail for iOS and Android devices months after rolling out its redesign to users on desktop and web browsers.

A series of new features including nudges and smart replies', in-part powered by machine learning, will be introduced to mobile and tablet devices in the coming weeks as part of Google's wider push to rebrand its suite of productivity apps.

The firm's 'Google Material Theme', which debuted with the new Gmail in 2018, and subsequently in Drive, Calendar and Google Docs, will eventually be incorporated into all G Suite apps, the company announced in a blog post.

"Today, we're kicking off the year with a new look for Gmail on mobile, too. As part of the new design, you can quickly view attachments - like photos - without opening or scrolling through the conversation," said Gmail product manager Nikolus Ray.

"It's also easier to switch between personal and work accounts, so you can access all of your emails without breaking a sweat. And just like on the web, you'll get big, red warnings to alert you when something looks phish-y."

The tech giant issued a redesign of its flagship e-mail service last year to improve the user experience and deploy new technologies and features designed to ease inbox management. These included yellow nudges' prompting users to return or follow-up messages that are untouched for days, as well as high-priority notifications.

But Google isn't the only firm working on fundamental changes to its email service, with Mozilla announcing at the beginning of the year renewed efforts to improve its open source client Thunderbird.

Among the changes highlighted are a redesigned user interface (UI), better stability and smoother Gmail integration.

IT Pro approached Google for further comment and asked for a clearer timetable for the launch of redesigned mobile versions of the remainder of the G Suite.

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Google Docs users were hit yesterday by a phishing attack which lets an attacker obtain contact lists and access Gmail accounts to spread spam messages on a large scale.

Reddit user JakeSteam detailed the process and wrote that the attack was disguised as an email from a person on a user's contact list, which invited them to edit a file in Google Docs. But clicking on the link wouldn't take users to a Google Doc. Instead, it would give a third-party app access to the user's emails and potentially perform a password reset too.

It would then replicate itself by sending emails to the user's contacts. It's also particularly dangerous as it bypasses any 2-factor authentication the user has set up.

Clicking on "Open in Docs" takes users to a new page and prompts them to sign in to continue to "Google Docs". By clicking on its name in "to continue to Google Docs" users were able to detect that it wasn't a genuine Google Doc. It then asked for permission to read, send, delete and manage users' email as well as managing their contacts. You can see this in the gif below:

Google responded to the scam within an hour of it launching and manage to stop it before it got out of hand.

"We realise people are concerned about their Google accounts, and we're now able to give a fuller explanation after further investigation. We have taken action to protect users against an email spam campaign impersonating Google Docs, which affected fewer than 0.1% of Gmail users," a Google spokesperson told IT Pro.

They continued: "We protected users from this attack through a combination of automatic and manual actions, including removing the fake pages and applications, and pushing updates through Safe Browsing, Gmail, and other anti-abuse systems. We were able to stop the campaign within approximately one hour.

"While contact information was accessed and used by the campaign, our investigations show that no other data was exposed. There's no further action users need to take regarding this event; users who want to review third party apps connected to their account can visit Google Security Checkup."

More than one million Google accounts have been compromised by a new authentication-theiving malware campaign called Gooligan, according to security company Check Point.

In a blog post, Check Point said the malware steals authentication tokens from infected Android devices, which can later be used to access Google Play, Gmail, Google Photos, Google Docs, G Suite, Google Drive and other data stored with Google.

The Gooligan malware campaign appears to affect 74% of in-market devices, particularly those running on Android 4 (JellyBean, KitKat) and 5 (Lollipop).

Around 57% of these devices are in Asia and 9% are in Europe. Android users can check whether their account is compromised here.

Check Point suggested that, if an account has been breached, users should carry out a clean installation ("flashing") of the operating system on the affected mobile device. As this is a complicated process, however, the company said users may want to power off the device and ask their mobile service provider or a certified technician to 're-flash' the device.

Check Point also recommended changing all Google account passwords once the "flashing" process is complete.

The security company is working closely with Google to investigate the source of this campaign.

Adrian Ludwig, Google's director of Android security, said: "We're appreciative of both Check Point's research and their partnership as we've worked together to understand these issues. As part of our ongoing efforts to protect users from the Ghost Push family of malware, we've taken numerous steps to protect our users and improve the security of the Android ecosystem overall."

To counteract the malware campaign, Google is reportedly notifying affected accounts, revoking affected tokens and deploying SafetyNet improvements.

Google will enable Android users to access their Google Docs offline, the company revealed this week.

Up until now, customers using smartphones or tablets based on Google's Android mobile operating system (OS) could only get to the documents in the cloud via a Wi-Fi or 3G connection.

Regardless of whether you're connected to the internet, you're always connected to those files.

Now, users can select the documents they want to be able to view offline and access them, regardless of connectivity, via the Google Docs application.

"There may be times when you don't have an internet connection on your Android device, but you still want access to a file you've saved in Google Docs," wrote Freeman Liu, a software engineer at Google, on the company's blog.

"Now you can select any file in Google Docs to make it available offline. So regardless of whether you're connected to the internet, you're always connected to those files."

In addition, whenever the phone or tablet is connected to Wi-Fi, it will automatically update any changes made to the documents to the cloud version. Users can also manually update documents when they have any data connection.

Although these improvements will benefit mobile and tablet users, the prospect of this functionality will be of great importance to users of the ChromeOS. One of the flaws for business users is the inability to access documents without a connection, which would become null and void if this was implemented on Chrome netbooks.

Google has also continued to boost its tablet experience by revamping the Google Docs app for the devices.

Users will now get high definition versions of their documents when they view them on a tablet, as well as being able to use more touchscreen capabilities, such as swiping left to right to move through the documents stored.

"Whether you're offline or online, these improvements will make it easier to be productive from anywhere," added Liu.

Office 365 isn't a new version of the Office desktop suite; it's a cloud service offering the key server-based versions of desktop applications Exchange mail server with Forefront malware and spam protection, SharePoint document management (which can also power a public-facing Web site) and Lync Online for communications (presence, instant messaging and audio and video calls).

This is similar to the BPOS cloud service Microsoft has been running, but it has newer versions of the server-side software that are multi-tenant and (Microsoft claims) better suited to running as a cloud service. You also get online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook and some subscriptions even include the full Office Professional Plus suite. There's also an Office 365 marketplace for third-party tools that work with the service.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both.

Google Apps for Business includes Gmail with Postini spam and malware filtering and basic smartphone management, Calendar and Contacts, Google Docs (including spreadsheets and presentations), Chat, Groups mailing lists, Sites (for both intranet and public Web sites).

There's a control panel for managing users and what they can do with the Google Apps tools. You can also control user access to various other Google services like Picasa (which may get more important as Google combines personal and Google Apps accounts into a single account type) and add third party services from the Google Apps Marketplace.

Office 365 is commonly seen as competing with Google Apps so we decided to look at them both to see how similar the services really are and how they compare to each other.

Administration interface

As cloud services, you manage Google Apps and Office 365 online. Despite the simple layout, the Google Apps control panel is confusing until you learn where everything is. Options are scattered between Domain Settings, Settings, Advanced tools and the various links from the Dashboard tab which duplicate the Settings hierarchy. The Dashboard is also cluttered with adverts for optional tools in the Google App marketplace and adverts for new features.

The Google Apps admin page is cluttered with adverts for new features and third-party tools.

The Office 365 admin console is cleaner and better laid out, with a pane for switching between managing users, services and domain, clear explanations of what the main management tools are for next to the links to manage them. There are also handy shortcuts at the bottom of the window and links to relevant resources and community discussions.

By comparison, the Office 365 dashboard is clear and well laid out; you can see immediately what to do.

Google Apps has two levels of administration rights; the 'super admin' who has full access and admins to whom you can delegate some administration tasks. You can give different users a different mix of rights but you have to remember who can do what.

Office 365 has five named admin roles; you can give someone the rights to manage billing, passwords, users or services if you don't want them to have full admin rights. If you need more granularity, you can also set up administrator roles for Discovery Management, Records Management, UM (Unified Messaging) Management and other tasks in the Exchange Control Panel. It's more complex than Google Apps, but enterprises will welcome having the option.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's administration interface is not only better organised, it's also easier to handle when delegating management rights to others.

Setup and user management

There's a setup guide to get you started on Google Apps which walks you through things like verifying the domain you're using , creating user accounts and changing your MX records to point to Gmail (you need your own domain to use Google Apps). It's mostly clear and simple, but the duplicated instructions and sometimes circuitous inteface make setup a very fragmented experience. Setting up the Postini spam service tells you it may take up to an hour and again you have to change the MX records to redirect mail to the Postini service and configure some settings in Google Apps email by hand - all of which should be far more automated and suggests that Google has still not fully integrated the Postini acquisition with its platform.

Office 365's Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, SharePoint and Lync Online are running by default so all you have to do is create or migrate users. You only need to configure settings if you want to use an optional vanity domain, to get finer control or if you're integrating with on-premise servers. Thankfully the guides to doing this are clear and detailed.

You can create Office 365 users individually assigning admin rights and turning on services for them at the same time - or by importing a CSV file. You can also connect to an existing on-premise Exchange server and migrate users and mailboxes, or synchronise with your Active Directory to manage Office 365 users with roles and policies the same way you manage existing users (so you can delete a user in AD and they're removed from Exchange Online). You even get PowerShell cmdlets that let you configure Office 365 from the command line.

The Forefront rules and filters are very powerful but the interface is more complex.

To create Google Apps users you can set them up one by one in the control panel or import a CSV file - but most enterprises will use the Google Apps Directory Sync to get user details from AD or Lotus Domino, which the setup guide doesn't cover. This is a one-way sync and you have to leave the tool running on your local server and make changes to users in AD and propagate them up to Google Apps. To migrate mailboxes you have to run an Outlook sync utility individually and you can't migrate distribution lists, so you have to recreate them. It's initially confusing which tools you need for synchronising and migrating different information and settings to Google Apps, especially as the help pages often refer to old tools that have been replaced.

What Google Apps calls 'groups' are merely mailing lists. To control who gets which Google services you need to set up organization units. These cover both the core offerings like Gmail and the wide range of other Google tools whose terms and conditions your business will be deemed to have accepted if users from your business sign in with their Google Apps account - so this is mainly useful for disabling access to Picasa or YouTube if you don't want to accept those terms.

If business users sign into other Google services with their Google Apps account, the business is bound by the terms and conditions, so you can block this.

There's a separate option for whether users get access to functions and features from Google Labs, which could be a new option in Gmail or a tool like Google Moderator for managing a question and answer session at a company meeting (it's unclear what happens to these tools as Google recently announced that it is shutting down Google Labs). You can also use organization units to restrict which domains users can send email to, but you can't use them to control any other settings so it's nothing like as powerful as AD groups. You can't delete an organization without moving or deleting the users first, and deleting a user gives you the choice of deleting their documents or moving them to another user.

Both Microsoft and Google promise single sign-on. If you have Active Directory and AFDS 2, Office 365 users can use their Windows login to sign on to the local network (including any business apps you've integrated with that login) and to Office 365 services. Your Google Apps sign in gives you access to all the online Google services (including services that aren't part of Google Apps if the administrator allows this). It's possible to use a SAML bridge and the provisioning API to make that work with your in-house LDAP directory and local apps, but this is far from trivial to set up and it won't work with Google desktop applications.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's product is easier to set up and integrate into your company's existing infrastructure.

Mail server, malware and spam

Office 365 has a simple interface for basic admin options like managing passwords and security groups but you can also use the full Exchange Online interface. This is identical to the Web interface for Exchange Server, so it will be very familiar to Exchange admins. You get a comprehensive set of tools for setting up features like role-based access control, transport rules (such as adding disclaimers to external email) and reports to help you track down any problems along with auditing logs for compliance. If you don't need them then you can stick to the basics and be set up in minutes.

All the key email management features in Office 365 are available through a straightforward interface if you don't want to use the full Exchange interface.

Gmail has vastly fewer options because you don't get to control a mail server, although you do have some control over routing and mail gateway settings. The options are mostly on the level of setting up a vanity URL for users, choosing whether users can use Gmail Labs and chat or allowing Docs results to show up in a Gmail search. With Google looking after the mail server, most businesses won't need more admin options.

There are useful features in Google Apps that aren't turned on by default, and the interface is basic but clear.

Both Google Apps and Office 365 have a mailbox limit of 25GB. There's isn't an archiving option from Gmail, but with Office 365 you have a choice between third-party archiving services or a specific Office 365 plan with unlimited storage for email archiving.

Google Apps for business includes Postini Services for spam and malware detection, but you can't use it is you have multiple domains or if you want to use the Postini Discovery ediscovery and archiving service (in those cases you need to pay for Postini spam services separately). The Postini admin console is separate from the main Google Apps console and has tabs for viewing and deleting or approving messages detected as junk or viruses in the past three days, a week or for as long as it keeps records. The only option for virus blocking is whether you get email notifications that a mail has been quarantined, so you can check and release it if it's a false positive.

For spam you can whitelist individual senders, domains or mailing lists and block specific addresses or domains, set up inbound and outbound content filters for specific words, phrases or patterns and create attachment filters by size or type. You can also choose five levels of spam blocking, from lenient to very aggressive, and use category filters to put more emphasis on blocking explicit, 'racially insensitive' and financial spam. Oddly, IP whitelists to avoid spam filters go under the email settings pane, not in the Postini configuration page.

The Forefront admin console is also separate and has a very different interface from the rest of Office 365; it's powerful but also confusingly complicated for anything except checking quarantined email - we'd like to see this simplified for admins who don't already have Forefront expertise. What you get are the powerful Forefront Online Protection for Exchange (FOPE) tools; not just malware and spam filtering, but options to safelist specific IP addresses, options for auditing and tracing messages and extensive filtering rules for both inbound and outbound email. You can therefore write rules to stop your users emailing out confidential information such as credit card numbers. You can upload dictionary files when you have a lot of values to use in a filter and manage rules by type; there are a lot more options compared to Postini.

Neither service lets you add additional reputation services or real-time block lists, but both let you use SPF for your own reputation - only Google Apps supports DKIM so far.

Winner:Tie. There's no outright winner in this category. Gmail is perfect if you want to get up and running as quickly as possible, while Office 365 provides fine grained controls and capabilities that will suit particularly fastidious organisations.

Mobile management

With Google Apps for Business, you can manage Android devices (as long as they run Android 2.2 or later). You can set a policy that enforces a password of a particular strength and wipe lost devices and users can remotely locate or lock their phone or make it ring. You have to manage rolling out device security as it requires an app users download from Android Marketplace, but turning on device security stops them using Android Marketplace until the app is installed (there's a direct link to get around the chicken and egg problem here).

There's also a connector to allow you to manage BlackBerry users of Google Apps from a BlackBerry Enterprise Server, and options for applying password and other device policies to smartphones using Google Sync or Exchange ActiveSync, which can end up as a confusing mix of management options.

Fine control of smartphone security in an interface that will be familiar to any Exchange administrator.

Office 365 has a more unified and comprehensive approach. Exchange Online gives you the same mobile device management as Exchange Server using ActiveSync Policies which work to some extent on virtually all smartphones including Android, iPhone. BlackBerry and Symbian as well as Windows Mobile and Windows Phone. You can enforce strong passwords and encryption, control individual device features (like Bluetooth), configure sync options like whether attachments can be downloaded on a phone and wipe devices automatically if the password is wrong too many times. You can also block or quarantine specific mobile devices from connecting. Users can even block or wipe their own phones.

Winner: Office 365's unified and comprehensive approach to smartphone management makes it the clear winner here.

Document management

Google Docs has no equivalent to SharePoint Online. Sites is a nice simple tool for creating internal or external Web pages and with Google Docs, you can control whether users can publish or share documents outside the business and whether documents default to being private or public. Otherwise sharing is an ad hoc thing that users control.

SharePoint Online combines workflow, document management and Web publishing and it looks professional straight away.

SharePoint Online combines Web page authoring for external sites with a full document management tool with libraries, lists, templates, discussion tools, shared calendars, RSS feeds, workflow, check in and check out options and version control plus powerful search options. Your Team Site includes pages for every user where they can blog, share links and documents or access their files on the move. Taking advantage of all the options is more complex but it's also far more powerful.

Winner: Office 365 has much more capable sharing features, but these are correspondingly more complicated to manage. If you need them though, then it's worth bearing with.

Chat and talk

Google Chat is the same simple but powerful tool available to the public; users can see presence for Google Apps contacts inside Gmail and start a text, voice or video chat from there once they've downloaded the plug-in. Alternatively they can use the Windows Google Talk software for text and voice chat or file transfer. Management is minimal; you can block chat outside the organisation or just warn users but you can't block file transfers.

Microsoft's Lync Online is more powerful. The extensive management options let you choose whether users can transfer files, make audio or video calls and talk to people outside the business or just colleagues.

Users can see each other's presence and status in Outlook and Outlook Web Access (including information from someone's Exchange calendar), and in any Office app where you're collaborating. It's possible to start a chat, voice or video call from there or from the Lync client. Microsoft is also promising Lync clients from a range of smartphones, offering IM first and voice features later. If you have an in-house PBX you can also set up unified messaging (like dialling phone calls from Outlook) and integrate voicemail with Exchange Online although we weren't able to test this.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging.

Lync Online automatically federates with Windows Messenger and AOL for instant messaging. It can also federate with on-premise Lync servers if permitted by the server admin.

Google Apps can federate with any XMPP service, but to make that work you have to edit the SRV record in your domain by hand (or ask your domain hoster to do it for you), and you then get federation with all the services Google is connected to - you don't get to choose which are allowed or blocked. Similarly, you can allow users to chat with any Gmail or Google Apps user or block them all; you can't pick and choose which Google Apps-using companies they can communicate with and you can't block or allow chat access for specific users (individually or by groups).

Lync Online also incorporates the features of LiveMeeting; you can switch from an IM chat to an online meeting with up to 250 people with audio, video and Web conferencing, and you can schedule meetings in advance through Outlook. If you want to let people phone in to a meeting without needing Lync (customers for example), you can buy an audio conferencing service for Lync Online from BT.

Winner: Office 365. Google App's chat and messaging features are fine for most users, but for more fine-grained controls, Office 365 is better.

Online apps

Online apps like Google Docs are primitive compared to the richness of the full Office suite. In general, the features of the Office Web Apps and Google Docs are broadly similar, but while many like the sparse interface of Google Docs for its simplicity, the Office Web Apps tend to have the edge in sophistication.

Create a PowerPoint presentation in the Office Web Apps and you get good-looking themes and images you place are automatically sized to fit; a Google Docs presentation starts out in plain black and white and the designs aren't as appealing.

The Office 365 Outlook Web App has good self-service features for users (and you only see the admin links if you're an administrator).

Office Web Apps make inserting images from your hard drive the same simple experience it is in a local app. Google Docs gives you a wider choice for inserting images from a URL or a Google image search in a document, but it's a completely different dialog box in a presentation where inserting an image has fewer options and is a clunkier experience. The mismatch of features between different document types in Google Docs is more extreme and more jarring than in the Office Web Apps.

Sharing is better integrated in Google Docs, with a big blue Share button on the page that opens a popup dialog box. The Office Web Apps make you save the document and take you away from the editor to choose who to share it with, and take you back to viewing but not editing the document. This is because Microsoft assumes that you won't share a document until you've finished working on it. Updates appear live in Google Docs; this also happens in the OneNote Web App but the other Microsoft Web apps make you save your own changes to see edits by other users.

There are many features in both Outlook and Outlook Web that are missing from Gmail from macros to Quick Steps. Gmail equivalents tend to have fewer features which some users prefer because they're simpler. Gmail's stars, labels and priority buttons let you do much the same things as Outlook's flags, categories and folders with the advantage that a message can have multiple labels instead of being in only one folder.

You can turn an email into a Gmail task and then make a reminder, although this isn't quite as immediate as setting a follow-up flag for a specific day directly on an email. Filters the Gmail equivalent of Outlook rules have far fewer actions; in Outlook you can play sounds, send an automatic reply or even print a message that matches a rule. Gmail does include all the mostly commonly used ones though such as filing, forwarding and deleting messages.

Google Apps for Business Gmail users finally get the option to request read receipts, but these have to be enabled by the administrator and Gmail doesn't respond to delivery or read receipt requests in emails sent from Exchange. Gmail only shows the request when you close the message (Outlook shows it when you open the message) and you have to decide for each message as Gmail doesn't have Outlook's don't ask me again' checkbox. Even more irritating; if you don't want to send the receipt the button you click is marked not now' and Gmail will ask you again every time you read the message.

Apart from creating resources using Google's complex naming structure, you have only a few controls for calendar sharing.

Google Calendar can include shared resources - like rooms and projectors that need booking - which you create by typing in the details one at a time. Oddly there isn't a drop-down picklist to ensure the resources are given consistent names or a wizard to help with the complex naming conventions Google suggests, so you could end up with six conference rooms and one meeting room if you're not careful. If you follow the convention suggested, all resources that start with the same three letters will be grouped into a hierarchy but you can't do this manually.

Exchange Online has templates for creating resources like rooms (as well as equipment that isn't in a fixed location); you can even say which users can reserve rooms without permission and how often.

The Google Calendar features for end users aren't quite as powerful or complex as in Outlook, but you get the important options like overlaid calendars and recurring appointments. The Quick add tool that lets you type in a sentence, including the day and date of what you need to do, which then sets an event on the right day at the right time is a phenomenal time saver.

Winner: Tie. The Microsoft Web Apps for crediting documents are more sophisticated than Google's equivalents, but Google Docs has better sharing and collaboration features. Exchange Online has a plethorea of configurable options, but many organisations won't need these and may prefer Google's less feature-packed but also less cluttered approach.

Office and working offline

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010, which includes OneNote, Publisher and Access as well as the usual Word, Excel and PowerPoint. You can load and save documents from all of them into the SharePoint Online site included in Office 365 and use the online collaboration features to edit documents at the same time in the main apps.

Depending on which plan you sign up for Office 365 includes download rights for the professional version of Office 2010.

This is a bargain; you get the full power of Office and the back-end servers that enable all the features, from using Information Rights Management to control who can distribute a file to asking people to update a database by replying to email. One great feature for businesses; you can host PowerPoint presentations online and present to a group of people on the Web, letting them ask questions and make comments ideal for training or sales pitches.

Also available are the publicly accessible Office Web Apps; Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote all but PowerPoint let multiple users edit the same document at the same time. SharePoint synchronisation neatly takes care of making documents available offline as well as accessing them from anywhere online.

Although offline access to Gmail and Google Docs (without the deprecated Gears plugin) is still only available to Google employees, Google recognises that offline document access matters. You can run software to sync Outlook with Gmail, Calendar and Contacts, and to move Outlook Notes to Google Docs (though they're read-only, it doesn't sync notes filed in folders - and if you use Outlook on multiple PCs you have to run the tool on all of them because categories, follow-up flags and other settings don't sync fully otherwise).

There's a connector toolbar for Office that lets you sync documents to Google Docs; the latest release fixes many of the problems in the first version, but it's not as polished as the SharePoint integration and converting files into Google Docs for editing online doesn't preserve all document features (the same thing happens when you open an email attachment in Google Docs). You can't edit watermarks, smart art, charts or footers in Office Web Apps, but you can see them in the read-only viewer and they're preserved in the document so you get them back when you open it back in Office. Google Docs doesn't show those details and doesn't keep them if you edit the document. Even fonts and line spacing can change when you move Office documents in and out of Google Docs.

Winner: Office 365. Microsoft's offline support is far from polished, essentially being dependent on SharePoint and subscription access to the full Office suite, but this is also, unsurprisingly, far more capable than Google's cumbersome and crude offline tools.

Service levels and support

The Google Apps dashboard repeatedly told us that there might be a problem with an unspecified Google Apps service; whenever we clicked through to the dashboard all the services showed as having no issues, but seeing the warning virtually all the time was concerning. Office 365 has a similar service health dashboard; neither service had any major outages or failures while we were testing them, but Office 365 didn't keep warning us of non-existent problems.

Despite frequent warnings about a problem, Google Apps didn't record any disruptions to the service.

Both services promise 99.9% availability. Google Apps measures this on a monthly basis with a credit of three days of service if the SLA is not met in a month; Office 365 credits 25%, 50% or 100% of the service cost if the SLA falls below 99.9%, 99% and 95% respectively.

Google Apps has no planned downtime; Office365 does schedule maintenance when usage is likely to be low for example Lync might be unavailable for five minutes at 1am on a Saturday morning and dates and times are listed five days in advance in the support area.

Support is definitely better with Office 365. Support is requested using the admin console and your requests are managed there, but 24-7 phone support is also available with response times from 15 minutes to four hours depending on the severity.

Issues with Office 365 can be broken down by exactly which part of the service is affected.

Google Apps also has 24-7 phone support but only for critical problems that involve more than half your users and affect the Google Apps Web services. If the problem was with mobile emails you'd be stuck with email support, which doesn't cover weekends.

Winner: Office 365, but only just. It's tough to judge how reliable a cloud service is, but Microsoft's technical support has better availability which is reassuring.

Verdict

Google Apps has a flat price of 33 per user per year; Office 365 has a range of prices from 6.50 to 17.75 a month, depending on whether you want Office, Office Web Apps, SharePoint, Lync or archiving it can be more expensive but you can choose what services you want to pay for and there are discounts for volume pricing (including transferring existing Exchange and SharePoint server licences to Office 365).

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux.

Google Apps is in a constant state of flux; the whole service is migrating to a new platform, there are two versions of the control panel available, there are options to give users access to previews of new interfaces and features from Google Labs which itself is going away, with no indication of what happens to the features it provides and new features like return receipts arrive periodically. Getting continuous, instant improvements is one of the benefits of cloud services, but if you're managing the service and supporting users you might prefer Microsoft's approach where updates come at regular intervals and you can choose whether to adopt them immediately or by a specific date.

That underlines one key difference between the two services that has little to do with features; Office 365 has the professional feel of a service planned in advance and designed for administrators; Google Apps has the feel of a service that has grown by leaps and bounds, but sometimes in a rather haphazard way that's not always consistent.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences.

In the end, the two services are both powerful but they suit different audiences. If your business already uses Microsoft tools, Office 365 is the logical progression, giving you server workloads that integrate with and make the most of your existing investments. It's a comprehensive, powerful, end-to-end cloud platform for business that doesn't make you do everything online, which many businesses find a step too far. You can have all the power of Exchange and SharePoint without the bother of configuring and running them.

If you need a mix of on-premise and cloud services, having to manage both Active Directory and the Google Apps control panel is more work than being able to do everything through System Center. Google Apps is a better fit for businesses starting from scratch online with no legacy systems who can benefit from the simplicity without having to keep the service in sync with on-premise tools, but it has definite limits.

MICROSOFT OFFICE 365 SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Operating system: Windows XP SP3 or later; MacOS X Leopard 10.5 or later; Windows Server 2003 or later Office client: Office 2007 SP2; Office 2008 or later; Lync 2010 Administration and Office Web Apps: a modern web browser Active Directory-based features: single forest GOOGLE APPS SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Modern web browser

Unlike Microsoft's latest browser, Mozilla's new Firefox 4 is compatible with Windows XP. This will immediately pique the interest of companies who have yet to migrate to Windows 7, but still want to use a more capable browser than the sluggish and clunky Internet Explorer 8. In any case Firefox 4 is here and you wouldn't mistake it for any previous version of Mozilla's open source browser.

Firefox 4 has a dramatically redesigned user interface that's quite a departure from the one seen in previous versions, but it also bears a striking resemblance to Google Chrome. The tabs now sit above the address bar which, combined with the lack of a menu bar, maximises the amount of screen space devoted to actual web content. A Windows Start menu-style Firefox menu contains the most common menu commands with the Bookmarks menu accessible from the Bookmarks toolbar, if you choose to leave it visible. It's possible to restore a more traditional appearance though, with a menu bar and tabs below the address bar.

Tabbed browsing has been given a makeover with an intriguing new feature called Tab Groups. Multiple windows full of tabs can be managed from a single visual overview without cluttering up your desktop and Task Bar with lots of windows. This is useful if you're addicted to tabbed browsing and juggle tabs related to different tasks and projects. Tabs can be dragged and dropped between groups, groups can named or resized so, for example, more important Tab Groups are bigger than less important ones.

Like Chrome, individual tabs can be 'pinned' so that they can't be closed which is useful for web applications, such as Google Docs, that you might always want accessible. If you start typing the address of a web page that's already open in another tab, Firefox offers to take you to that tab without reloading the page.

Firefox 4 can even use your computer's graphics chip to speed up the rendering of animations and other graphically demanding page elements, although the company has yet to confirm which graphics chips are officially supported.

On a laptop with an Intel GMA 4500M HD integrated graphics chip, Firefox 4 managed a fast 35fps in Microsoft's fish tank animation test with 50 fish onscreen. Chrome 10 was slower, but still smooth, at 25fps while Internet Explorer 9 lagged behind at a sluggish 13fps. The GMA 4500M HD is a widely used chip, so Mozilla's rivals still have some work to do, but it's still early days for hardware accelerated browsing.

A modest but useful improvement is the refined interface for finding, installing and managing the multitude of add-ons available. It uses a larger window that makes better use of the available screen space. Many add-ons will need to be updated by their developers before they'll work with Firefox 4, but the browser automatically disables incompatible ones anyway.

Users of multiple computers may appreciate Firefox Sync which lets you sychronise your bookmarks, history, open tabs and other settings between multiple computers running Firefox 4. It's not a new feature, having previously been available as an optional add-on for previous versions. An intriguing option is the ability to run your own Firefox Sync server if you'd rather not have sensitive business data and settings passing through Mozilla's servers for compliance or commercial reasons.

Privacy-conscious users will be attracted to Firefox's ability to stop websites and advertising networks from tracking them as they browse from site-to-site. However, this feature relies on websites and advertising networks respecting the user's wishes unethical websites and ad providers could still track the user. If you still want to enable this feature, it's tucked away in an obscure corner of the Options dialog box.

So what's our verdict?

Verdict

Firefox 4 is the best version of Mozilla's web browser yet. We're fond of the fast rendering speeds, the useful Tab Groups feature and the interface as a whole, even if it is a little derivative. We also like the broad selection of available add-ons. Although you can't go too far wrong with any of the modern browsers, Firefox 4 is our preferred pick.

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2 Memory: 512MB Graphics: not stated Hard disk: 200MB free hard disk space OS: Windows 2000 or later

Google today launched Discussions, a new element in its premier cloud application, to enable better collaboration in the editing process.

Building on the comments section added to Google Docs last year, Google Discussions introduces a Twitter-style column, with time stamps and profile pictures, so as employees collaborate over a document, feedback is simpler to follow.

Once elements of a discussion have been completed, the comments can be hidden away or "resolved." This means previous conversations aren't lost but removed from the linear stream of correspondence once the issue has been dealt with.

There is also clever email integration, sending notifications when a document has been commented on straight to an inbox, but also allowing the user to reply to a conversation straight from their email editor.

To prevent spamming of notifications, however, there is also the option to turn off the process by either clicking a button at the bottom of an email or using the Discussions drop down menu on the document.

Users can also add people to the discussion though an @ mention of their username or email address, easily bringing people on board and allowing them to see all the previous dialogue.

"Managing content is a full time job [and] we all tend to fall back to email [meaning] the context of the conversation is lost," said Matthew Glotzbach, product management director for Google Enterprise, during the launch at Google's HQ this morning, attended by IT PRO.

"Discussions significantly shortens the feedback cycle and helps users become significantly more productive."

He claimed this type of process could only be done with Google's "100 per cent web" approach and just couldn't happen on a desktop.

Google has released a video to demo the new feature, which we have added below.

Google Discussions will be available to both paid for business users and consumers in the coming days. However, it will only work with newly created documents, so users cannot retrospectively add Discussions to work they have already started.

Google has brought the ability to edit and share Microsoft Office documents to its own Google Docs.

Dubbed Cloud Connect, the move is seen by some as a direct attack on Microsoft's own SharePoint software. The offering enables users to work on Word, PowerPoint or Excel documents in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 or 2010 at the same time in two different locations.

However, unlike Share Point, this add-on for Google Docs is free.

"Millions of businesses are experiencing radical productivity gains with web-powered tools, and today Google Apps collaboration is ready for every employee," Shan Sinha, Google Apps product manager, wrote on the Official Google Enterprise blog.

"You can edit a Word document's table of contents from Dublin while co-workers adjust formatting and make revisions from Denver. Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people's edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together."

However, the system only works on Windows PCs and Google has admitted it is unable to create the same add-on for Mac users.

"Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time," Sinha added.

"We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well."

Google also announced it is to offer a 90-day "Appsperience" to enable businesses to test out whether its Apps model would fit into their corporate environment.

"Appsperience [lets] businesses encumbered with 1990s technology experience modern collaboration and the burst of productivity that's possible now," Sinha said.

"Whether you manage IT for your whole business, lead a department, or manage a complex project like an industry event, a nominal fee covers 90-day unlimited use of Google Apps collaboration plus hands-on support from Google experts."

Google Docs has been made available for smartphone owners, meaning users can edit documents in their mobile browser.

The English-language version will be rolled out for users around the world in the next few days, although it will be limited to Android 2.2 and Apple's iOS 3.0 and above.

This means iPad owners will be able to edit documents while on the move as well, while support for other languages will be added soon.

"With Google Docs, we're always trying to make you more productive - and part of that means making it possible for you to get things done from anywhere, at anytime," said Andrew Grieve, Google software engineer, in a blog.

"It's easy to get started: visit docs.google.com in a browser on a supported device, and select the document you want to edit. Then, when you're viewing it, press the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor."

Edits on Google Docs appear in near real-time, meaning amendments made by other users on the same document will appear almost instantaneously.

Other features include bullet holing, table editing and, if using Android, the ability to add words using voice.

Google Docs is going head to head with Windows Phone 7 Office, which already offers the same capability of mobile document editing.

Even Google would accept that its free Google Docs office suite can't compete with Microsoft's offering feature for feature, but there is one area where it currently reigns supreme: support for real-time collaboration.

Office 2010 changes this, by enabling real-time collaboration, or co-authoring in Microsoft speak, either from the Office desktop applications or the all-new Office 2010 Web Apps.

The background to the latest Microsoft/Google turf war goes back to 2005-2006 and the first wave of web 2.0 applications.

At this point, collaborating with colleagues on a document was a nightmare. Either you had to email documents along a chain, with each author/editor making changes and someone at the end handling the final revision and merge down, or you had to share one copy of a document on a server and expect your users to take turns to access it and edit.

New groupware, communications, server and document management products helped, as did the enhanced revision tracking features introduced to Office over the years. All the same, neither approach was particularly elegant or functional.

Online collaboration

With the initial wave of web 2.0 applications, however, savvy online developers like Zoho, Upstartle, 2Web Technologies and 37Signals realised that the internet could be harnessed to enable a more natural form of collaboration.

If a file is hosted on the web, rather than a local server or desktop, you can allow several users to read to and write from it at once. If everyone can see what everyone else is doing, and there are mechanisms in place to track versions, revert changes and safeguard file integrity, there's no need to take turns to edit or merge changes at the end you can all continue working until everyone (or at least the most senior editor) is happy.

These early applications, still widely used and supported today, have become niche applications, but Upstartle's Writely and 2Web's XL2Web became the foundations of Google's Docs office suite.

Google Docs

With backing from the world's biggest web company, availability from any PC with a browser, integration with Gmail and other Google services, and that attractive free' price-tag, Google Docs was bound to make some waves in the Office software market, but real-time collaboration is widely seen as Google's killer feature.

Last September, an IDC survey noted that one-fifth of respondents replied that Google Docs was widely used in their organisation - but not necessarily at the expense of Microsoft Office.

Instead, IDC believed users within these organisations were using both suites for different purposes, employing Office for its richer feature set and formatting power, and Google Docs to collaborate on files with colleagues.

Despite this, there are questions about how important co-authoring actually is. Is this something that enterprises really need?" says T J Keitt, an analyst for IT research firm Forrester. "I've yet to be convinced that information workers really want to be able to work in the same document at the same time, overwriting each other as they go that's a hassle. What is really needed is a simpler way of doing version controls and version tracking all the rest is window dressing."

All the same, Google's success with real-time collaboration has certainly played a major part in convincing Microsoft to make it a major feature of Office 2010.

For Keitt, this isn't so much a question of co-authoring being the future, as Microsoft defending its turf. "Microsoft has web conferencing, desktop conferencing, instant messaging, and a unified communication solution that ties all of these things to its popular collaboration platform SharePoint and email server Exchange" he explains.

"If anything, they're just putting more distance between themselves and Google in the real-time space, saying, 'Yeah, we have co-authoring covered as well'."

Of course, Google won't take this lying down. The new, updated Docs service it rolled out last month features enhanced collaboration features which are arguably more real-time than Microsoft's.

Co-authoring in Office 2010

One of Microsoft's goals for real-time collaboration in Office 2010 was to make it work as simply and easily as emailing a file or opening one on a server.

As far as the client side goes, it seems to have succeeded. Open a Word, Excel or PowerPoint file on a Sharepoint server and, if someone is already editing it, you'll be notified.

Your co-author(s), meanwhile, will be informed of your presence. Clicking on a button in the bottom left of the application window brings up a dialog listing who is working on the document at the moment, and by clicking on the name you'll open a further dialog with their contact details, and with options to email, phone or IM - providing you both have either Windows Live Messenger or Office Communicator installed.

You'll also find the same information and a contact option in the Info section of the new Office backstage view.

If you want to see what others are doing, it's easy. In PowerPoint, for example, the Slides pane to the left of the main edit pane adds a small icon to a slide when another author is working on it. In Word, meanwhile, paragraphs or objects being edited get colour-coded brackets set against them.

The interesting thing is how Office 2010 chooses to synchronise all the different changes being made. The team deliberately chose not to follow a model where Author X types a sentence or changes a font and the result shows up immediately on Author Y's screen.

"Customers mentioned that their primary obstacle to getting real work done is continuous disruptions and interruptions" said Microsoft's Co-Authoring project leader, Jonathan Bailor, in an interview with Microsoft's News Centre in April.

"Along these lines they mentioned that having their documents change underneath them, without them having any sort of control, would interrupt and disrupt their writing process," he said.

Instead, Microsoft have chosen a save to share' model, where changes are only synchronised when you hit Ctrl-S or click the Save button. At this point, changes you make are uploaded from a local cache on your PC to the master document on the server. At the same time, changes others have uploaded to the master version are downloaded to you.

In short, you're in control of what changes and when. Your colleagues don't see your half-finished notes and fudged formatting efforts before you have a chance to knock them into shape, and you don't constantly have to deal with moving cursors and shifting paragraphs because somebody is adding paragraphs or changing fonts and styles in the section above you.

The one downside is that if you and your co-authors don't save frequently, you can suddenly be surprised by major changes. Despite Microsoft's best efforts, it's going to take some time for teams to learn how to avoid treading on each other's toes.

Of course, there are ways of keeping those toes well protected. Office 2010 gives you the ability to lock off specific areas of a document so that others can't make edits, and use the versioning features built into the Backstage view to revert changes or erase mistakes.

In client-side terms, then, Office co-authoring is simple and effective. The complexity comes in the architecture needed to support it. At the lowest end, Microsoft's collaboration with Facebook, Docs.com, doesn't allow real-time collaboration through its cut-down versions of the Office web-apps.

Instead, the platform for consumers and small businesses looks to be Windows Live SkyDrive, which is closely integrated into Office 2010. It's already the default online repository for files within the desktop Office apps, and it provides Office users with a free way of viewing and editing files either through the desktop Office apps or the new Office 2010 Web apps.

Once Office hits final release, this functionality should extend to co-authoring, though it's worth noting that, if our experience with the Excel web app is anything to go by, it won't be possible to co-author using desktop apps and web apps at the same time.

For SMESs and corporate customers, SharePoint Foundation 2010 and Server 2010 become the platforms of choice, with Office users signing in to a SharePoint site, opening shared documents and working on them from either the desktop or web apps (though again not a mixture of both).

Effectively, this makes Office 2010's co-authoring features not just a selling point for Office, but for the SharePoint infrastructure too.

Again, one of the attractions of this system will be security and control. IT departments used to administering a SharePoint site will have no problems handling users and permissions, and whether they opt for a local SharePoint server or a remote, hosted service, they remain in control at all times.

On the other hand, there's a certain amount of work in uploading, administering and sharing documents using Sharepoint, which can make the process of co-authoring less streamlined than it is with the Google alternative.

Real-time collaboration with Google Docs

It's no surprise that Google's approach to real-time collaboration differs from Microsoft's, mostly because Docs is designed from the ground up to move users away from desktop apps and towards more ubiquitous cloud-based services.

Google Docs is closely tied in to Google's standard Gmail and Calendar services at the low-end and Google's business-focused Apps services above that, and the whole process is less about maintaining tight control over who can access and edit files, and more about making it as easy as possible to collaborate.

The advantage Google has is that team collaboration has always been a focus of the product. "The current tools for collaboration are broken," Google's enterprise product manager Anil Sabharwal told the US website PCMag.com in April, dismissing Microsoft's attempts to compete with Office 2010.

"Office focuses on the individual author. At the heart of every modern workplace is collaboration. We built in collaboration from the ground up. It makes document editing as simple and natural as having a conversation."

In many ways, Sabharwal has a point. There's no need to mess around with shared folders, servers or permissions. Instead, users simply begin a new document, click the Share button at the top-right of the Documents window and select Invite, then add collaborators by typing an email address or choosing them from their Google contacts list.

Your prospective co-authors are contacted by email, and if they have a Google Account or Google Apps account, they can be editing your document within one or two clicks.

They don't even have to have a Google Account if you don't deem it necessary you can use the Get the Link to Share option, email colleagues the link and tick the Allow Anyone with the Link to View and Allow Anyone with the Link to Edit options in the dialog.

Co-authoring in the updated Google Docs works feels a more organic process than it does in Office, in ways that are both good and bad. In the Documents word processor and Spreadsheet apps, changes and edits are rolled out as you make them, virtually in real-time, to everyone currently editing the same document.

In the word processor, what you type will appear as instantly as server traffic and connection speeds allow on your colleagues' screens. Collaboration is supported through a system of colour-coded marks.

In Documents, labelled cursors in up to ten different colours show who exactly is editing what and where, while coloured borders are added to cells in the Spreadsheet app to indicate the same. Even Google's new drawing app follows similar conventions.

What's more, the colours relate directly to the new sidebar, which names the current editors and allows for real-time text chat and commenting. The approach isn't as controlled as in the Microsoft apps it's a bit of a shock to be editing a sentence when a large image suddenly appears on the page but it's very easy to keep track of who's doing what, and the direct approach helps foster a strong collaborative vibe.

On the downside, Google Docs doesn't provide as much control over who edits what and when. In the Spreadsheets app there's an option to protect specific worksheets, but there's no protection for specific sections or elements within a Documents or Presentations file.

On the plus side, versioning is well supported, and you can revert to an older version of a document rapidly and easily.

The victor?

We won't know who wins this particular battle until Microsoft rolls out the web apps proper and support for co-authoring over SkyDrive; something which might not happen until the Office retail release in June. At the moment, both sides have their strengths.

On its side, Google has simplicity, ease-of-access, integrated chat, low costs and browser-based ubiquity, It's a great quick and dirty tool for collaboration. On its side, Microsoft has the familiarity and unbeatable feature set of Office and a close integration with enterprise-level applications and services that the majority of enterprises already know and trust.

While that's the case it's unlikely that Google Docs will eat dramatically into Microsoft's enterprise market share, but all it needs to do is keep a foot in the door.

Microsoft's new co-authoring features mean that organisations can do both offline editing and online co-authoring from within the same package, but when Google Docs works so quickly and so well, that might not be enough to squeeze Google out.

The entire Google Docs suite has been overhauled with real-time collaboration and a host of "much requested" features from rival suites.

Perhaps the most impressive change to the suite is real-time editing collaboration, which allows people to see the character-by-character changes being made by up to 50 other users as they're made. The feature has long been a staple of Google Spreadsheet, but has now made its way to the rest of the suite.

On a more basic level, Google has added a raft of features long found in rivals. These include rulers to set margins within documents, tab stops, and improved image handling, making it easier to shift images and text around.

Google Spreadsheet benefits from a formula bar for cell editing, auto-complete, and a new tabbed interface for simpler navigation between sheets.

Perhaps more significantly, Google claims to have completely redeveloped the underlying Docs platform, as it looks to turn the service into a serious competitor to Microsoft's market-leading dekstop suite.

"They say a house is only as good as its foundation, and we believe the same holds true for web applications like Google Docs," said Jonathan Rochelle, group product manager for Google Docs.

"With our old foundation, we could continue delivering most features you wanted quickly, but over time it became clear that some just weren't possible. So we decided to rebuild the underlying infrastructure of Docs to give us greater flexibility, improved performance and a better platform for developing new features quickly."

In real terms, this should equate to faster loading of complex documents and smoother scrolling.

Anybody looking to trial the new look Google Docs needs to click "New Version" in the top right hand corner of the suite.

Google is adding a new feature to Google Docs that enables users to upload and share files without having to connect to their office network.

Each users of Google Apps will get 1GB of storage and the ability to upload files into Google's cloud of up to 250MB.

It claims to then allow colleagues to securely share, edit and update the file from anywhere.

A blog post from Anil Sabharwal, product manager at Google Docs, said: "Now accessing your work files doesn't require a connection to your internal office network."

"Nor do you need to email files to yourself, carry around a thumbdrive, or use a company network drive - you can access your files using Google Docs from any web-enabled computer."

Google Apps Premier Edition customers will be able to upload files in batches and also buy additional storage from $3.50 per GB per year.

They're the workhorses of modern applications, the ones you couldn't get through your day without. But do we really still need to pay for office productivity suites?

Buying Word, Powerpoint and Excel from Microsoft still costs rather a lot - it's currently around 270 on Amazon.com for the standard version.

But you don't need to pay out, as there are free alternatives. And the competition must be worrying the Redmond giant, as it's set to release its own free, web-based apps alongside Office 2010 next year. (Click here for our review of the technical preview of the web-based Office.)

However, they've got some solid competition. Google Docs will see 30 to 50 updates over the next year, according to president of Google's enterprise division Dave Girouard, who claimed the tweaks will mean businesses can "get rid of Office if they chose to."

It's not just a Google vs Microsoft battle either. Here are our picks for five alternatives web based and otherwise to paying out for an office suite.

Google Docs

To start, there's web-based Google Docs. It offers a spreadsheet, word processor and presentation software, all free of charge.

However, there are some security issues. Everything is saved on Google's servers, which might not bother you, but data has been leaked before. As it's web-hosted, access could be a problem if the system fails which it has for Gmail.

On the upside, Google Docs are accessible from mobile handsets and thanks to Google Gears can now even be used offline.

Google Docs' biggest selling point price aside is collaboration. Documents are easily shared, and can be we worked on at the same time by users, with changes reflected in real time. In addition, your documents are available on any PC with internet access.

Google Docs are already in use by one in five businesses. Though that's presumably in addition to other office suites.

Open Office

This is Microsoft's biggest competition, though it might not be reflected in user numbers. While OpenOffice.org 3 just saw its 100,000,000th download, it has about 13 to 14 per cent of market share on Windows desktops, with Office holding 95 per cent. Obviously some are using both.

Technically called OpenOffice.org for patent reasons the suite was developed off the back of StarOffice, bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999. So it's been around for a while, to say the least.

It's even set to update sooner than Office 2010, with OpenOffice 3.2 expected to arrive in December with Ribbon-like functionality.

One downside is file formats, which still suffer compatibility issues. Others complain about the footprint of the package, as well. And, while technically OpenOffice isn't web-based, Ulteo now offers the suite through a browser.

In fact, that's one of the lovely benefits of OpenOffice.org there are so many variations and add-ons available, including an enterprise-friendly package.

If you don't have Microsoft Office on your PC and don't want to pay up for it, OpenOffice.org is a really solid alternative.

Adobe Acrobat.com

Adobe also has its own web-based documents system. Called Buzzword, it's still in beta but includes a decent set of features. Like everything Adobe, it looks slick and is pretty easy to use.

While there are few keyboard based shortcuts - saving is thankfully one of them - accessing necessary formatting tools is easy thanks to some nice animation. Click the paragraph logo, and the related tools slide out, letting you see all your options.

However, the affiliated spreadsheet and presentations apps are still stuck in the labs.

While they're definitely useful for basics, those with more demanding work might want to stick with a more robust system. On the upside, the Acrobat.com system also includes conferencing software ConnectNow as well as a document sharing system.

Like Google Docs, the web-based Buzzword is excellent for collaboration. The commenting facility is especially nice, so this might be a better tool for when you need to work with someone, rather than for every document you create.

Buzzwords handily imports a fair number of document formats, so it's a good way to share out existing files. Users do need to sign up for a free Acrobat.com account, though.

Also, like Google Docs, everything is saved on Adobe's servers for good or bad. At the moment, there are no plans to take Acrobat.com's apps offline, but that could change in the future.

Zoho

Zoho is another web-based productivity suite. Like Google Docs, it's web-based. There's no offline access, however.

Its document app Zoho Writer is pretty function rich for something technically still in beta.

Zoho features many other online tools. Aside from presentation and spreadsheet tools, it includes email, document management, chat, and a sharing repository. It also offers more business-friendly applications, including CRM, invoicing, reporting and more although these are only free for a limited number of users.

Those extra business tools make Zoho a solid choice for small businesses looking to make use of business intelligence and other systems without forking out a lot of cash. Even if you prefer to use an OS-based office suite for your documents and files, the free software on offer by Zoho is worth a look.

IBM Lotus Symphony

Launched back in 2007, IBM's Lotus Symphony is another option if you're looking for a Microsoft-like, desktop-based solution. Based on an earlier version of the OpenOffice.org code, Lotus Symphony's document editor will seem very familiar to Word users with many of the same shortcuts, too.

It also features spreadsheet and presentation applications, but unlike others they're all in the same place. Click 'new' to open a spreadsheet and it stays in the same window in a separate tab, which should come in handy when you're moving between different document types.

It also has a built-in web browser, which seems a bit strange when you're used to working with a separate one.

As far as user interface goes, it's a bit old school, lacking any slick UI treatment. It also does weird things to the text when you're typing, auto-suggesting words and underlining spelling mistakes before you even finish typing the word. It also renders text strange, making it seem bold as you type, before settling down to how it should be.

IBM has publicly dropped Microsoft Office in favour of Lotus Symphony, but it's hard to see others doing the same with the small troubles Symphony still has especially with OpenOffice.org around.

On the flipside, it's still in version 1.3, so hopefully the next release is a bit better to work with.

Google Docs is now used by one in five businesses, according to a new report published today.

Analyst IDC has released preliminary figures from a survey showing that almost 20 per cent of just short of 300 respondents said Google Docs was used widely within their organisation, with just over a quarter saying it would be by next year.

This is a massive rise from the five per cent IDC reported back in 2007, but the survey didn't detail how extensive the use of Docs was, and what other software was used alongside it.

A spokesperson from Google told IT PRO: "Cloud computing is becoming a reality for more and more businesses. The process of sharing and collaboratively creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations becomes easy and seamless when you adopt web-based services like Google Docs."

"We're thrilled that businesses and users are also discovering the benefits of Google Docs."

The author of the report, IDC analyst Melissa Webster, has warned that if this rate of growth continues Microsoft could be threatened.

However, even with 20 per cent using Google Docs, the survey still showed 97 per cent of respondents are still using Office, so Microsoft is far from defeated yet.

This is not the first time Google has taken on the giant that is Microsoft. Along with the ongoing battle for search engine dominance between Google and Bing and the continuing fight of web browser with IE and Chrome, Google has also announced it will be launching its own operating system to take on the might of Windows.

Read our analysis on how the two companies compare here.

Portsmouth students will be given Google accounts to communicate with each other and their lecturers.

The University of Portsmouth has introduced Google Apps to its near 30,000 students, which means that they will be using services like Gmail, Google Docs as well as instant messaging with Google Talk.

The students will also be able to take advantage of the storage space that Google offers as a cloud-based service.

The university has bought Google Apps Education Edition, which means it is ad-free. Another advantage is the fact that students keep the accounts after they graduate, which could benefit them when it comes to networking for jobs as they can keep in touch with friends and lecturers.

"Switching to a more modern, easy to use system will save students time and make and make communicating with staff and other students a lot easier," said Jacob Leverett, vice president of the Student's Union, in a statement.

"Applications like calendars, messenger and shared documents mean university life is starting to reflect the way students communicate outside of university."

In February, The Guardian News and Media Group spoke to IT PRO about its own implementation of Google Apps.

Google outlined its vision of cloud computing', focusing on business users using the collaborative tools they are used to in their non-working lives.

Dave Armstrong, Google Enterprise's head of product and marketing for EMEA, said that Google were well positioned to offer online consumer tools in the cloud that were better than tools employees often found in the workplace.

Talking at Cloud Expo Europe in London, Armstrong used the example of users sending documents to each other.

He claimed that it often got confusing as they were sent in different formats, which often needed to be converted back into a suitable format for a manager, without any errors.

Consumers were already used to Google Apps, but businesses could also use features such as Google Docs to edit documents without dealing with different versions.

He said: "There are some other things that are unique to cloud computing that we could never do in the past, just as we could never collaborate in that way."

Armstrong revealed two other features that Google was using, both internally and for its enterprise customers, which was made possible by the cloud.

One of them was video conferencing within the browser, which meant that users could communicate with each other simply with an internet connection and a webcam.

He said: "It's interesting because the president of Google Enterprise Dave Gerard was actually flying across the US on American Airlines a couple of days ago, and they now have Wi-Fi on their planes."

"He was able to do a video conference call through a browser on a laptop on a plane for a colleague down in California," he said.

The other feature was real-time translation through instant messaging in 41 different languages, which meant that real-time users could communicate with people from other countries, without needing to know the language.

He said: "It does overcome one of the challenges that we see in our global business, which is that English isn't the native tongue for everyone."

Armstrong also mentioned Gmail's new ability to translate emails into different languages, which he said was difficult to do simply using your own computer as it didn't have enough processing capability.

Google Apps Premier Edition has a new fan in the media world in the form of the Guardian News and Media group.

Google's web-based system is now being used by all employees across the group, which publishes the Guardian and Observer newspapers, letting them use Google's Docs, Calendar, Sites, Video and Talk even while working out of the office. Google Mail will be added later this year, in addition to email security from Postini.

"The way we were doing it before pretty much summed up as word attachments in email'," said Andy Beale, technology director for enterprise operations at the Guardian, who added that the group also used Lotus products for collaboration.

"We recognised this was not a good solution for a long time," he told IT PRO, explaining the company had also tried using newer tools such as wikis. "We very much saw wikis as being a solution but we established it's part of a solution, but not everything."

Beale said it became clear that email would be a key part of the equation, and that office products were a "de facto standard" for modern workers, so he started looking at systems that could offer both.

One consideration was to continue the investment in Lotus, but instead, the Guardian chose to move to Google's technology, because of the ease of use for staff and IT, in addition to the lower cost. "It's a competitive cost model compared to more expensive enterprise software."

While the switch was tied to the Guardian News and Media Group's move to new offices in St Pancras, London, Beale said the idea to use Google Apps came up during the Beijing Olympics last summer. The 30 reporters on the ground used the web-based collaborative tools to do work because they could access them anywhere.

Indeed, when picking new systems, the group had to consider the working habits of its staff. "We had to look at what type of staff we have now, and their expectations of technology," Beale said. "They're not interested in things that take days and weeks to configure or involve the IT department."

No formal training was required across the company for the Google Apps roll out, according to Beale. "People generally just get it," he said. "It is simple to use."

Because everyone already knew how to use the technology, or quickly figured it out on their own, IT staff were able to focus on creating awareness of more specific features, such as encouraging employees to make use of video chat functions rather than take business trips.

Off-site management and hosting does have a number of benefits. But Beale admitted it was initially a challenge moving to a software as a service (SaaS) model, as the data is held elsewhere and it can raise new security concerns. "That took a small amount of introduction and work to make sure we were all comfortable with that data model," he said.

The Gmail roll-out later this year won't be the end of the project. While the next moves are still in the "idea stage", the Guardian plans to take full advantage of its new investment, according to Beale.

"We do see it as a very core product now We will be looking to use the extensibility of it, using gadgets to bring in internal data and workflow type tools with it," he said, adding that he also hopes to migrate the firm's current Lotus Domino collaboration system to a Google version.

The Guardian's move follows one by its rivals at the Telegraph last summer.

That said, Beale believes Google Apps aren't just suited for the world of publishing. "I generally think that there isn't a sector thing going on here," he added.

"Anyone with requirements for group collaboration around information, anyone with a disparate workforce, would find these products useful."

Click here to read IT PRO's review of Google Apps Premier Edition.

Claiming its cloud' email services are more reliable than traditional IT, Google has extended its availability guarantee across all its web-based services.

The firm said it will be extending its 99.9 per cent service level agreement - which is currently offered to Premier Edition users of Gmail - to its Google Apps including Calendar, Docs, Sites and Talk services.

According to data from the Radicati Group, on-premise email solutions such as GroupWise, Lotus and Exchange averaged 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime, on top of 36 to 90 minutes of planned outages. Google claimed its Gmail averaged 10 to 15 minutes of unplanned outages each month over the past year, with no scheduled downtime.

"Looking just at the unplanned outages that catch IT staffs by surprise, these results suggest Gmail is twice as reliable as a Novell GroupWise solution, and four times more reliable than a Microsoft Exchange-based solution that companies must maintain themselves," Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google Enterprise, wrote on [a href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/what-we-learned-from-1-million.html" target="_blank"]the Google blog[a/]. "And higher reliability translates to higher employee productivity."

But the firm did acknowledge the service hasn't been perfect, highlighting a major outage in August. "A very small number of people have unfortunately been subject to some disruption of service that affected them for a few minutes or a few hours. For those users, we are very sorry," wrote Glotzbach.

Indeed, the firm said that with a million businesses using Google Apps and tens of millions using Gmail, any disruption "attracts a disproportional amount of attention."

But Google claimed that when its customers feel pain, it does too. "Google is one of the one million businesses that run on Google Apps, and any service interruption affects our users and our business; our engineers are also some of our most demanding customers," Glotzbach said.

Enterprise adoption of Software as a Service (SaaS) is set to continue to grow, with revenue from such markets doubling by 2012, Gartner has predicted.

The analyst firm said SaaS revenue in enterprise markets will hit $6.4 billion this year, up 27 per cent from 2007. It is on pace to double to $14.8 billion by 2012.

Office suites are the fastest growing areas of SaaS, although Gartner stressed they still had small bases of users. The analyst firm said office suites delivered in this way would grow at an annual compound growth rate of 99 per cent through 2012, with revenue hitting $1.9 billion that year.

Gartner said free web-based applications such as Google Apps, Adobe Buzzword and ThinkFree will make up nine per cent total software market share, but used alongside traditional office suites, such as Microsoft's. That firm has suggested it is set to come out with its own web-friendly version soon.

The largest aspect of SaaS in enterprise is still content, communications and collaboration (CCC), with revenue set to more than double to $4.7 billion by 2012. That's followed by customer relationship managers (CRM), which will rise to $3.2 billion by 2012, Gartner said.

"The popularity of the on-demand deployment model has increased significantly within the last four years. Initial concerns over security, response time, and service availability have diminished for many organisations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become pervasive," said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner.

This popularity is driven by businesses looking to cut their budgets, every-improving broadband services, and the need to quickly roll-out very specific business applications, Gartner said.

"Before IT leaders embark into deploying SaaS, they need to determine where SaaS is most appropriate and advantageous within the organisation's overall sourcing and applications strategy. It is also important that they identify the costs incurred with a SaaS solution to establish whether SaaS is the better choice," added Chris Pang, principal analyst at Gartner.

Taylor Woodrow, the construction, facilities management and engineering services subsidiary of Taylor Wimpey, has transferred all of its 1,800 employees onto Google Apps Premier Edition, saving 1 million in costs and software licence fees.

The firm will now use the free suite of hosted email, word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and calendaring applications, as well as collaboration tools Google Sites and Google Talk at offices across its operations, paying fees to Google for its Premier support package.

Rob Ramsay, Taylor Woodrow director of IT said: "Many of our staff are highly mobile, with around 200 mobile technicians who spend most of their working day at construction sites and client premises. The ability to provide them with access on the move to email, documents, spreadsheets and everything else that comes with Google Apps is something that will help increase productivity."

The firm has been using the Google Search Appliance to manage search and retrieval of documents on its intranet for over two years now and made the decision to move to search giant's entire productivity platform after trialling a Google Site to host online training documentation and videos for employees to familiarise themselves with Google Apps. It said over 1,000 users volunteered to sign up to trial the service prior to the go-live date.

"Our employees can now get in touch with their colleagues easily from whatever location they are working at," said Ramsay. He added it was the mobility Google offers, coupled with the speed of roll-out, the lack of requirement for a physical infrastructure and the pace of new product development that were seen as main the benefits of adoption.

"It also gives our employees access to a system and interface that many of them are already familiar with as a result of their use of Google products at home," he said.

Taylor Woodrow has also deployed Google Message Discovery for email security, content policy management, discovery and archiving services to ensure that employee email is protected and retained, for business continuity and compliance requirements.

"Ensuring that all our emails are protected from threats and stored correctly is something that is important to our business operations," added Ramsay.

The 1-million savings have been calculated on the basis that the productivity suite is hosted, saving on infrastructure-related overheads and because it's subscription-based support costs are inclusive and predictable.

A report claimed spam is back on the increase with levels not experienced since early 2007 - with increased targeting of free hosted services like Google Docs.

The MessageLabs Intelligence Report for May said that levels had reached 76.8 per cent of all emails (71.3 per cent in the UK). It was suggested the high figure was due to changes in tactics by spammers.

The report said there was a move away from reliance on new and undetectable email attachments (switching between image, PDF, MP3, office DOC and XLS spam). The trend was now moving towards taking advantage of open and free mainstream services such as Google Docs and Calendar.

Links to the Google Docs domain were not blocked by traditional spam filters and the environment carried enough bandwidth to host spammer's websites. It was also said to be possible to track their success by the use of Google Analytics.

"The spammers are taking advantage of the fact that these services are free, provide ample bandwidth and are rarely blacklisted," said Mark Sunner, MessageLabs chief security analyst.

"This is one more addition to the growing list of ways the spammers have succeeded in outsmarting traditional detection devices."

Spam levels rose across all industry sectors in May with manufacturing the top for spam activity at 83.7 per cent of all emails. The highest rise was in the non-profit sector, where spam levels grew by seven per cent to 81.3 per cent.