IT pros should be wary of embarking on unified communications projects without doing the necessary networking groundwork first.

At an event about the business benefits of UC, jointly hosted by systems integrator Cisilion and networking company Easynet, delegates were warned that poor network infrastructures could derail their UC plans.

Tim Mabbatt, sales business development manager at Cisco, told the audience collaboration had been redefined to include voice and video.

"Up until two or three years ago, collaboration was very data centric emails, document sharing and that kind of thing, but it [now includes] video and voice. So it is really important, when you develop a collaboration strategy that you consider all those aspects," said Mabbatt.

"Having a comprehensive architecture is really important. Whatever you deliver [in terms of UC software], [you have to make sure] the underlying infrastructure can actually support voice and video. Otherwise, it is like running a Ferrari across a dirt track it is going to feel bumpy and not run very smoothly," he added.

Mabbatt also flagged the importance of the browser in UC deployments.

"We see WebRTC (real time communication) as being a real disruptive technology," said Mabbat. "Effectively what it gives us is the ability to turn any browser into a VI (visual interface) point [and] the expectation is this will have three billion end points by 2016," he said.

"Every browser is suddenly a video end point, so how you actually communicate from a business to consumer standpoint is absolutely transformed."

BT has launched a range of new collaboration services to tap into the growing demand from executives for more efficient ways of communicating.

According to a new global survey, sponsored by BT, executives think they are wasting up to 25 per cent of their time every day because of poor communication and collaboration.

On top of that, there's also a frustration with the restrictions placed by IT departments, particularly when it comes to permitting the use of executives' own devices.

Forty-eight per cent claimed their IT staff did not keep up-to-date with new technology.

Forty-eight per cent of respondents claimed their IT staff did not keep up-to-date with new technology, meaning many business managers are now starting to use platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in defiance of their own teams.

Andrew Small, VP of unified comms at BT said the common theme that emerged from the survey was the desire of managers to use their time more efficiently.

He said the company had reacted to this want by launching a public cloud version of Lync. Small said the offering, which follows on from the launch of an enterprise version, would be launched in the US on 1 November and in the UK during the first quarter of 2013.

One Cloud Lync will integrate several comms streams onto a single platform. So, an organisation's email can be integrated with instant messenger, audio, device-based video, screen-sharing, and interactive white boarding.

And the "presence" feature shows when someone's free or in a meeting. He said that the product offered a single interface to improve the experience.

Another new part of the BT portfolio will be OneVoice Anywhere, a smartphone app that aims to reduce the cost of roaming when working abroad.

It offers executives the ability to make calls from their own device using Wi-Fi. "In one trial in Asia Pacific, we found that phone call costs were were reduced by 40 per cent," said Small.

Apart from the new products, BT is also collaborating with Dolby Laboratories to find ways to improve the sound quality of audio conferences.

"This is a really interesting one," said Small. "It gives spatial awareness to participants in an audio call and that changes the way that people behave on such calls."

He said the new technology meant there was a more natural process. "In an eight-way or ten-way call, there's often a lot of talking over people going on: often the people with the loudest voices get heard while the quiet people, with the interesting viewpoints get isolated. This technology changes that."

Microsoft has added a number of features within Lync client, allowing users the ability to do everything from initiate groups chats to carry out VOIP calls on the move.

Lync 2013 is available to download as a preview, and we take a look at the whether it is worth using this service as opposed to other commercial alternatives.

Instant Messaging and Presence

A key new IM-related feature in Lync 2013 is Group Chat, which was based on the MindAlign product which came from Microsoft's 2007 acquisition of Parlano. Although group chat was available in the previous version, in Lync 2013 it's now fully integrated. In practice, the Group Chat server is easy to install, a huge contrast from the nightmare installation process in earlier versions.

Much like commercial IM products such as Microsoft Live Messenger, AOL IM, Google Talk and Skype, Lync tells you when users login and their status update.

If a colleague or customer is busy, in a meeting or out of the office you can immediately see this via their status and not make potentially expensive call to their voice mail.

The contact features of the Lync 2013 client allow you to group contacts and the software integrates all details from Active Directory, Exchange and Lync itself.

Conferencing

Lync 2013's Conferencing feature enables users to create, participate and moderate both ad-hoc and pre-planned conferences. The Lync client provides the ability to share audio, video, as well as the desktop, white boards, and poll slides. Already a solid feature in Lync 2010, conferencing is now easier to use and manage.

Lync uses open standards such as H.264 SVC, to enable HD video conferencing. Whilst the bandwidth requirements will burn through mobile data allowances, there's no doubting this will be popular for those with high-speed connections in office environments.

Mobility

With Microsoft gearing up for the launch of Windows 8, the client interface has been given an overhauled. The mobile app in particular will be optimised for touch-based use.

Major additions to the mobile edition include the ability to make VOIP and conferencing calls using a smartphone or tablet. Using this from a Wi-Fi hotspot will be useful for those constantly on the move.

Microsoft will make the client available on popular operating systems such as iOS and Android. Of course the firm claims the best experience will be reserved for its own Windows Phone OS.

The demos we have seen of Lync 2013 mobile on a tablet have been impressive. The development team has understood the need to differentiate the features on a tablet and phone. The smartphone client is designed for users in motion, whereas the tablet tends to be used while users are more stationary and consumption of content and meeting attendance are key use cases.

Group chats on tablet are likely to be used frequently by enterprise users. The screen shot demonstrates the typical setup. As a user starts speaking, the Lync client creates a blue halo around their picture to give users a visual cue.

Lync users will be please to hear Microsoft hopes to ship the mobile client at the same time Lync 2013 (unlike the 2010 mobile client which shipped a year after the server).

Enterprise Voice

Enterprise voice, which enables Lync to function as a Private branch exchange (PBX), was first introduced in Office Communications Server 2007 and substantially improved in both OCS 2007 R2 and Lync 2010. Microsoft has improved this further in Lync 2013, even giving Cisco and Avaya products a run for their money.

Enterprise Voice in Lync 2013 includes a wealth of new features but the best one is the one you may never see resilience in the face of failure. The architecture is much improved in order to be more resilient. And should a problem arise, the new architecture enables more features to be available during the outage.

Lync 2013 Architecture Updates

Lync 2013's architecture is complex. Those new to Lync have a bit of a learning curve, but existing users will be delighted with the upgrades.

• All Lync roles can be virtualised, a feature long overdue.
• Users no longer need to run a separate server and separate SQL instance for monitoring and reporting those roles can be co-located on the front end servers. And the gateway to mediation server mapping is now N:M any gateway can, in theory, talk to any gateway.
• The ability to scale out individual sub-roles, partly removed at Lync 2010 is now gone. So you can no longer have a separate pool of A/V conferencing servers or Edge Servers
• SQL clustering is no longer supported. Instead, you use SQL Server mirroring to support disaster recovery and high availability.
• The topology builder tool is much enhanced and is now the key (read ONLY) way to define the topology. It also has been enhanced with more validation to ensure you can't deploy a solution.
• Support for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) an open-standard communications protocol has been built in, along with IPv6 support and Archiving via Exchange.
• With Lync 2013, you can run a hybrid mode splitting users between the cloud (Office 365) and on-premise environments.

Lync 2013 still has a need for a reverse proxy solution as part of the Edge (i.e. DMZ). Without the reverse proxy, a number of Lync use scenarios simply do not work. Sadly, on the day this review was written, Microsoft announced they're dropping the Forefront TMG product most Lync fans would have recommended for this role. And since there is no reverse proxy feature in Lync itself, you will need to have a 3rd party tool, such as Squid.

Overall

Microsoft Lync 2013 is shaping up to be the best edition to date. The client improves key areas such as mobile apps, interface and the back-end.

If you are new to the client and considering implementing Lync, you will almost certainly need training. Microsoft and other training firms will shortly be able to re-deliver the Lync Ignite training. There will also be updated Microsoft Official Curriculum courses and the good news is that they are being written by the product team.

Verdict

Lync 2013 is better than the earlier versions in virtually every way – a new rich client, a simplified architecture, better reliability and fault tolerance and with more immersive and compelling features. Pricing is TBC, but should be similar to Lync 2010 subscription model, making this a must have for large enterprises.

Front end servers: Minimum 2 cpu sockets (8-24 CPU core total) Xeon 5500 series or AMD Opteron 6100(2GHx or higher) 16-GB ram 8 or more SATA or SAS 10k disks SQL Servers - Similar specs to the Front End Director servers -Similar specs to the Front End, but with 8GB Ram OS has to be Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 (currently Server 2012 is not supported although that may change by RTM). Additionally there are a large number of pre-requisite software packages are required, including Windows Identity Foundation and PowerShell V3, .NET 4.5. And for all front end servers, you’ll also need Windows Desktop Experience installed.

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

Retail giant Tesco and tech behemoth Microsoft have penned a contract which will see the supermarket chain purchase plenty of collaboration software.

As Tesco has started growing globally, it has sought better collaboration services to ensure the company does not become too fragmented.

The deal with Microsoft will provide those services, with the SharePoint, Exchange and Lync technologies expected to provide immediate rewards.

"We have lots of colleagues in Tesco, doing lots of jobs all over the world," says Mike McNamara, group chief information officer (CIO) at Tesco.

"These technologies can help bring us together to share learning and expertise, views and opinions, thoughts and ideas."

Tesco will also be able to enjoy access to the Microsoft Services' Enterprise Strategy programme, which will offer advice to the retail firm on delivering projects.

"Tesco is one of the most innovative global retailers and this commitment confirms their position in the industry as a company that is focused on its customers, as well as driven by forward-thinking leaders," said Bill Gonzalez, general manager for the worldwide distribution and services sector at Microsoft.

At the time of publication, Microsoft had not confirmed how much the eight-year deal would be worth.

This kind of deal represents where Microsoft is successful. Its online services division, however, continues to leak money.

In the Redmond giant's recent quarterly results briefing, the division revealed its loss widened to $728 million from $688 million a year ago.