Issue link: https://epubs.iltanet.org/i/9825
Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) offering to Google Apps Premier Edition (GAPE), both in terms of total business value and cost differences in the following key areas: • Service Capabilities • Security • Support • Transition and Migration • Cost SERVICE CAPABILITIES Laws firms depend on rapid communications through e-mail and instant messaging (IM) in ways that increasingly include awareness of a user’s availability and location, as well as the ability for attorneys to work effectively while offline and on mobile devices. As key cost factors and essential business success factors, e-mail and IM are among the primary service capabilities to compare when deciding on a hosted service provider. OUTLOOK CLIENT SUPPORT Microsoft Office Outlook is typically the preferred e-mail client in law firms of all sizes. Therefore, firms that want to use existing deployments and decrease training costs must understand the support requirements for Outlook. Google’s integration with Outlook is a major selling point for its Gmail services. Gmail can synchronize e-mail, the primary calendar and Outlook contacts, but not distribution lists, rich formatting in contacts, tasks, notes, journal entries or follow-up flags and dates. For example in the Outlook Calendar, optional attendees, calendar attachments and rich text formatting are not synchronized using Google. In some cases, Gmail requires attorneys to manage two different inboxes in Outlook. Also, CIOs should be aware that firms’ IT departments will need to deploy client-side connectors on every PC, as well as set up a server to synchronize LDAP with Google Apps for the firm’s Global Address List (which attorneys cannot access or search while offline). Microsoft Exchange-hosted services enable firms to run Exchange in the cloud, on premises, or in a hybrid manner, with a mix of hosted and on-premises solutions. The functionality of Outlook is exactly the same whether Exchange is hosted in the cloud or on premises. OFFLINE CAPABILITIES As a cloud-based solution provider, Google understands that offline capabilities are a big gap in the functionality of its solutions. Google’s answer to this is Google Gears, which provides offline caching capabilities for many of Google’s online services. Google Gears is a browser add-on deployed for all users, and the local data is stored unencrypted. Google Gears provides offline editing of existing word processing documents in Google Apps, but read-only views for spreadsheets and presentations. Attorneys cannot create any new Google Apps-based documents, spreadsheets or presentations when offline. www.iltanet.org Microsoft 35