Closing Out 2012: Top 10 Office 365 Searches, Statistics and News

As the end of the year approaches, I am looking forward to many exciting changes to Office 365 in 2013.  I've talked about them a couple times and even recorded a webinar.  I thought it would be interesting for a change now to talk about where Office 365 has been not just in 2012 but back through it's inception as a replacement for BPOS in 2010.

To start with, I was curious about how Office 365's exploding popularity was embodied in internet searches... and found that Google conveniently tracks those things for us and has a website (Google Trends) that presents exactly what I was looking for.  For those Microsoft hawks, I did try Bing first.  They have a Popular Now page, but it did not have the information I wanted.

So, here's what I found with regards to interest in Office 365 over time:

1. The first searches were in January 2005 but those are probably just flukes.
2. The first real news articles appear in March or April of 2010.  TheStreet.com may have broken the news on the web on 9/12/10.
3. Searches started taking off October 10-16, 2010
4. Peak interest spiked early on 10/17 - 10/23 in 2010, and again to its highest historic level in 2011 between 6/26 and 7/2.  Interest has been steadily gaining throughout the entire period.

Regional interest in Office 365 is fascinating to look at as well.  As you might expect, western countries like the US. UK, and Australia have all been intensely interested in Office 365.  While other English-speaking countries have been interested (South Africa, India, and Canada), the most interest has actually originated in a couple very small countries: New Zealand and Ireland top the chart.  Also interestingly, Dublin and Singapore are the two top cities searching on Office 365.

The terms being searched are about what you might expect:




If you want to compare Office 365 to Google Apps check out this chart:

In it you can see that the search term "Google Business" started out more popular than "Office 365" but that in recent weeks Microsoft has pushed past Google.  With the changes in both services over the last several months this shouldn't be all that surprising.  Consider these recent changes in the industry:

1. Google announced that Google Apps for Business users that wanted true e-mail archiving (putting them on parity roughly with Office 365) would be charged $10/user/month or $120 per user per year.  Previously the pricing was about $60 per year per user for Google Apps for Business.
2. Microsoft has cut pricing recently, reducing even the version of Office 365 that includes a subscription to Office Professional Plus to $20/user/month.  At the low end, you can get Office 365 e-mail only for $4/user/month or the E1 plan for $8.  The Kiosk Worker plans are roughly comparable with Google Apps for Business and start at $4/user/month.
3. The Office 365 platform is about to undergo a major upgrade in Q1 of 2013 and will soon add many more advanced features, a streamlined interface and an even better subscription model for purchasing Microsoft Office... including the new Office 2013.
4. Google has continued to make "interesting" business decisions that alienate their core users.  For instance, they have been aggressively retiring support for internet browsers that many people still use.  They've also recently announced that Google Apps will no longer support Microsoft Activesync, the protocol that enables mobile devices (your phone or tablet) to synchronize their Gmail.  Customers are being forced to manually download e-mail to their devices instead, infuriating and confusing users.
5. Microsoft is increasing the length of their free trials from 30 days to 90 days to help disenfranchised Gmail users make the switch, and more and more we hear that they are indeed doing so.

For more about recent changes in the industry check out the news about Office 365.

In summary, there are an increasing number of good reasons to consider Office 365 for your cloud productivity platform.  It was designed by the world's leader in business productivity software for business users.  Google Apps is an e-mail system afterthought created by a company that developed a web search service for the purposes of getting advertising revenue.

Which would you trust your data with?

Related articles

• Office 365 Gives a Credit... Good Customer Service Follow Service Failure
• Office 365 Service Update for October
• Google Thinks its Time to Ditch Microsoft Office, Customers Say They're Wrong
• Google Apps is no Longer Free

Office 365 Gives a Credit... Good Customer Service Follows Service Failure

This past week wasn't the finest for Microsoft's Office 365 service (see the ZDNet story), but it did give us an opportunity to see how Microsoft handles customer service and exercises their "financially-backed guarantee".

Here's what happened: on November 8th and again on November 13th, some Office 365 customers in North America reported that they were experiencing e-mail problems.  Microsoft then acknowledged that some customers in the Americas had intermittent failures accessing Office 365 e-mail services.  Customers reported various issues ranging from partial to full outages and also for various lengths of time, some for over two hours.

Office 365 is an enterprise service with a 99.9% up time SLA.  There are 30 days in November, 24 hours per day and 60 minutes in an hour... 30 x 24 x 60 = 43,200 minutes (720 hours) in November. 99.9% of 43,200 is 43,157, or just over 719 hours.  That means that if Office 365 was down for an hour or more for your business they missed their 99.9% up time guarantee.

What do you do to get your service credit?  Normally you would need to report the outage and request your credit through the Office 365 portal's Service Request page.  Microsoft would then credit a future bill to compensate for the lost service you paid for.  In this case, though, Microsoft went above and beyond...

Microsoft announced in e-mails to Office 365 service admins (the account holders) the following:

Dear Admin:

The Office 365 team strives to provide exceptional service to all of our customers. On Thursday, November 8 and Tuesday, November 13 we experienced two separate service issues that impacted customers served from our data centers in the Americas. We apologize for the inconvenience these issues caused you and your employees.

We are committed to communicating with our customers in an open and honest manner about service issues and the steps we’re taking to prevent recurrences.

Here are more details about the recent issues:

•

The first service incident occurred on November 8 and resulted in prolonged mail flow delays for many of our customers in North and South America. Office 365 utilizes multiple anti-virus engines to identify and clean virus messages from our customers' inboxes. Going forward, we have built and implemented better recovery tools that allow us to remediate these situations much faster, and we are also adding some additional architectural safeguards that automatically remediate issues of this general nature.

•

On November 13, some customers in North and South America were unable to access email services. This service incident resulted from a combination of issues related to maintenance, network element failures, and increased load on the service. These three issues in combination caused customer access to email services to be degraded for an extended period of time. Significant capacity increases are already underway and we are also adding automated handling on these type of failures to speed recovery time.

Across the organization, we are executing a full review of our processes to proactively identify further actions needed to avoid these situations.

We understand that any disruption in service may result in a disruption to your business. As a gesture of our commitment to ensuring the highest quality service experience Microsoft is changing the standard credit procedure for this incident and is proactively providing your organization a credit equal to 25 percent of your monthly invoice. The credit will appear on a future invoice, and there’s no need to contact Microsoft to receive this credit. Please note, processing of the credit may take as long as 90 days.

If you have additional questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Questions and answers about this and other Office 365 issues can be found at our Office 365 community site.

Thank you for choosing Office 365 to host your business productivity applications. We appreciate the serious responsibility we have as a service provider to you, and we know that any issue with the service is a disruption to your business and that’s not acceptable. We apologize for the inconvenience these issues caused you and your employees.

Thank you,
The Office 365 Team

I don't know for certain that all North America Office 365 accounts were sent this notice, but I didn't notice an outage on either of those days with either of the two separate Office 365 accounts I use daily.  I'm being provided with a service credit apparently even though I didn't report an issue and didn't experience any issues.  I imagine that the service credit is probably for the entire region.

Say what you will about Microsoft.  Everyone messes up sometimes.  I know that e-mail outages are frustrating and sometimes result in a real loss of revenue.  In some cases e-mail is even more critical and lives and careers can depend on it.  Realistically, though, there are alternatives for communication when e-mail goes down:

1. You can still use the phone (even if you don't want to talk)
2. You can temporarily use an alternate e-mail service (Yahoo mail or even those other guys whose name begins with a G)
3. Most businesses still have fax machines - yes... they do.
4. You could use a courier
5. Just wait a while... it WILL come back.

Make sure you hold your vendors accountable though.  It's painful to be without a service they guarantee.  In this case, Microsoft was proactive in their service credit and appears to be taking all the right steps to ensure the issues won't be repeated.  I applaud their efforts.  Someone should give the guy that suggested that a raise.

In other cases, you exercise your objections to outages by demanding your money back (or a credit).  Hit businesses where it hurts... in their wallets.  This is how you encourage good behavior and how services improve... when customers demand it.  Know your rights as a customer and stick up for yourself.  Your vendors won't always treat you with respect and be as proactive as Microsoft was.

Here are some links to the Service Level Agreements for Microsoft's Office 365 and for Google's Apps for Business:

• Office 365: http://microsoftvolumelicensing.com/DocumentSearch.aspx?Mode=3&DocumentTypeId=37
• Google Apps for Business: http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/maps-sla.html

Microsoft promises the following:

Monthly Uptime Percentage	Service Credit
< 99.9%	25%
< 99%	50%
< 95%	100%

Based upon the numbers from the top of this story, there are 43,200 minutes in November and 99% of that is 42,768 minutes or 712.8 hours.  So unless you experienced more than 7.2 hours (43,200-42,768=432/60=7.2) of outage this month you just got the correct credit (25%) without having to submit a ticket.

The cloud isn't perfect.  Is it better than what you could do on your own though?  Could you do better security?  Almost certainly not... I don't care how big or small your organization is.  Could you beat the cost?  I doubt it... calculate the cost of equipment, support engineers (not cheap!), outside consultants, ongoing upgrades, power, cooling, etc.  Oh, then add in the cost of backup software, high-availability across geographically dispersed locations and more.  Can you do that on your own?  At any price?

The cloud is getting better though... and will continue to.  Services improve and I would bet that eventually you will see the SLA guarantees creep up to four-nines (99.99% up time guarantee).  In the meanwhile, though, if you need more up time than you can get from Office 365 you can consider a companion product so that your risk is spread across multiple vendors.  One such product is Mimecast(PDF).  They guarantee 100% up time for your e-mail.  It looks good on paper, but I haven't tried it out yet.  If anyone has experience with the product I'd love to hear about it.

In any case, I think Office 365 is like Democracy.  Everyone says that Democracy is the worst form of government ever conceived... except for all of the others.  Office 365 (and cloud services in general) is still a relatively new service and when it goes down it really stinks.  I think its still much better than the alternatives though.  The calculations that make cloud computing compelling haven't changed.  Hold your vendors to their guarantees, but keep in mind that service is just going to get better.

Related articles

• Microsoft apologizes for recent Office 365 outages
• Microsoft Surface and Office 365
• Office 365 email conks out twice within a week
• Office 365 Home Prem

Google Thinks its Time to Ditch Microsoft Office, Customers Say They're Wrong

Image via CrunchBase

In September, Google announced that Google Apps would cease exporting to the older Microsoft Office document formats: .doc, .xls and .ppt.  The change was to take effect October 1st.  Google Apps would still be able to export to the newer open .docx, xlsx and .pptx file formats, but only Microsoft Office 2003 and newer can open those files without conversion.

On Wednesday of this week after many complaints from its users, Google backpedaled and delayed the deadline to January 31 of 2013.  It shouldn't be a surprise that Google wants to discontinue supporting these older Office formats, Microsoft has been trying to retire older versions of Office for years and will probably accelerate that process even more as Office 2013 nears release.  I'm sure Google would love to have customers remain in and share from Google Apps and stop supporting Microsoft Office exports altogether.

Why you should be concerned...

1. The Google announcement was made with only 4 business days (announcement on 9/26 of the feature change on 10/1) to prepare, and thousands of users and businesses that depend on Google Apps to interact with customers on older versions of Microsoft Office would have been left in the lurch, with no way to collaborate and exchange files.
2. Google provided no transition period and offered little in the way of guidance on alternatives.  They did recommend Microsoft's conversion utility, the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, that enables newer versions of Microsoft Office to read and save to the older file formats.  While this utility could be used to enable conversion for those left in the lurch by Google's change it would require installation of the tool on many computers.

Microsoft gives notice month's ahead of time when it makes changes to applications and then as a matter of routine offers an extended and unsupported time period before a product, format or feature is officially "retired."  As a matter of fact, Microsoft just released Office 2013 compatibility content for the Office Resource Kit... including a nice easy poster (see below) that talks about how to retain compatibility with older Office versions even as Microsoft releases Office 2013.

This is yet another demonstration for why organizations should take a long hard look before depending on Google, a service that was developed by a search company organized to create advertising revenue, to keep and protect their business data and reliably provide critical cloud infrastructure services.

What other Microsoft products could you be using that Google plans to stop supporting?  Internet Explorer 8!

The alternative cloud service from Microsoft, Office 365, continues to gain traction in large and small organizations around the world, announcing new enterprise customers almost daily.  Office 365 provides many more options for customers with packages ranging from some that include features similar to Google Apps all the way up to a suite that comes with a full desktop version of Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010.

With Microsoft releasing new versions of both Office 365 and Microsoft Office (2013) in the next few months, the gap between the features that Google includes in its Apps product and what Microsoft provides should widen even more.  For organizations that demand the state of the art in productivity software there is still only one viable choice in the market, Microsoft.

Similarly to Google Apps, Microsoft's Office 365 is a pay-as-you-go subscription billed monthly and by the number of users.  For a flat monthly fee, users gain access to features including e-mail, a company intranet and instant messaging features among others.  All of the applications are designed specifically for business, not for home users like Google Apps was (see Gmail).  With a history that began with writing software for customers, not selling advertising, Microsoft has a credibility that Google can only wish for.

To try Office 365 visit Microsoft at http://www.office365.com.  To preview the latest upcoming changes with both Office 365 and Office 2013 you can sign up for the preview trial at http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/en/whats-new.

Related articles

• Google Delays End of Export Support for Old Microsoft Office Formats
• Google Docs to support older Microsoft Office formats until Jan. 31
• Google Docs Drops Export Support for Old Microsoft Office Formats
• Google Still Doesn't Get How to Beat Microsoft Office

Google De-Emphasizing Apps?

Image via CrunchBase

Wall Street Journal reporter Clint Boulton blogs that Google is de-emphasizing its efforts in online productivity tools that compete with Microsoft.

They seem to be focusing on their core business of search and increasing the social networking market share of Google+.

The shift in focus is apparent in recent changes of leadership in the Google Apps division and in the black hole in leadership within the division since the departure of long-time vice president of Apps, Dave Girouard.  Girouard isn't the only departure, either.  Several other key employees have left or been reassigned recently.

Do you use Google Apps?  Are you worried about the future of your service and considering alternatives?

See Dave's article at http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/04/09/google-organizational-changes-cloud-the-future-of-apps/.

Related articles

• Google Apps VP Dave Girouard Leaving to Start a Company
• Google's apps for businesses released
• Google Apps guru dumps Choc Factory for sugar daddy
• Google Enterprise chief Girouard heads to startup Upstart.com

Pay for Your Privacy - The Google Conundrum

How much is your privacy worth?  $10 per month?  $25 per month?  Would you just give it away for free?  All of your private data?  Information about what you like?  Your shopping lists?

Giving it away for free is exactly what you're doing when you use Google's products.  Now some people may not care all that much.  Maybe you think it's okay if Google and other big companies know everything about your online activities, but businesses and especially governments need to think again.

Image via CrunchBase

Think this is a whole lot of to do about nothing?  The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) doesn't.  They filed suit against Google on February 8th to try to prevent Google from combining data from across Google's services in to a single profile, making all of your data available to all Google services.  In practice this means that you may see advertisements customized based upon the content of your Google searches.  You may also see advertisements when looking at your photos on Picasa based upon the contents of your e-mail or Google Talk chats.

Picture this: a friend is getting a divorce and asks you to recommend an attorney.  You do a Google search for "divorce attorney."  Later, your spouse goes to read your shared G-Mail account and is presented with a slew of advertisements for divorce attorneys.  Awkward questions ensue...

Another example with photos and instant messaging: you're having a discussion about good times at college with a buddy on Google Talk.  You mention playing drinking games and going to clubs of ill-repute.  Later that day you're sitting with your 5-year old looking at family photos on Picasa and a pop-up ad is targeted at you for Viagra (or something worse).  Mommy, what's Viagra?

privacy (Photo credit: Sean MacEntee)

So let's talk about Google Apps.  Google says that Apps' education, business and government customers are safe and that they won't use their data for advertising.  Apps isn't quite free, but it is a very low cost service.  Where is Google making their money then?  Is it from subscriptions?  Really?  I don't believe Google cares whether people use Apps or not... they're counting on creating new Google search customers.  Even if they aren't directly using the data that organizations store in Google Apps the 900 less-well regulated applications that you use when you're a Google Apps customer aren't covered by their privacy policy.  Don't tell me that Google isn't going to use information from those other apps to choose ads to display to users.

It's a slippery slope.  Get a discount on your cloud e-mail, file storage and sharing but be aware that there is still a cost for using Google's services.  It's your information... your privacy.  That's how you pay for low-cost and free services from Google.

So, am I going to stop using Google services?  This blog was published with Blogger.  I used Google search for some of the references and related articles.  I don't plan to stop any time soon either.  But am I going to trust customer's data to a company that makes 97% or more of their revenue on aggressive search advertising?

Not a chance.

Next time: is Microsoft a better choice for cloud e-mail services than Google?  See you soon!

Related articles

• Q&A: Google to dig deeper into users' lives (msnbc.msn.com)
• Are You In the Dark About Google's New Privacy Policy? (chikg33kstekntoyz.wordpress.com)
• Clock counts down as Google privacy change looms (news.cnet.com)
• Last Ditch Efforts to Halt New Google Privacy Policy (searchenginewatch.com)
• Developments related to Google privacy initiative (seattlepi.com)
• EPIC Files Emergency Appeal Against Google (webpronews.com)
• Google's new privacy policy takes effect (goerie.com)

Dogfooding IT with Office 365

Have you heard the term, "eating your own dog food?"  Microsoft manager Paul Maritz wrote an e-mail in 1988 that created the term and loosely it means... use what you sell.

I took the challenge to heart a while back and decided that if I was going to sell cloud services I needed to use them myself.  This idea really took off for me with Office 365 this year.  As I started talking to more and more clients about the benefits of cloud-based e-mail I first signed up for Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS, the precursor to Office 365) and then the beta of Office 365.  I used BPOS and the beta as test beds to learn the products and to assess their viability for my clients.  I wasn't ready to migrate to them internally yet however.

Eventually, just as Office 365 was releasing my first client wanted to get moving.  I had been talking to them about it for months.  My experience with the beta had been good so we went ahead.  I signed up for the full product and started moving over e-mail at the same time I was installing it for this client and actively selling the product to my other clients.  I figured it was time to eat my own dog food.

So, here's what happened: my client had some growing pains but Office 365 has turned out to be a good solution for them; I've had several other clients express interest and installed it for them successfully; I love using it internally and am recommending it to anyone that listens.  I did learn some lessons though:

1. Doing your research really pays off.  It did for me!  I avoided several land mines by doing a beta assessment first.
2. The entry-level Office 365 SKU (P1) doesn't come with phone support.  It isn't worth the $4/mo savings... get the E1 SKU, you won't regret it.  There's also a 50-user cap for the P1 SKU.
3. You cannot switch from the P1 to E1 SKU.  Tell me it ain't so!  This was a real bummer for me.  I still don't understand why.  I'm sure there's a good technical reason.  You have to do a full migration to move between these SKUs.
4. I know Office 365 is supposed to be easier than self-hosted Exchange, but it's no cakewalk and still requires significant technical knowledge and capability.  Your average tech-savvy client isn't going to do a migration without assistance.  Some of the migration stuff gets pretty complex.  Besides, most businesses just don't *want* to do the administration.  They have other stuff to worry about... like running their business and making money.
5. The amount of money you'll make on Office 365 (aside from ancillary services) is negligible until you get in to hundreds of  deployed licenses.  Don't plan to make your money on monthly recurring revenue.  It's a 6% share per year plus 12% if you're the initial partner of record that signs up the client.  That's a maximum of 18% the first year plus 6% per every year after.  Make your money on services, that's all I can say about it.  It's not nearly as profitable as providing a hosting service if you do that.  If you do provide hosting services plan on this being a big competitor!  Stress the customization options you offer that Office 365 does not.
6. A properly run and well maintained Exchange server doesn't take much more work to service than Office 365.  You'll still get the bulk of your work on user adds/deletes, adding new domain names and aliases and on the user-side support of Outlook.  You just don't need to monitor the hardware any more.  Oh, and you have a new administrative interface to learn.
7. Including Microsoft Office in your Office 365 subscription seems like a good idea and it may be for some clients that have very seasonal workforces.  Do the math before you decide on this course though.  You have other options for subscription based Microsoft Office, like Open Value Subscription and sometimes Services Provider License Agreement (SPLA).
8. There's no private branding or resale of Office 365.  It's 100% direct bill from Microsoft.  You don't get to mark it up.  This makes it hard to include in a fully managed service agreement by the way.  Microsoft really needs to fix this to increase adoption by Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
9. Just like any service IT WILL GO DOWN.  Make sure your clients understand that 99.9% of the possible 8,760 hours in a year equals about 9 hours per year of down time.  That's a full day and then some and it could happen at any time.  Just the same, it's likely to be much more reliable and secure than self-hosted Exchange for most small businesses and may make sense for larger ones as well.
10. It comes with some nifty additional products you may or may not use.  Bear in mind that you don't get as much of each product with each Office 365 SKU so learn your product before you sell it.  Also, don't try to sell Lync to people using Office Communication Server as an onsite VoIP unified communications system.  There's no integration with the public communications infrastructure yet.  That means for right now it's an internal-only system.  Cool, but not blow-me-outta-the-water awesome.

I like Office 365.  I've tried Google Apps and while that worked okay, Office 365 just feels more like a business solution to me.  It's been reliable and pretty easy to set up.  Most days I don't even notice I'm not hosting my own Exchange server any more.  And isn't that the idea?  Apparently, dog food ain't so bad!

Are there any best practices with regard to Office 365 that you've found and I've missed?  How many seats do you have on Office 365 and how has it been as a profit center for your business?  Let us know with your comments!