Google today made a significant announcement to take on Microsoft Office in the enterprise world. If you have a qualifying contract for productivity software (Office), such as an Microsoft enterprise agreement, you can use Google Apps at no charge until your old agreement expires. Also, Google will fund deployment services from a participating partner.
In fact, we’re so confident that Docs has all the features you need, without the ones you don’t, that we’re making it even easier to give it a try. If you’re worried about switching to Docs because you still have an enterprise agreement (EA) with another provider, we’ll cover the fees of Google Apps until your contract runs out. We’ll even chip in on some of the deployment costs and set you up for success with one of our Google for Work Partners.
Once your current EA is up, we offer a simple contract with no traps or gotchas. For a lot of businesses, it’s cheaper, too. Our estimates suggest that businesses with basic EAs and no dependencies can potentially unlock savings of up to 70% by switching to Google Apps for Work.
This give away shows that Google is finding it hard to switch enterprise customers to their Google for work platform. Also, Google claims about 70% cost reduction when using Google for Work over Microsoft Office when used for 6 years. That claim is ridiculous. In fact, Office 365 offers cheaper subscription plans that Google for Work and offers better user experience. You can check out Office 365 plans here.