Google for Work gets a corporate makeover of sorts

Not sure how many people may have noticed this, but Google rebranded their office suite last week and added in a few new features. In this article and some of the comments, I find it interesting to see the take on G Suite vs MS Office. I've used/use both. For most everything I do at home, I use the Google apps. I do maintain a copy of MS Office on my computer for emergency purposes, but I've only had to use it a couple times in the past 6 months. That said, if I were doing some of the more advanced formatting stuff for financial reporting purposes, I'd probably be using MS Office a lot more as that is the area where Google falls behind in my opinion. On the flip side, the collaboration capabilities of the Google apps are much better.


 Perhaps more interesting than my own use is one of Google's apps or MS Office is what is going on with my daughters. Their school is heavily into the Google for Education platform so the teachers use Gmail and Drive for a lot of communication and assignments. So much so that I was able to invest in a couple good Chromebooks this past year for both of them to use for their school work. Thus far we have not run into any issues where they had to go back and use either my Macbook or one of the Windows laptops we have available. I was even impressed with how easy it was to get the Google Cloud Print up and running so they can print to the inkjet printer (although the initial setup of the printer itself was not the easiest).
What I'd really like to do is start testing the Google Apps/G Suite in an enterprise environment to see if we could actually replace MS Office.


Google Work Apps Gain New Powers, But Microsoft Still Rules

This week, Google retooled Google Apps for Work, signaling the company's ever-deepening interest in the enterprise market. It makes sense: the opportunities for growth are enormous, as is the competition. Apple continues to leverage its partnership with IBM to muscle its way in. Facebook will reportedly soon launch its business-focused Facebook at Work.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Perils of Collaboration

Image
I was recently reading an article on collaboration ( Collaborative Overload ) and some of the problems that it can create for an organization. Wait, what? Collaboration is a problem? That may seem like an odd claim in this day and age when we seek ever increasing levels of collaboration and teamwork in our workforces. As the article points out though, there are potential problems out there if the effects of collaboration are not managed effectively. The basic problem with collaboration that is identified by the authors is that demands for collaborative activities - like attending meetings - pulls people away from being able to work on the actual tasks that they have been hired to work on. This creates a cycle requiring them to do things like take work home, which in turn increases stress, which then leads to burnout and turnover.
Read more

Cyber Security for the new employee

Image
This past week Dashlane released a list of cyber security items to go over with new employees. This was meant to help structure the onboarding process. Unfortunately, most of the organizations I have been involved with had weak onboarding processes - I even had to resort to creating my own checklists to make sure everything was covered. So I always enjoy lists like this one from Dashlane. The list covers five items, but each item has more than one sub-item, so the list is actually quite a bit longer and more comprehensive than you might think. As someone who spends a lot of time working with tech, most of this was second-nature to me. However, having supported users I would say there are plenty of people who are not familiar with these concepts, so it would likely help organizations to adopt some of these items into their onboarding process. What New Employees Should Know About Cyber Security from Week One If you're a CEO or IT administrator, you'll need to spruce u...
Read more

A new (to me) acronym - VUCA

Image
I ran across this article a few days ago about a new acronym - VUCA. This stands for: V - volatility U - uncertainty C - complexity A - ambiguity According to the article, we should expect to see more focus on VUCA as a set of considerations when dealing with business challenges or setting strategic goals. I'm sure many of you are familiar with the term - SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) - a tool used to assess where an organization is in relation to the environment (however that may be defined). The VUCA framework reminds me of SWOT, but at a slightly lower level when we are considering specific goals or strategies. One of the things I like that came from the article is the set of tools we can start to deploy or use once we identify where an issue may fall in the VUCA framework.These include things like communication plans or listening skills or collaboration to review possible responses. Using VUCA to Process Organizational Change - hr ...
Read more