Another chapter has been added to the ongoing cold war between Google and Microsoft. Google has come up with a new tool to give a big advantage to its enterprise business by this latest application that it offers.
Google is offering its corporate clients a tool that facilitates the transfer of mail and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange servers to Google.
In line with the Google Apps For Business (and Education) customers sync services with Outlook and Blackberries and it introduction of a migration tool for users of Lotus Notes last year, it has now come up with Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange.
The main attraction of the announced software is that it allows simultaneous data transfer in email, calendar and contacts, including IM and video conferencing to hundreds of users and not one by one as was being done until now. The applications come in two versions one is an internal version of the browser and the other corporate versions of the software for the users.
It is designed as a centralized tool, with this it will now be possible to make the whole process of migration while users are
working, so that they practically do not realize the changes that are being implemented.
The company is determined to overtake office productivity tools world with this utility. Quoting Google Apps product manager Abhishek Bapna “It’s really fast, and that’s what distinguishes it from other tools.” The tool works with Exchange 2003 and 2007 and is available to customers of Google Apps Premier and Education Edition.
The only place that it lacks is that it does not copy the task lists in the Exchange. Google’s intention with this tool is that more and more companies migrate to the Apps service as most businesses small and (especially) large use MS Exchange servers in-house for email and to store contacts and calendars shared among employees.
This utility allows to transfer all the data to the cloud-based Apps for Business in simple four step process.It is speculated that Microsoft is not far behind in developing a similar application to rival Google’s that allows its customers to take Exchange information easily to the cloud.