Google "outdid" Office 365

The Spanish company Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) rendering different financial services plans deployment of G Suite (before Google Apps) for 110 thousand employees. At the same time the company refuses the former mail systems, including Microsoft Exchange. This project will become the largest implementation of Google Apps in the world, it should be complete until the end of 2012.

The management of BBVA took such step for increase in efficiency of transactions and improvement of interaction between employees in the main office in Spain and more than 20 regional offices. Initially selected cloud platform, and as a result the choice fell on Google Apps.

As a result of BBVA refused use of Microsoft Exchange almost for 35 thousand employees at offices in the territory of Spain, as well as other similar systems applied at offices of bank around the world.

The head of BBVA on global innovations Carmen Lopez Herranz noted that the company was faced by a task not just to replace the platform. "We wanted to change quality of our work. We never approached this project as to simple replacement of a system of e-mail", - she emphasized.

In this project the fact that cost reduction was not one of its purposes is interesting. Microsoft often gets into a disadvantage in comparison with offers of such vendors as Google when one of project requirements is need of cost reduction.

Microsoft offers the packet of cloud communications of Office 365 which is directly competing with Google Apps, as well as with proposals of other suppliers, including IBM Lotus. Publicly the management of Microsoft does not express special concern about approach of Google Apps to its market share yet, noting only that the company is very happy with Office 365 sales, as well as versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Office for deployment in the local area networks of the enterprises.

Commenting on the transaction of BBVA at the request of the Computerworld edition, Microsoft answered that after almost five years' presence in this market, Google needs building of trust from audience and the declaration of the transaction with BBVA one of such attempts. "As the history of Google shows, to catch clients it is one, and to hold them - absolutely another. Performance - our chief helmsman, and results show it", said in the comment of Microsoft

Office 365 can become the most actively sold service in the history of Microsoft while Office 2010 became the most quickly sold consumer version of this product. According to the statement of the company, more than 80 million people use cloud products of Microsoft, including Office 365, his predecessor of BPOS, Office Web Apps and Live@edu.

Nevertheless, the transaction of BBVA and Google is unusual. According to the analyst of Gartner Matthew Cain, the transaction of Google Apps/BBVA is considerable for two reasons. First, today it shows confidence of the large companies at the appeal to Google behind crucial services, such as e-mail. Secondly, it demonstrates expansion of Google to the new industries, such as banking.