14 DAY TRIAL // Google is looking into ways to make its own G Suite a more competitive rival to Microsoft’s Office 365, and the company is working on two different projects that could see daylight as soon as this year.
The Information writes that Google is looking into developing an alternative to Microsoft’s Active Directory, and the company is running internal studies to determine how companies manage their employees’ data. G Suite customers have already been asked to provide feedback in this regard, and is believed Google wants to charge $8 a month per employee.
Little is known at this point about the ETA, but the cited source says 2018 is very likely to be the target, though it’s pretty clear everything can change overnight, especially because the project hasn’t been officially announced.
Skype for Business rival
The second new feature that Google is working on could be a competitor to Microsoft’s Skype for Business. The search giant is reportedly calling this feature “Wolverine” and is a modern VoIP service specifically aimed at enterprises who are looking for efficient solutions to route calls inside and outside of the company.
Specifics are not available for the time being, but as it turns out, Google is heading towards the same collaboration and communication approach that Microsoft embraced with its productivity solution.
Wolverine, or whatever it’ll be called when it gets the go-ahead, is expected to see daylight this year as well, probably as an evolved version of Hangouts. Again, some skepticism is recommended since the feature hasn’t been confirmed just yet.
Microsoft is betting big on Office 365, as it’s become one of the main cash cows of the company since Satya Nadella took over the CEO role from Steve Ballmer.
In the first quarter of FY18 alone, Office commercial products and cloud services posted an increase of 10% in revenue to $8.2 billion, with Office 365 commercial revenue alone growing 42% from the previous quarter. There were 28 million consumer subscribers to Office 365.