Google's assault on Microsoft's enterprise software business has continued to advance as the search giant released a new tool that helps companies move away from Exchange.
The Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange tool will launch later today, designed to give Exchange administrators help in moving their users' data into Google Apps. It's all part of Google's pitch for the benefits of cloud computing, which might sound nice to some administrators in theory but can require a lot of work.
Administrators can now download the tool from Google and move 200 users per hour from Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 to Google Apps, including email, contact and calendar data, said Chris Vander May, senior product manager for Google Apps. It will be available for Google Apps Premier Edition customers as well as Google Apps for Education customers.
Just as Microsoft is throwing resources into Bing and internet search in hopes of denting Google's enormous market share, Google is trying to do the same thing to go after Microsoft's huge advantage in office productivity software. Over 25 million users are on Google Apps, according to the company, which sounds like a lot but is a fraction of the businesses still using Microsoft products.
Last year Google released a similar tool for letting administrators enable Google Apps but allowing their users to keep their Outlook clients.
Leave a comment