
Airbus moves 130k employees from Microsoft Office to GSuite - kbyatnal
https://www.geekwire.com/2018/google-picks-another-win-g-suite-airbus-grounds-microsoft-office/
======
redm
I love G-Suite, and I use it daily for documents, sheets, and mail. I can do
most things I need to do in sheets. That said, Sheets is no replacement for
Excel nor is the performance on par for complex and dynamic sheets.

I suspect this is a general change over as a base solution for all employees.
I'm sure there are still parts of Airbus that will continue using Excel, Word,
etc.

IMHO this speaks to the fact that Office is overpowered (or bloated depending
on how you look at it) for average employee needs; perhaps a cost savings
issue too.

~~~
JonathonW
Frankly, Docs, Sheets, and Slides are nowhere even close to Word, Excel, and
Powerpoint in terms of feature set and usability. Sheets especially, but even
in Docs and Slides I'll run into things I can't do.

Where the G-Suite apps _really_ shine, though, is in collaboration. If I'm
working by myself on something, I'll likely do it in Office just because
that's where I'm most comfortable. But literally _everything_ I write for work
happens in G-Suite (mostly Docs, occasionally Slides), because Google makes
simultaneous, real-time collaboration easy and seamless. That's something
Office is only just starting to figure out (and too late).

~~~
Someone1234
Office 365 is though.

\- Microsoft Teams is a [bad] Slack clone.

\- Microsoft Planner is a [bad] Trello clone.

\- Outlook.com instead of the [bad] Outlook Desktop Application

\- Sharepoint online for a CRM

\- OneNote online for a shared scratchpad.

The offline versions of Excel, Word, and Power Point have no online rivals but
for collaboration Office 365 is one to watch. I'd even argue it has pulled
ahead of Gsuite in the last year.

~~~
someoneelse987
I agree with your critique. This is just a hunch but I don't think they are
ahead:

\- Outlook.com must be one of the worst web apps there is. Compared to Gmail
it's just plain awful.

\- Sharepoint is decidedly one of the worst pieces of software ever built,
that is if you are a developer. If you are an editor/content manager then it
is possible it's just fine.

~~~
magnusdeus123
I use Outlook.com as my main email provider. And I'm managing to convince
people to move off've Gmail onto it because of it's streamlined interface.
What do you find wrong in it?

~~~
bassman9000
It's deliberately slow in Linux (applies to all Office products)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13932226)

Issue still happens to me: easy to test switching agents.

~~~
KyeRussell
That’s interesting, especially as that’s not what the link you’ve kindly
referenced says. Congratulations on being able to change the user agent -
Microsoft is _not_ you and has to support decisions it makes. I can see why
there’d be little cause for them to perform Linux testing given the small
market share. So, if you were Microsoft - and not you - would you rather
potentially break the experience for Linux users, or not enable what appears
to be OS/browser specific code that speeds up the experience? Again, calling
this a deliberate slowdown is extremely misleading.

------
neovive
I think G-Suite found the sweet spot on what most users need from office
productivity tools and enhanced it by doubling-down on collaboration.

Regarding advanced usage, I just completed a G-Suite project that leveraged
some of the advanced features of Google Sheets and was quite impressed. If you
haven't done so already, test out the IMPORTHTML/IMPORTXML, IMPORTRANGE,
FILTER and QUERY (with group by and pivot) functions. You can build some very
nice dashboards, pulling data from multiple sources (web, worksheets) and
summarizing into one view. I'll admit that the syntax was peculiar at first,
but once you get used to it, it's very powerful--even without App Script. As a
web developer, IMPORTHTML/IMPORTXML is actually pretty fun.

------
kasperni
No Microsoft fanboy, quite the contrary. But ended up installing Office 365
for my SOs business (~ 30 people) last year. And I'm properly impressed, by
the amount of progress they do. It is a solid offering for very little money.

Yes something like Teams (Slack Clone) might be feel a bit betaish. But they
are starting to add features such as recording of meeting, automatic
transcribing and inline message translation.

I really think they are going to be hard to beat in the future.

~~~
braderhart
Yet they can't even support WebRTC for audio/video in Linux? They are still 5
to 10 years behind everyone else and are a dying company.

~~~
JungleGymSam
Utter nonsense.

------
kozikow
Airbus became a big user of Google cloud some time ago. Airbus made a
presentation on last Google Cloud Next how they migrated core technology
systems for satellite imagery storage and analytics to Google Cloud.

Google Apps are a logical extension, as you can use same accounts for Google
Cloud and email. There are some benefits of the integration - e.g. export
BigQuery result as Google Sheets. They also had a CTO poached from Google.

------
andygcook
Curious if Airbus moving over to GSuite has anything to do with Google
Hangouts Chat launching and being included in GSuite as the final piece of the
puzzle. Google didn't have an answer to Microsoft Teams, but now it does.

~~~
simplyinfinity
Do you imagine a CEO switching a whole company of this size because google
released a new chat app? AFAIK those decisions are planned for a long time &
costs are calculated + lost/gained productivity. What a terrible CEO would
that be if they switched 130k people on a whim.

~~~
jonas21
I can certainly imagine Airbus having a list of requirements that Google would
have to satisfy as part of the contract to switch to GSuite, and it would seem
reasonable that group chat might be on that list.

------
aaronarduino
Hopefully, this will start a trend away from MS Office to other office
programs. Preferably open source solutions.

~~~
golergka
I'm yet to find a single decent alternative to Excel. It's an excellent data
modeling and analysis tool.

And yes, I've learned Python, R and SQL, but these tools are not a replacement
for the Excel workflow.

~~~
braderhart
What features are lacking specifically that LibreOffice, Google Sheets, or
some other cross-platform solution doesn't have?

~~~
bko
Keyboard shortcuts are huge. Also I’m used to the ribbon which I don’t think
they copied yet

~~~
copperx
The ribbon has a software patent, if I remember correctly. Although it's a UI
element, so I'm not sure if it's enforceable?

~~~
paulie_a
I am thankful that the ribbon UI is patented, it prevents that terrible
experience getting more widely implemented

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gbenzzz
I feel sorry for whomever has to administrate that. From an admin perspective,
GSuite doesn't hold a candle to Exchange. What do you mean I can't forward a
users email, set an OOO reply, or give full access without logging in as the
user!?

------
amq
Maybe the main reason is email hosting, with gmail being so ubiquitous? Second
reason could be better integration with mobile platforms. Other than that, one
could think that GSuite is cheaper, but it's really roughly the same.

~~~
NegativeLatency
Collaboration on the Microsoft product is not great compared to Google's
offering.

------
Neracked
It seems strange to use the present tense ("moves to GSuite", "ditches
Microsoft") for a change that should take (at least) 5 to 10 years to
implement.

Also, the change should be to move away from Microsoft Office in favor of
tools suited for the tasks at hand (databases, project-management
applications, bug trackers, requirement management tools...) and only migrate
to GSuite for the subset of tasks where having an office suite makes sense.

~~~
joshuamorton
5 to 10 years? I think you're vastly overestimating the time it takes to do
such a move. Maybe 5-10 _months_.

~~~
thesumofall
People need to be trained, documents moved and converted, business processes
adapted, ... In addition, solutions will have to be found for documents that
exceed GSuite’s capabilities. 10 years? No, but 2-3 years for sure.

~~~
joshuamorton
For 100% adoption sure, but for 95% or even 99% adoption, I doubt that long is
necessary.

~~~
thesumofall
> “We expect it to take up to 18 months to reach every one of our 130,000
> employees but our teams are already starting to work on a plan which will
> involve you and of course our social partners,” said Enders.

------
pkaye
The Google products are awesome in synchronization and collaboration between
multiple users. Way better than the Microsoft Office 365.

~~~
ebikelaw
I think the other commentators are really understating the extent to which
Google beats Microsoft on realtime collaboration. In Office 365 you can see
that someone else has opened the file but you can't see their changes until
they Save which is hilariously retro. Google Docs doesn't even have a Save
button. In Office if someone else makes a change and saves it you get a popup
to merge their changes, or if you save you get a popup to merge your changes
with their saves. That's garbage. In Google Docs you and I can edit the same
_word_ or even the same character at the same time, with all changes reflected
on both sides immediately. No saving, no syncing.

------
thesumofall
How much of a role did licensing fees play and how much of a role the desire
of management to “be modern”? An Office suite is the perfect example of a
software that benefits greatly from the speed, usability, OS integration of a
native application. Collaboration can easily be achieved with Box, SharePoint,
etc. I’m sure there will be employee backlash

------
drumhead
I suspect that certain areas such as Finance might have an exemption from that
rule.

------
mancerayder
Naïve question here: how is Google able to have Docs and Sheets without
getting the crap sued out of them by Microsoft? In a similar way as the
OpenOffice and similar reverse engineering efforts avoided getting attacked?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Sued for... what exactly? Not only do Docs and Sheets have almost nothing in
common with Office besides being... well, an office suite of some sort...
Microsoft's DOCX and XLSX formats were offered up as a standard other
developers can implement, so compatibility isn't a problem either.

------
ajcodez
At a past consulting job the CEO claimed Google was reading his confidential
information in the 00’s and refuses to use anything except Office 365. In his
case confidence that MS will not act improperly is the most important feature.

~~~
snewman
As an engineer working on Docs and related products from inception through
2010: I would be astonished if this were the case. Had such behavior become
known within the engineering team, there would likely have been an uprising.
There was no backdoor mechanism for looking documents, at least on the Docs
(word processing) side, and in any case this sort of thing Was Not Done. My
guess is that things are locked down even more tightly now.

~~~
ajcodez
I use Docs all the time. It's really nice to hear privacy is important to the
team!

------
__m
How can we streamline industrial espionage?

------
rkwasny
Curious if anyone has tried Zoho? how does it compare

~~~
sridharvembu
Zoho CEO here. Please take a look at our Workplace suite (Mail, Cliq, Connect,
Docs & Office suite - collaboration and productivity) and judge it for
yourself. Our Writer (word processor) and Show (presentation) have had major
upgrades recently, and Sheet is getting upgraded too.

------
MindTooth
How to choose between two evils? Guess privacy were not on that list.

~~~
komali2
What sort of loss of privacy would an Enterprise account experience in Office
or gsuite?

~~~
MindTooth
Google or Microsoft makes their money on analytical data. In other words; we
are the product. Not the software.

So what I ment is that they traded one evil for a another one.

~~~
BLanen
You don't know what you're talking about.

Don't just repeat cool sentences that don't apply here.

You're wrong here, ESPECIALLY with microsoft.

~~~
MindTooth
If I am wrong, why do Microsoft collect so much data? An honest question to
you.

------
interfixus
It remains a fair stretch beyond my comprehension how anyone - individual or
100.000+ workforce corporation - could wish to lay their fate and data utterly
in the hands of some third party entity.

~~~
simonsarris
Either you've never actually built anything worthwhile or your sentiment
approaches the people who say "I never trust anyone" without thinking about
what that statement actually means.

Car companies lay their fate of their passengers in third party tire companies
and third party brake companies.

Airplane companies lay their product's fate in the hands of third party
engines.

Airplane passengers lay their fate utterly in the hands of some third party
pilot.

Car drivers lay their fate in car companies and other drivers.

Spreadsheets? Data? Whatever works best right now will do 99.9% of the time.

~~~
interfixus
Yes, clearly every social interaction is based on some level of trust. Your
examples sort of state the obvious.

The point is, I will not drive on shitty tires if I have a reasonable option
of good ones. I will not knowingly fly with a drunk pilot if a sober one is
available.

Airbus - and nearly everyone I know - happily hand over ultimate control of
their data trove to someone else, seemingly without any pressing grounds for
doing so.

And yes, I know that is the way of the world these days, however much I may
bemoan it. Witness the snide and micro-agression even here on HN whenever
someone dares to differ.

