Microsoft's Office 365 For Government Heralds New Google Fight

Nerval's Lobster writes "In a bid to expand the reach of its cloud services, Microsoft has introduced Office 365 for Government, which features the same cloud-based productivity tools as Office 365 but stores data in a segregated community cloud. Google and Microsoft have been locked in vicious battle over the past few years to score cloud contracts for government agencies. Microsoft hopes its support of standards such as ISO 27001, SAS70 Type II, HIPAA, FERPA, and FISMA will help to give it an edge in winning those contracts."

Comments

Re:I'm hoping for microsoft

[hairyfeet]

THIS, this right here, is why I can't understand all the MS office hate. I give LO to my home users but would never think of giving it to my business customers or those with college students, why? because its simply not made for that use case!

Google docs and LO are fine and dandy if all you need to do is make some basic word docs. for that they are fine, great, not a problem in the least. But when you start messing with headers and footers and tables and embedded graphics and change tracking...they just suck! And why shouldn't they? Its not the use case it was designed for! it would be like bitching that economy car can't haul a boat, well duh! Its not made to! Oh and before someone pipes in with "herp derp use PDF" that is a good way to get an F in a class or have your work file 13ed friend, NOBODY takes PDF except printers.

So I honestly don't see why there is any argument here, its like arguing that a screwdriver and a wrench should be used interchangeably. if all you are doing is basic word processing with minimum formatting then frankly you shouldn't be using MS Office, you are just wasting your money when Google Docs or LO will do just as good. But if on the other hand you are dealing with large complex docs then you would be nuts NOT to use MS Office, because Google Docs and LO simply isn't designed for that use case. its really that simple.