Key Differentiators of G Suite Over Other Collaboration Platforms

G Suite's collaborative approach enables a new way of working with higher productivity and efficiency in teamwork. The agile methods of daily collaboration tasks accelerate the output of a company immensely while strengthening its ability to adapt to its customers. The following points concisely differentiate G Suite as a solution over alternative options.

Collaboration-first

Unlike Microsoft 365 where users only get reduced functionality in the browser, G Suite offers the full feature set and rich experience from a singular version. Working in parallel on the same document from any device and from any location becomes the norm. You can add Co-workers to any document instantly with one click. Built-in chat features and comments allow interactive collaboration without "redlining".

You can assign tasks in documents by simply naming the contacts via auto-complete.

From any G Suite application you can simply access chat, gmail, and calendar directly through the sidebar to involve customers, colleagues and external collaborators. The intuitively familiar nature of G Suite has made it easy for people to learn and adopt. You don’t have to deal with a variety of desktop applications and can stay in the browser even when you are offline. 

Fully cloud-based architecture

G Suite data is stored and managed on a network of Google servers hosted in data centers, rather than on local servers or personal computers. Google's global infrastructure offers extremely high levels of availability and reliability, which can be hard to reach with local system components.

No local installation - this massively reduces the effort for IT departments. Updates and new features are "just there" and arrive carefully tested in gradual, easy-to-digest steps. Nevertheless, the IT organization retains control by getting announcements on all updates early on and having the ability to test them on a dedicated, free test instance.

Integration

Google’s history and growth has been based on its ability to deal with vast amounts of data quickly and effectively. You can search all documents and content available in the company quickly and easily with G Suite’s Cloud Search, which leverages the power of Google search to reduce time to find content and also connects to third party/on-premise systems. In addition to Cloud Search, Google Sheets connects directly to other Google Cloud services such as BigQuery (Google's petabyte-scale data warehouse) or third party systems such as SAP or Salesforce.

Automation through Artificial Intelligence

AI and Machine Learning have been Google focus areas for many years with leadership in tools like Search, Assistant, Translate and Google Photos. This expertise and technology is also leveraged in G Suite:

1. Quick Access in Drive automatically suggests documents that you are likely to need, based on calendar entries, drive activity, and other data. This feature halves your average time to find the documents you need.

2. Google Assistant integrated with Calendar (beta) now helps you prepare for your workday with insights on when & where the next meeting is, and keeps you on top of scheduling changes.

3. Smart Compose in Gmail constantly suggests completions of the whole sentence as you type. The completions do not follow simply pre-programmed patterns, but are constructed on-the-fly depending on the context.

4. Smart Reply in Gmail and in Hangouts Chat anticipates possible answers to a message and offers them in the form of a "button" - so no answer must be typed, one click is enough. This feature is extremely popular for fast answers and already delivers more than 10% of email replies on mobile phones.

Gmail uses machine learning not only to display messages by category, but also to detect and automatically filter out malware, phishing and spam emails. With the introduction of machine learning add-on filters users do not need third-party solutions anymore.

Security

Documents and content are encrypted in transfer and at rest. Google's infrastructure is trimmed to the highest level of security at all levels - starting with its data centers, global fiber-optic network, and its pioneering role in encryption techniques (including Postquantum cryptography). Other key points:

2-factor authentication (e.g. with Google's Titan Security Keys) can be configured directly in the G Suite Admin Console.

As a frequently targeted company, Google is exceptionally well prepared against DDoS attacks.

URL filters in the Chrome browser prevent access to phishing or malware sites; Process isolation per tab and automatic updates make Chrome an extremely secure platform. Google'

Chromebooks further reduce the surface for attacks by using the hardened, centrally managed, streamlined operating system Chrome OS.

Cost and ROI

Running the fully cloud, browser-based G Suite creates significantly less cost and effort than other solutions which require software distribution and maintenance of local components. The latest Forrester study surveyed eight large companies using G Suite and identified the following financial benefits:

The average organization in the study achieved sales growth of 1.5% YOY.

Forrester calculated a return on investment of 331% for the transition to G Suite - with a payback period of less than 12 months.

Increased efficiency: Employees have saved an average of 172 hours a year, equivalent to a full month of work.

Risk Mitigation: With G Suite, customers have reduced the risk of data leakage by over 95%, and the cost of countermeasures and remedial action has plummeted.

Savings on IT costs: The reduced need for technical support (-20%), the removal of servers and the replacement of software licenses have significantly reduced IT costs.

The bottom line

The bottom line is that G Suite beats out other emailing solutions across the range of critical factors companies care about. GSuite exceptionally does well about the two key metrics that every company today cares about most: Innovative and Productive. 

G Suite is truly having the impacts on all the other metrics discussed above indicate, it is winning over any collaboration solution it is compared with.