If you're looking at uptime, which is a pretty big number for any cloud-based system, the Google Enterprise team reported earlier this week that their actual Gmail uptime percentage for 2012 was 99.983% - better than Google's guaranteed 99.9% rate.

"This translates to an average of just over seven minutes of service disruption per month over the last year, and most users experienced no disruption at all," Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering reported.

Curious to see how Microsoft compared, the folks at Cloud Sherpas decided to analyze 151 days of Exchange Online incident reports to get Microsoft's uptime percentage. Their figures were notable: in that measured period, Exchange Online had a 97.929% uptime rate, lower than Microsoft's 99.9% uptime promise.

There are, I would say, a couple of big caveats with this report: first, Cloud Sherpas seems to equate Gmail vs. Exchange stats as a Google Apps vs. Office 365 face off. The last I heard, Gmail was only one part of Google Apps, and Exchange a component of Office 365. Downtime for one does not reflect downtime for all.

Plus, the figures could be cherry picked a bit: Exchange Online was monitored from Sept. 23, 2012 to February 2, 2013, and the reported Gmail figures are from the entire 2012 calendar year, not just the same 151-day timeframe. For all we know, Exchange Online was problem free for all of 2012 until September 22. Or, after January 1 of this year, Gmail tanked a few times.

Google and Microsoft (and their respective proxies) will no doubt be butting heads in this space for quite some time. What is interesting to me are the anecdotal reports I keep hearing from workplaces that have shifted to Google Apps: people love to use Google Apps for collaboration and shared storage, but when documents are actually being created, Microsoft Office is still the tool of choice.

There are no clear winners yet in this space, but for now, there is no getting around the fact that Exchange Online was only up 97.929% for almost half a year, which comes out to just over three days of lost productivity. The infographic below tells Cloud Sherpas' story:

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock.

It's easier to first explain what the different subscription options have in common. All but two – Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise E1 – include desktop versions of Access, Excel, InfoPath, Lync, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, SkyDrivePro and Word. Similarly, each user has the capability to use the service on a total of five PCs or Macs, except for – again – Office 365 Small Business and Enterprise E1.

The differentiator, it seems, lies in the number of users you'd like to authorize. According to Microsoft's pricing page, here are the maximum number of users you can sign up for various Office 365 for Business options:

• Office 365 Small Business and Small Business Premium: 25 users
• Office 365 MidSize Business: 300 users
• Office 365 Enterprise E1 and E3: Unlimited users

The Small Business option offers no desktop applications to install and no mobile app options. Nor does the Enterprise E1 option, though it serves an unlimited number of users, while the Small Business plan is limited to just 25.

I told you it was confusing.

Pricing shakes down to users per month (or sometimes per year, just to keep it nice and complicated).

• Office 365 Small Business: $6/user/month (or $60/user/year)
• Office 365 Small Business Premium: $15/user/month (or $150/user/year)
• Office 365 Enterprise E1: $8/user/month
• Office 365 MidSize Business: $15/user/month
• Office 365 Enterprise E3: $20/user/month

If you're at all interested in an Office 365 option for your workplace, I'd recommend you get out a spreadsheet and start figuring out what plan works best for you. (Though the desktop version of Excel won't be available to you if you're using Office 365 Small Business or Enterprise E1!) Microsoft seems to have crafted a sweet spot for mid-sized businesses, but your mileage will of course vary.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

And there's another consideration, too: Office 2013 is apparently locked to a single machine, perpetually, while Office 365 licenses are sold to a group of users, who can license and de-license PCs at will.

Choosing Which Office Is A Big Decision

These are important considerations for Microsoft Office users. Microsoft is in the middle of its Office 365 launch; Microsoft made the consumer version available on Jan. 29, and the version for small businesses and enterprises will be made available on Feb. 27. Although some consumers may have already made up their mind and opened their wallets, small businesses trying to decide between a traditional Office license and the new Office 365 suite may want to put on the brakes and reconsider their options.

So far, Microsoft has tried a number of strategies to encourage users to sign up for an Office 365 subscription, not the least of which has been pricing. Single consumers will probably gravitate toward the traditional Office 2013 suite, where users can buy a single license of Office 2013 Home & Student for $139.99. In two years, that option will have paid for itself, as Microsoft's Office 365 subscription runs $99.99 per household per year. But for larger households, Office 365 makes more financial sense.

Different Versions Get Treated Diffferently

The problem is that's not the entire equation. Microsoft representatives said this week that updates and upgrades will be treated differently for both products.

"Will Office 2013 customers with traditional licenses get updates with the same frequency as Office 365 Home Premium customers?" I asked in an email.

"No," a Microsoft representative replied. "Office 365 customers will get most updates first, and they will get upgrades and/or new capabilities. Office 2013 customers will get the same updates as Office 365 customers, usually in the form of a service pack, later than Office 365 customers, and they do not get upgrades and/or new capabilities."

The service packs will be rolled out "when needed," the Microsoft representative added. Microsoft will also continue to support Office 2013, as it does all of its products, for ten years.

What's An Update? What's An Upgrade?

Under the Office definitions, new content will be made available to users in the form of updates, minor improvements and patches; and more significant, major upgrades. Fortunately, at least for business users, Microsoft publishes its list of updates and upgrades here. 

Updates happen on a monthly basis; in October, for example, the Office 365 updates consisted of new Office Web Apps, PDF viewing inside the browser, and a new administrator ability to set password expiration dates. In December, the updates were less significant: a rate-limit increase for both Outlook and Exchange.

The 2013 upgrade, however, is more significant. Microsoft explains that it will be rolling out to customers throughout 2013. As you'd expect from a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, the improvements will go on behind the scenes.

The new 2013 upgrade features include, according to Microsoft:

• Wider support for mobile devices, so you and your staff can be more productive in more places.

• Integration between online conferencing, social networks, and email for improved collaboration.

• File sharing and storage in the cloud with SkyDrive Pro.

• Smarter email, calendar and contacts with broader mobile support.
• Improved management capabilities in the redesigned Office 365 admin portal.

SkyDrive Pro will offer businesses roughly the same capabilities as Microsoft's SkyDrive cloud storage, where users can upload documents, photos and other files. SkyDrive Pro will let users share the documents with others in the organization, and help IT admins manage the account. (The sharing features are actually restricted more than the basic SkyDrive content, because of corporate security concerns.)

Microsoft didn't say what it would do regarding security patches; Critical updates will presumably be pushed out on a roughly equal timeframe to both Office 365 as well as Office 2013.

Your Office Is Locked

But there's another consideration, too: With Office 2013, Office copies are apparently locked to one machine, forever. 

Adam Turner at Australia's The Age read through the Office 2013 licensing agreement and discovered that the terms of service for both the version that comes with new computers and retail copies are now the same: Only one computer can contain Office. Unlike with Office 2010, users can't "de-license" the PC and shift the copy to a new machine. Microsoft public-relations officials confirmed the story's accuracy to ReadWrite.

Unfortunately, Turner discovered this only through days of communications with Microsoft's public-relations team, and only after Microsoft's tech-support personnel gave him mixed messages. And Turner wasn't able to discover if the one-copy, one-license provision will be stringently enforced, or if it will end up as another loophole in the Office 365 licensing language. 

So far, Microsoft has used price as the prime lever to push consumers to Office 365. But for customers set on Office who still haven't made up their minds, the lack of timely updates and upgrades should be a major concern for those eyeing Office 2013. The fear of being locked to a single PC could also be an issue for some people. If you're the type of user who demands flexibility, including the latest features, Microsoft keeps coming up with more ways to encourage you to choose Office 365.