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Companies move from Google Workspace to Microsoft 365 when Microsoft’s Office applications, existing work habits, or specific email, calendar, offline-work, security, or deployment requirements fit their needs better. The reasons vary by organization; available customer examples are historical, Microsoft-published accounts—not a current survey showing why companies switch most often.
What reasons have companies given for switching?
Microsoft’s May 13, 2013 announcement described customers that had tried Google Apps—now Google Workspace—and selected Office 365, now Microsoft 365. Those accounts offer examples of individual organizations’ motivations, not a current comparison of the two services.
Familiarity with Office and established workflows
Arysta LifeScience cited employees’ experience with Office applications. Its global head of IT infrastructure, Dustin Collins, said Google Apps “was difficult to use and lacked the capabilities our employees had grown accustomed to in Office.” That statement reflects the company’s assessment at the time, not a finding about today’s products or all users. Microsoft’s 2013 announcement recounts the example.
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The same announcement reported that Arysta employees had difficulty sharing calendars and had limited offline capabilities. It also described SEPCOIII staff as finding Gmail unreliable, calendars cumbersome, and offline use limited. These are reported experiences from 2013; they should not be treated as evidence that current Google Workspace has those shortcomings.
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Security, privacy, and data control
FHI 360 said Office 365 met its security and privacy requirements. The organization’s IT infrastructure director, Douglas Wilkins, said it was important to know where data was stored and to set parameters for who could view it. This is FHI 360’s historical account of its requirements and assessment—not proof that Microsoft 365 is categorically more secure or offers better controls for every organization.
Deployment flexibility
FHI 360 also described a need to combine cloud and in-house deployment because broadband access and cloud availability varied in some locations. That rationale reflects its operating environment at the time; it is not a current feature-by-feature comparison.
Consolidating platforms and adopting AI
A Microsoft customer story dated February 25, 2026, describes PwC’s Microsoft 365 and Copilot rollout as part of a broader modernization and platform-consolidation effort. It does not say PwC switched from Google Workspace. The story reports that PwC moved more than 15 petabytes of data and over 500,000 mailboxes, with migrations limited to about 20,000 users per day on weekends. It also attributes more than $25 million in savings to platform consolidation and $150 million to Copilot use. These are Microsoft-published, PwC-specific case claims—not typical results or savings established for a Workspace-to-Microsoft 365 switch. Read Microsoft’s PwC customer story.
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The clearest direct examples above come from Microsoft’s 2013 customer announcement. They are useful for understanding reasons particular organizations gave, but they are vendor-published and nearly a decade and a half old. They do not establish how common any reason is today, rank switching motives, or demonstrate that one platform is universally better. The PwC story is newer but describes a Microsoft 365 modernization, not a documented move from Google Workspace.
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How to decide whether a switch fits your company
Start with the organization’s actual workflows and requirements, then test the proposed destination against them. The historical accounts can suggest questions to ask, but they cannot answer those questions for a different company today.
- Check Office and document workflows. Identify work that depends on desktop Office applications, complex Office files, or established Microsoft processes. Assess the fit with the current products and the way employees actually work.
- Test email, calendars, and offline needs. Document specific user problems and evaluate both services against real workflows, rather than assuming the historical complaints still apply.
- Map security and administration requirements. List the controls the company needs and check them against the Microsoft 365 plan and configuration it would actually use. A past customer’s assessment is not a substitute for a current requirements review.
- Plan integrations and coexistence. Consider identity, devices, documents, and collaboration tools, including how workloads will operate during transition. Mail and Drive migrations have distinct workstreams.
- Calculate the full change cost. Include licensing, migration work, retraining, support, temporary coexistence, and any retention or records-management changes. The cited sources do not provide an apples-to-apples cost result for a typical switch.
What does a move to Microsoft 365 involve?
Switching is not just copying email. Microsoft’s business migration overview, last updated October 2, 2026, lays out a sequence that includes setting up the destination tenant, preparing users and devices, verifying the business domain, installing apps, migrating mail and calendars, changing mail routing, moving Drive content, and discontinuing Workspace only after the transition. Personal Google Drive files go to OneDrive, while shared-drive files go to SharePoint. See Microsoft’s current migration overview.
Plan for mailbox data and migration limits
Microsoft’s mailbox migration guidance lists mail and rules, calendars, and contacts as supported categories and describes migrating users in batches. It also identifies items that do not transfer or need attention:
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- No more than three email addresses per contact migrate; Gmail tags, contact URLs, and custom tags do not migrate.
- Rules transfer disabled by default and should be reviewed before users enable them.
- Existing messaging-records-management or archive policies can cause items to appear missing in migration checks; Microsoft advises disabling those policies before migration.
These details come from Microsoft’s page last updated August 8, 2024. Check its current instructions before a live migration because tooling and limits can change. Read Microsoft’s mailbox migration guidance.
Keep mail and Drive migration plans distinct
Microsoft’s consolidated guidance, last updated October 31, 2024, described a simplified Gmail migration experience for small and medium businesses with up to 1,000 seats, while larger mail tenants used a large-tenant experience. It also described separate Drive migration to OneDrive and SharePoint, with workload-specific Google Admin Console apps required at that time. Those workflow details may have changed, so verify the current admin-center process before relying on them. Check Microsoft’s consolidated migration guidance.
Before cutover, inventory the information and settings users rely on, confirm what will and will not transfer, and verify migrated content. Schedule mail routing changes and Workspace retirement around the organization’s actual migration and validation plan.
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