Editorial
Microsoft Office 365 is twice as popular as Google’s G Suite in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands — and Europe is leading the global charge on Slack adoption.
Those are just two of the findings from new research from Campbell, Calif.-based cloud security vendor Bitglass, which noted that two out of three organizations are trying Slack in Europe compared to just one in three in the US.
Europe Takes To The Cloud
According to the Bitglass survey Cloud Adoption EMEA, total cloud adoption in Europe is nearly 66 percent, ahead of global cloud adoption (59 percent). This is despite stringent regulatory requirements and wide-ranging security needs. France and the Netherlands lead adoption of cloud productivity apps at 78 percent and 82 percent, respectively.
The findings are based on 8,000 unique EMEA-based company domains and analysis of mail exchange records and custom scripts used in each organization, the cloud apps associated with each domain, and the identity providers used to enable single sign-on.
It shows cloud adoption is on the rise across the globe as more organizations see the benefits of migrating their premises-based applications to cloud environments.
“We looked at EMEA-based companies to compare the region to the rest of the world, to see which productivity apps are most used in these regions, and to explore which industries are driving cloud adoption upward," Eduard Meelhuysen, Bitglass Head of European, Middle East and Africa business for Bitglass told CMSWire.
Office 365 vs. G Suite
The report shows that fears about data privacy persist, impacting on Google’s G Suite deployments. The result is that many enterprises are opting to stick with Microsoft Office365 as they migrate to the cloud preferring to stay in an environment they are familiar with.
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Worldwide, Office 365 adoption is lower than in Europe at 34.8 percent while G Suite adoption sits a bit higher, at 24.5 percent.
Meelhuysen acknowledged the Bitglass research found there is little difference between Office 365 and G Suite in terms of functionality and what workers want on a daily basis. In fact, Meelhuysen believes that the dominance of Office 365 is historical.
“Relatively speaking, Google has just landed. Microsoft has a long history in enterprises here. This means that when an organization wants to move to the cloud it is far easier to stay in the Microsoft environment than move,” he said.
Why Slack?
It also appears that the rise of Slack in Europe has more to do with catching up than it does with any specific technology functionality.
Since the economic crash in 2008, investment in technology has been sluggish in Europe across the board. However, with most economies starting to pick up again, investment and ‘catch-up’ are the order of the day. With communication and collaboration technologies it’s no different.
“We have been behind in the curve where we were lacking communication tools like Slack for many years while the US plowed ahead and invested in the different technologies are they came along,” Meelhuysen said, calling Slack an "obvious choice" because it has already been tried and tested in the US.
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