What we want to do now is set up office applications for email, documents, slide decks, and other apps like that. We're going to go completely online so as to make our applications easier to manage. In 2025, I think it is safe to say that either Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace will work just fine. These two platforms have pretty good feature parity. If you're a true Excel or PowerPoint guru, that might tip you to using Microsoft 365 or even running these apps locally. But let me tell you why you shouldn't do this.
First, with Excel: If you are processing vast amount of data and are running out of memory in the cloud, it is probably time to move your data into a cloud database and use Tableau or Looker to view the data. Once you're at this level of expertise, you are also probably thinking about wanting to share data around the company. Having a centralized database and a cloud app for viewing and visualizing data makes it easier to have "one version of the truth." When everyone is bringing in their own bespoke spreadsheets, you are going to have arguments over how the sheets work. I think you'd rather be running your business.
The same thing is true for PowerPoint. If you are agonizing over pixel-perfect slides, you're probably wasting your time. Google Slides is a nice "lowest common denominator" for presentations. You can export a Google Slides deck to PowerPoint with very little degradation (I've sone none, except for occassional probems with font replacements).
Here I'm going to talk about Google Workspace.
Another thing I like about Google Workspace is that you can
You're going to need to do three things:
Back in the section "Establish a Corporate Beachhead" I recommended that you register a domain as soon as you have a name for your company. But I didn't explain how.
To manage a Chrome Pixelbook, it's $50 annually per device ($4.16/month).