How Is Google Workspace Different From Enterprise G Suite?

What Is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace is a collection of business tools designed to facilitate administration, content creation, productivity, and collaboration.

It has everything a business requires from documents and spreadsheets to business email and video conferencing software.

For those unfamiliar with Google Workspace, its functionality is similar to Microsoft 365 and is one of its main competitors. However, Google Workspace is a fully cloud and web-based collection of tools, rather than desktop apps.

 Its main advantages over its competitors are its affordability and an extremely generous amount of storage.

What Is G Suite?

G Suite was a former iteration of Google Workspace. The collection of business and productivity tools started life known as Google Apps for Your Domain.

From there it was renamed to simply Google Apps. In 2016 it underwent its transition to become G Suite. Now it has undergone a makeover once again to its current form as Google Workspace.

Google Workspace is the descendent of G Suite and can be considered a rebrand of the same service.

Are Google Workspace and G Suite Functionally The Same?

Yes and no. They are the same service, and Google Workspace is a rebrand of G Suite with almost all the same features. However, this evolution has not merely been a rebrand.

With the advent of Google Workspace, this collection of effective business programmes has undergone some changes, tweaks, expansions, and improvements to those offered by G Suite.

What Improvements Does Google Workspace Offer?

One of the most important improvements is the continued advancements in business security and more security controls on higher payment tiers.

While this is crucial for a cyber security-conscious world, the other core change that we see in the move from G Suite to Google Workspace is integration.

Along with phenomenal storage levels at higher payment tiers and competitive prices, Google Workspace’s other major benefit over competitors is an integrated experience.

Google Workspace is no longer merely a collection of separate useful apps as within G Suite. Google’s big focus has been how these apps work together interchangeably. They have created a unified interface inside Google Workspaces with an evident deeper integration between all its apps. Everything is accessible from one place, so switching between Docs, Sheets, and Google Meet does not feel so segmented. Instead, apps work together to make collaboration and creation a smooth and seamless experience.

It also isn’t merely a general nebulous ambience of interconnectedness. The unified interface is more user-friendly and actually increases productivity. The reason for this is that employees actually spend a surprising amount of time moving between different apps. This may not feel like it takes much time, but it all adds up. In the average company, a worker will swap through roughly 35 essential business apps over 1000 times a day. Having better integration of those apps can, therefore, save your staff time and increase their productivity.

The original set of tools included Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator. Over time, it expanded to include Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Google Drive, Google Chat, and Meet.

The best example of this heightened integration is Google’s ever-increasing emphasis on remote teams and facilitating collaboration.

Google Workspace now allows Google Meet, Google Chat, and Google Rooms to be more tightly integrated with its other apps, such as Docs and Sheets. Staff can even:

• Create documents directly within the Chat app
• Preview linked files in Docs, Sheets, and Slides
• Collaborate on a document without having to open it in a new tab
• View contact details inside Workspace documents. (Whenever you @ someone in a document, Workspace will launch a smart chip, allowing you to start an email or video call to them, even if they are outside your organisation.)

Google will continue this trend as it improves the Workspace Suite of tools. Google Meet will allow picture-in-picture to Gmail and Chat, enabling staff to see and hear each other while collaborating on Docs.