Identity

The Anatomy of a Google Workspace Dependency: What Keeps You Locked to Google

Google Workspace is often seen as the lighter-weight alternative to Microsoft 365. Fewer products, simpler licensing, less enterprise complexity. Organisations that chose Google early tend to believe they could switch to something else in a few weeks if they needed to.

That belief rarely survives contact with reality. Google Workspace creates dependencies that are structurally different from Microsoft’s, but just as deep. Some are harder to escape because they are less visible.

The Anatomy of a Microsoft 365 Dependency: What Actually Locks You In

When organisations talk about replacing Microsoft 365, the conversation usually starts with email and ends with “it’s too hard.” But the difficulty is rarely about email. The real lock-in lives in layers most teams never think about until they try to leave.

This post maps the actual anatomy of a Microsoft 365 dependency: the layers that make migration hard, the ones that make it easy, and the ones nobody documents until it is too late.