Microsoft vs. Google vs. Amazon:  What’s The Best Platform For Your RIA?  RIA Tech Talk Episode #4

Hello. Hello and welcome to the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by RIA Workspace. I’m Todd Darroca, and of course, alongside me is your very truly owned David Kakish. And together we’re on a mission to simplify the complex world of technology for RIAs just like yours. So in this podcast, we’ll be your tech guides, breaking down those often confusing tech topics into that plain good old practical terms for you. Join us in each episode as we dive into the latest tech trends. We’ll share our expert insights and help you navigate the ever-changing world of the RIA technology. Let’s get started. Of course. David, welcome back. How’s everything going? You doing all right?

David Kakish (01:22):

I am fantastic, and I love how you introduced me. I feel like a celebrity. So thank you, Todd.

Todd W. Darroca (01:27):

You are the celebrity of the RIA world, so we’ll do some meet and greets soon. When you go out to do conferences, we’ll have a meet and greet panel. But hey, so yeah, so Dave, what are we talking about today? What’s the big topic for today’s audience?

David Kakish (01:41):

The big topic is Microsoft versus Google versus Amazon. What’s the best platform for your RIA and just for good measure? We’ll also throw in Apple and talk about Apple too. I think I’d like to start out with the really big problem or the really big challenge for RIAs is that there’s a lot of a, you’re really good at managing money and running an RIA, not necessarily being an IT professional or a technologist. And there’s just so much conflicting and confusing information out there. And the really big challenge is everybody talks about Microsoft and Amazon and Google and Apple and the cloud platforms, but all that is good and dandy. But what does that mean to me when I have an RIA with five employees, 10 employees, 25 employees, right? What’s the predominant technology and why? And right off the bat, I’m going to say we’re pretty, or at least I’m very vendor agnostic, and we’re going to share with you real world experience and expertise.

(02:38):

Like, Hey, what’s the best platform for your RIA? And there is one, and I’m going to tell you why. But again, we focus a lot on, let’s just say RIAs with five to 25 employees. You could be less, you could be more, but the same applies. We’re not in the business of working with banks and financial institutions with hundreds or thousands of employees. So we’re very focused on this segment and we’re going to talk about the pros and cons of each platform. We’re going to be very transparent, and as I said, there is a clear winner. I don’t want to say who it is yet. And then just for fun, we’ll geek out a little bit too. Not too much, but just enough so we have a little bit of fun. Awesome. So Todd, I guess I want to start with you. I want to share my expertise in real world, what we see out there. But when I ask you this question, what are your first impressions when I talk about Google versus Microsoft versus Amazon? What comes to mind when I ask you that question?

Todd W. Darroca (03:36):

So me being a small business owner myself too. Every single client I work with, everyone’s different. They’ve got either Google or they’ve got Microsoft. I don’t have many, and I don’t use Amazon more than shopping. So honestly, I didn’t realize that Amazon, besides Amazon Web services, there’s a full on productivity suite. So when I think about Google, honestly, I always worry about security. And I’m not trying to make go on the storyline, but I do. There are some parts of me because as a marketer in my small business, I always am like, how much are they tracking of me? Is my documentation really secure? Is this the safest place to put it? So that’s always the first question I have with Google. When I go to Microsoft, I will say I feel safe because many of the companies I work with, that’s all they use is Microsoft Teams because it is more secured and all that stuff. But the negative connotation I have with that is, oh, s locked, it’s old, it’s heavy, and it doesn’t play well with an Apple person like me. So obviously there are things I can do on Apple, but not so much. So that’s kind of the first, when I think about those things. And honestly, I don’t use them for my wealth management, even just personal finances, but also in the business. Again, I use Google Suite if I’m honest, but I’m always really hesitant right now on it. The only thing available to me I can

David Kakish (05:09):

Afford. Yeah, we probably should tell the listener, you run your own marketing company.

Todd W. Darroca (05:15):

Yeah, sorry. Yes, listener. I a marketing consultant.

David Kakish (05:17):

You’re not running an RIA, correct? I mean,

Todd W. Darroca (05:19):

No, I’m not running an RIA, but I’ve worked with people like that in the past. But yeah, no, I running my own small business. So I understand a little bit what you guys are going through.

David Kakish (05:30):

Alright, cool. And what are your impressions about Apple? I’m curious. You are a Mac user, right?

Todd W. Darroca (05:36):

Well, I’ll put it this way. So I have a watch, I have a computer, I have a laptop, I have an iPad Mini, I have an iPad, and I have an iPhone. So yes, and I have an Apple speaker. So yeah, I mean if Apple wanted to sponsor this, that’d be great. But no, yeah, everything in my home is Apple ecosystem and literally it’s just because it’s easy for me to use. It’s just really plug and play for me and my family uses it, but yeah.

David Kakish (06:04):

Yeah. Well, you know what Apple reminds me a lot of is, back in the day, we all bought Sony, right? The Sony Walkman and the Sony stereo.

Todd W. Darroca (06:11):

Sony had a yellow one. Yeah. Yeah.

David Kakish (06:13):

So I mean, we’re old enough to remember that. And I’m sure some of our listeners are and some maybe are not, but Sodi was the consumer brand that you had at home, right? Yeah.

(06:26):

Alright, well listen, so Todd, thanks for sharing. Again, my goal is to talk about the platform or the productivity platform and what RIAs are using and why and what the advantages are. Before I talk about that a little bit, I want to talk a little bit about the endpoints. And what I mean by that is are you using an iPhone or an Android or an iPad or a MacBook or a Windows computer or a Chromebook and things like that? And at the end of the day, from our perspective, it doesn’t really matter because that’s just an endpoint. We’re very agnostic. And what I mean by that is if you think about computers, the big players in the RIA space is mainly Windows computers. And then there’s a lot of people that are using Macs that are by Apple. And so it’s very typical for an RIA with 10 employees.

(07:14):

Seven of them are all using a Windows computer, and then three of them are using Mac. And the ones that are using Macs are hardcore Mac users. Like, Hey, I won’t work for your RIA if I can’t use my MacBook, which is really interesting. So we see that a lot and that’s good. We don’t really see a lot of Chromebooks. Very little people are using Chromebooks. Chromebooks are really big in education, and I’ll just kind of leave it at that. Just my brother works for Google, so I know a lot more than maybe I should, or you know what? That sounds terrible. I know a lot.

Todd W. Darroca (07:54):

So have you read my emails? Are you inside my Google suite? David?

David Kakish (07:59):

Yeah. Yeah. So I know a lot that came up the wrong way. That’s not what I meant to say. So let me correct myself. We have a lot of discussions around this type of stuff. And then on the smartphone and tablet worlds, you have iPhones, iPads by Apple, and you have Androids and Microsoft missed the boat on smartphones and coming up with something like that. But again, these are endpoints. All of our clients are using all the above in a very different way. And just for the listeners, so they know, I personally in the office, I use a Windows computer at home, I used a MacBook, an iPad, an iPhone, and Apple Watch, right? Todd? I got the Apple speaker. I didn’t like it because it’s not wireless, it’s not cordless, I’m not mistaken. It was a cord. And I’m like, hang on, I don’t want an Apple speaker. That’s not cordless. I actually returned that one. But I pretty much like you. I’m at home, I’m in the Apple ecosystem at work for the most part. On the end point, I jump between a Windows computer and then I work on Tuesdays. I work from home. And so when I’m working from home, I’m using a MacBook that’s for work. And so I jump back and forth. So I’m pretty Why do

Todd W. Darroca (09:14):

You jump back and forth if,

David Kakish (09:16):

Because I don’t want to carry my laptop home, right? Yeah, I have a Windows computer at the office. It’s a laptop, and then I have a MacBook that’s at home and I just don’t want to carry it back and forth. I guess I’m lazy, okay. But no, actually, here’s the real reason. The platform we work with, and I’ll talk a little about that, works really well with a Windows computer and with a MacBook. And I wasn’t a Mac user, and so I used to have clients or prospects that would ask me questions and I had to go back to my team. And so my team sent me up with a MacBook and said, there you go, use it. And then this way you don’t have to come to us every time. That was the main reason they gave me a MacBook, by the way. And you’re going to laugh.

Todd W. Darroca (10:00):

You basically said, quit bugging me, David, just take the computer and go away. Very polite way. So

David Kakish (10:06):

I got a free MacBook out of it, but you, you’re going to laugh at me, Todd. I’m a hardcore at the opposite Windows user, and so I know all the shortcuts. I use the keyboard and this and that. And for the first two to three weeks at home when I was using the MacBook, I was just going to go crazy because I didn’t know all the shortcuts. I know how to do the basic stuff, but then after that I’m like, all right, because the shortcuts are the control C and the control B and Apple is slightly different, but in a strange way, I am pretty good now, but the first three weeks I was going to go crazy. Yeah,

Todd W. Darroca (10:46):

Sounds like most people.

David Kakish (10:48):

Cool. So I got the end points out of the way. I really want to talk about the productivity platform itself. Think of this as, again, for simplicity, I’m going to talk about an RIA with 10 employees regardless of AUM assets under management or anything like that. And so when you look at it, what’s the Microsoft productivity platform? Think of the Office Suite, office Outlook, word, PowerPoint, OneDrive, SharePoint and so on. What’s the Google Suite? It’s the Google workspace or what used to be called the G Suite, which is their version of Word Excel, and then drive for the files and folders. And then Apple, apple has their own version of the office suite like sheets and I forget what it’s called. Pages.

Todd W. Darroca (11:37):

Pages, sheets. Pages, yeah, numbers,

David Kakish (11:39):

Exactly. And then there’s Amazon. It’s like the hip cool player that the big companies like to talk about. So those are the four really big platforms. Okay, I’m going to tell you something. You’re right. Amazon doesn’t really have a productivity suite for the RIAs. They don’t have the equivalent of Outlook or Word. Where they’re really big is on hosting stuff or if you need a cloud server or this or that. And again, think of a typical RIA with 10 employees. They’re largely using web-based applications, and then they’ve got some kind of a file folder structure and email. And so Amazon isn’t really a player at all in this space. So we can kind of quickly write ’em off, not that they’re a bad company or anything like that, but they just don’t have a productivity suite. And I think it’s funny that when we said Amazon, you’re talking about shopping on Amazon, it didn’t even occur to me,

Todd W. Darroca (12:35):

Hey man, I’ll tell you, I got that app on my phone. I’ve wasted a lot of money with that still. Yes,

David Kakish (12:40):

Yes, yes. I refuse to have the Amazon app on my phone because my kids keep asking me, dad, why don’t you have it? I go, no, I want to make it a little bit harder to spend money with Amazon.

Todd W. Darroca (12:52):

So Amazon’s out of the play here. Yes, exactly. So Microsoft, Google, and Apple.

David Kakish (12:57):

And so I’m going to talk a little bit about Apple. So Apple has their suite, but it’s a very consumer suite. We see very few people using the Apple productivity suite, not the MacBooks, not the iPads. The Apple hardware is really phenomenal and obviously a lot of people are using it, but we are not really seeing anybody use it because it’s very consumer driven and not business driven. So when you think about, again, remind me the names of the Apple.

Todd W. Darroca (13:24):

Yeah, so numbers, pages, yes, those are, yeah. And I will say that I use those personally just as when I write things or I’m doing documentation, but most of my clients, they don’t use it. It it’s just not helpful for them as an organization and collaboration. Again, those people don’t have that. And you have to obviously transpose all these into different documents. Apple doesn’t play well with the others.

David Kakish (13:54):

Yeah, exactly. And what you see, people that are using Apple, let’s just say a MacBook as an example, or even an iPad, what you see is they’re usually generally either using the Microsoft office suite like Outlook, word, Excel, or they’re using the Google G Suite, Google Drive, and so on. And so that’s what you’re seeing. So Apple, from a hardware standpoint, phenomenal. So that leaves, its really two big players is Microsoft and Google. So Amazon is not a player. Apple is great when it comes to hardware, but on the platform, the productivity platform, they’re really not in the business space at all. And I think they’ve come to at peace with that. A lot of individuals personally are using the Apple stuff, but they’re not using it from a business perspective. Lemme put it to you this way, in the last two years, I yet have to talk to an RIA that’s using the Apple Productivity suite, but they’re using Apple MacBooks and Apple iPads and things like that using either Microsoft or Google. So really this leaves the two big players, Microsoft and Google. So that’s really what we’re going to talk about. Okay. Alright.

(15:08):

So here’s kind of my take on this. And again, as I said, my brother works for Google and I love Google. And it’s funny, I use Google sort of on the personal side, but on the business side, don’t, vast majority of RIAs are using the Microsoft productivity suite and the ones that are using Google are looking to potentially move to Microsoft. And I don’t have an actual survey where we’ve actually done this. That’s actually a good idea. We may want to do that, but I would say out of all of our clients, over 90% of the RIAs that we work with, probably even higher than that are using the Microsoft productivity suite. And the ones that are using the Google Suite are coming to us and saying, Hey, we want to move to the Microsoft suite from Google. And you want to know why that is.

Todd W. Darroca (16:00):

I was going to say, why would you, again, and for me, Google is a little easier and it is collaborative and most people are doing it, but yeah, is Microsoft just more secure for them? Is it cheaper for them? Why are they all switching from one to the other?

David Kakish (16:15):

Yeah, so the pricing doesn’t really play a big factor in here because people are saying, Hey, how can I be more productive and how can I be more secure? And what we’re really noticing is that, hey, with Google and Microsoft, you can be really productive. What people are really worried about on the Google side is, Hey, how do I achieve better security and better IT compliance? And that’s the big question that, because again, even an RIA with five employees has over a hundred million dollars in AUM. And so that’s a really, really big concern for them. And to be fair, I don’t want to say that Google doesn’t have that. What Google has in terms of securing your productivity suite, you have to go in and get a lot of third party tools. And so they have these enterprise companies, but they don’t want to talk to you if you’re an RIA with five or 25 employees, these third party plugins or tools. Either you do it yourself or you want to work with a partner. And that partner is really focused on working with a financial institution with thousands of employees, not 25 employees or five employees. So I like the Google platform and I think it’s really good. The challenge is to really secure it and lock it down, you have to do a lot of other things.

Todd W. Darroca (17:30):

So my initial thought of me questioning, not questioning, but thinking about security on Google with all this stuff, I’m not too far off, at least not at all in the normal concern. Okay, yeah,

David Kakish (17:44):

You’re right on the money with your intuition is right, and here’s the deal to switch. So from Google to Microsoft, also your intuition on Microsoft is right, but I want to give you a refresh on that, which is historically yes, but Microsoft has really come a long way where you can easily collaborate and you can share now, but built within that is security. And so the big, in my opinion, if you were to ask me, the big difference between Google and Microsoft is with Microsoft you can get all these enterprise tools as part of the subscription, and you at five people, five employees, 20 employees, you can really leverage and use that technology. Whereas with Google, you have to have all these other third party tools to actually accomplish what you want to do. Now, to be fair with Microsoft, again, most of the RIAs we work with are really good at running an RIA really good at making people more money.

(18:42):

But they’re not technologists, they’re not the best people at being the best IT people. And so what I tell people is like, look, the Microsoft platform, if you’re using it, it’s kind of like you have the right airplane, but to maximize security and IT compliance and productivity, you might want to work with a partner that actually understands what to do with all that. And so you have the right airplane, you just might need a better pilot that sits in the cockpit that knows what to do with all that stuff. And you and I have talked in the past about some of the really neat things that Microsoft has single sign-on for web-based applications, defender for endpoint, which is like a security wraparound, your laptop or your MacBook as you’re traveling and you’re connecting at a hotel or at the airport or whatever, email encryption, data loss prevention where you can send an email and it automatically encrypts if it has a social security number or account number.

(19:43):

And I’m touching upon some of these things because these are enterprise solutions that Microsoft is basically saying, you at five employees you can leverage and you can use this enterprise security. You don’t need to go and get another third party tool to do that. And maybe we’ll include this in the show links, but I know people like to talk smack about Microsoft quite a bit. And again, we’re not Microsoft, we’re just kind of giving our unbiased opinion. But if you actually look at some of the Gartner reports and Forrester reports Microsoft scores really, really, really well, and they’re in the top right hand corner of that Gartner Reports Magic Quadrant. Thank you. You know what I’m talking about.

Todd W. Darroca (20:28):

Oh yes, I do.

David Kakish (20:31):

Magic Quadrant. Yeah, that’s right. So anyway, so here were to ask me like, Hey, just one-on-one, hey, we’re an RIA 12 employees, what’s the best productivity platform that you recommend hands off? I would tell you it’s, and then a distant second is Google, but I wouldn’t be looking at Apple or Amazon or anything like that. So hopefully I’m being transparent as I’m talking about what these are. And again, these are not the endpoints. The endpoints are irrelevant, whether it’s a Chromebook or a MacBook or a Windows laptop or an iPhone or an Android, to me that’s sort of irrelevant. What do you prefer? But the productivity platform itself by far, Microsoft is number one, and then rural would be a distant second.

Todd W. Darroca (21:18):

So when you talk about productivity, for me, part of productivity is not just the email and the writing, but sometimes it’s project management or collaboration in a project in a remote world. So I guess I haven’t, and maybe I’m just ignorant on this, I haven’t really seen Microsoft where they have a project management, for example, you have the Asana out there where you can do dates and due dates and do timelines and all that stuff, or a monday.com or a click up or a Rike. True. And so how did those productivity platforms compare to Microsoft and is there a project management part of Microsoft that if somebody wanted to do that?

David Kakish (22:01):

Yeah, yeah. Well, I can’t resist. You’re just ignorant.

Todd W. Darroca (22:08):

Alright, I’ll take it. Okay, good. So tell me where it’s at then.

David Kakish (22:14):

You’re right, I couldn’t resist Todd. I wanted to say that.

Todd W. Darroca (22:18):

It’s good. Oh man. Okay, so teach me something then, David. So take away my ignorance here. I’m

David Kakish (22:28):

Turning red. See, I said that and I can’t even keep a straight face. I’m feeling guilty now.

Todd W. Darroca (22:32):

Don’t feel guilty, everybody. We’re friends. It’s okay. You can make fun of me. It’s all good. Don’t write in,

David Kakish (22:40):

You’re not. You do have a good point, and I’ll talk about that in a minute. So the productivity suite that Microsoft has is think of the office suite, like word, Excel, outlook, PowerPoint, but also your file folder structure. You don’t need to have a Dropbox or Citrix ShareFile or all that. You can really do that inside OneDrive or SharePoint. So the core productivity suite that Microsoft has works really well for an RIA. It’s simple, you’re productive. Most RIAs know how to use that suite. And then also your file folder structure, you just click on File Explorer on a Windows computer or you click finder on your Mac and you can work. And it’s all saved privately at your Microsoft data center, your private cloud or your private tenant that you have with Microsoft. Now, to be fair, Microsoft has some other third party applications. I forget the name of their calendar.

(23:38):

It’s similar to Calendly. I don’t even use that one. I use Calendly because it’s a cleaner interface Microsoft has to do. So they have all these plugins, but to answer your question, like monday.com, Asana, Trello, any of these, those are third party and those are specialized and it makes a lot of sense to use that because Microsoft doesn’t have the equivalent of that. Now, what we do for our clients, for example, that are using that, and by the way, it’s the same for something like Redtail or Orion, any software that’s specific to the RIA business, we just take it and we do something called single sign-on for web-based applications or SSO. And so what happens is once you log into your computer, you open up the browser, you can go in and you can click on Asana and it automatically logs you in because now we’re leveraging your Microsoft credentials so that you don’t have to have another credentials.

(24:40):

And think of Todd like you hired Mary and she’s starting with you. Great. She can log into her computer or MacBook, open up the browser, and then she can access all the web-based applications without having to remember the passwords for all these other applications.com and so on. So yes, Microsoft isn’t the all be all. There are applications, software, apps that are much better than what Microsoft has. Again, Asana, Trello, any of these right there. And we would just plug ’em in into the Microsoft ecosystem so that an employee at that RIA can click on it work and use that. But that’s how we would do that. But yes. Got it. There are a lot of third party applications that are beyond the scope of what Microsoft or even Google would provide for that.

Todd W. Darroca (25:30):

Got it. So let’s go back again and let’s make sure that we talk about what some needs to walk away with today and what they can do today to put what you’ve taught them in action. Obviously for me, I’m going to look more at Microsoft and see about the productivity place. So what about the other ones though?

David Kakish (25:53):

Yeah, yeah. Listen, here’s the deal, and if we weren’t talking to an RIA, I think Microsoft and Google, it would be neck to neck, it would be difficult. And it’s funny, I say this with my brother all the time. I’m like, look, in the education space, I think Google is really dominating for in combination of different places. But I go, look, if you’ve got a generic business with 10 employees, I’m not sure that it matters that much if it’s Google or Microsoft Productivity Suite because that’s just sort of a generic business and what do people know and this and that. But in this space we’re in, because you get what I would call these big business enterprise security bundles that Microsoft allows you to have at five employees, at 15 employees by far. I would highly recommend Microsoft where you can go ahead and you can do that. So again, in your marketing space, Todd, I don’t know how much it matters if I got a copy of a logo you designed,

Todd W. Darroca (26:57):

But if I’m working with defense contractors or financial institutions, this is still something I do. And that’s really important then for me to be thinking about. Yeah,

David Kakish (27:08):

I would definitely give that a second thought. Again, not that Google is bad and not that you can’t accomplish the same thing with Google, but to get that enterprise security with Microsoft, it’s bundled in. You might have to upgrade to from an E three to an E five or something like that, but you don’t need to go out and get all these third party applications and stuff like that. Got it.

Todd W. Darroca (27:28):

Okay.

David Kakish (27:29):

So again, I’ll leave with this for an RIA with 5, 10, 25 employees. By far, Microsoft is the number one productivity platform. Google is a distant second and I’ll just leave it at that. Okay. No, no, no. I’m happy to answer more questions. I’m kidding.

Todd W. Darroca (27:51):

Now, if somebody did want to pinging you or ask you some more questions, what’s the best way for ’em to do that? Email, text carrier

David Kakish (27:57):

Pigeon? Yeah, I mean I would say the easiest way is we have a lot of content if they want to sort of read about this and learn more, obviously they can get ahold of us anytime and we’re happy to help. But if they go to our website@www.riaworkspace.com and click on the learning center, we’ve got a lot of content. We know our clients or prospects like to learn more, but if they want to just hit contact us on the website, Hey, here’s my question or schedule a call, we’re happy to do that. We’re more than happy to do that. And it’s always a fun discussion that I have when somebody has come from a company where they were standardized on Google and that RIA has made a decision to go to Microsoft and it’s just, you see the dynamics and I’m like, look guys, we’re agnostic. I’m just kind of trying to tell you what the advantages are and here’s why. And then it all sort of begins to register when we do that. But yeah, go to our website if you want to read on your own, go to the learning center. If you want to talk to me, just hit the contact us button on our website and then we’ll schedule a call. And depending on how smart you are, I may need to get one of my engineers on.

Todd W. Darroca (29:10):

Yeah, you don’t have to be smart people, you just have to be inquisitive. And if you’re ignorant, it’s okay. David will check you. Alright, well anyways, everybody, thank you so much. I’m for listening. Todd,

David Kakish (29:24):

I’m still feeling guilty about saying that. I just thought you,

Todd W. Darroca (29:26):

I feel guilty personally. I think it’s funny. So it’s all good. I’m glad you called it out. But anyways, yeah, don’t write in people. It’s fine. David and I were friends, it’s all good. But so speaking of that, we want to thank you so much for listening to us, to Crazy Guys here talking on the RIA Tech Talk podcast, brought to you by of course RIA workspace. And as David mentioned, go visit them at the website and check out that learning center for more helpful resources. So feel free to reach out to any one of us for any questions. And we always want to know what topics do you want us to cover for next time and make sure you follow us, like us, subscribe for us, all that good stuff. And stay tuned for more RIA Tech Insights in our next episode for David Kish and everybody else, I’m Todd Rocha and thanks so much for listening. Have a great day.

Speaker 4 (30:13):

Thank you.