Google Apps Business
Posted on Oct 22, 2009 - 11:28pm by Wayne Weisser in Technology
You could help in Google’s takeover of the world while saving money at the same time. If you are using Microsoft Exchange in your office, you could save a ton of money switching to Google Apps for Business. Google Apps includes Gmail for email, Google Docs for document, spreadsheet and presentation sharing and a Google Sites to make small web pages that act like your company intranet (a private internet only your company can see) and Google Calendar is great for appointment and event managing and sharing.
Microsoft Exchange is really expensive for any business to run. Not only do you have an investment in software, but you are probably paying yearly license fees. Plus if you’re a really large company you may have a completely separate server or you may have it sharing the same hardware as your file servers. In either case, you’re paying fees, plus you may be paying extra for spam, anti-virus and maybe archiving and backup services. You are making backups off site right?
It’s called “Cloud Computing”, all you need is a browser and you can access your data from anywhere. There are hosted solutions for Microsoft Exchange, but they charge as much or more then Exchange, then add document sharing, mobile device access, anti-spam / anti-virus programs and you’re talking serious change. Google has their solution and it comes in at $50 a year per user. That is really, really, really cheap. No equipment to take care of, no backups to worry about and it’s all inclusive. Get company email on Blackberries, or any mobile phone that can do email. Plus support is included. If you’re a small company you may have someone on-call or even worse, on retainer you’re paying for and every computer guy knows Exchange is not the easiest thing to take care of. Plus, because you absolutely need your email working all of the time, you may even have two of everything for redundancy. Then you’re paying for someone to upgrade and install patches, with Google, you won’t even notice. No more scheduled downtime for equipment, no more equipment. Only an Internet connection. You may still want to keep your file server, but you can put the rest on eBay.
When Google Docs first came out, there was a lot to be desired. Now, unless you’re doing a lot of custom or strange page layouts you may not be able to take advantage of Google Doc, but for the normal document and spreadsheet, it works fine and it’s a great backup, plus you can control who edits and is able to view it. Gmail has come a long way in the last few years. It’s dependable, easy to use and easy to organize with labels and filters, it’s just like Exchange, but cheaper.
Migrate your current mail into Google or start fresh. Users can use the Google Mail interface or install a plug in from Google that will allow the user to continue to use Outlook while synchronizing everything in Google Apps. Completely transparent to the people that still want to use Outlook except with 25GB of email storage, that’s a boat load of emails.
A secure connection, sharable calendars, documents, anti-spam/virus, support and you keep your same domain and email addresses. Besides trusting your company’s crucial email to Google, instead of Microsoft, there really is no downside.
For the business users you probably want to go with the Premier with the 25GB, but if you can handle 7GB of email storage get the standard for free.
Want a professional sounding email address instead of Joe45@gmail.com? Have your own domain? (They’er only $10 a year) use the standard Google Apps with your own domain for free, without messing with POP3, SMTP or anything else you don’t understand and use your domain with Gmail and Goolge Apps. Need help or have questions? Let me know in the comments.
One of the videos show a trucking company, kind of, they drive trucks (hey! it’s as close as I could get to trucks). If you’re curious or if think you could get a cut of your company’s savings, here are a few links to get you started. If you’re in the office and want to see it in action, get a Google account and use Gmail, Docs, Calendar and GTalk, they are exactly the same or like I mentioned earlier, get a domain and open a Standard Apps account for free.
For all Google accounts the Instant Messaging Client, Gtalk not only does instant messages, but voice and video too, free. On a side-note for a moment, if you’re trucking around the country, get a $20 web cam for yourself and one for your family and actually see your family while you’re talking. It makes a difference in any conversation when you can see the person especially if it’s been awhile. Much better than just a plain voice call.
Stop spending so much on IT and give it to the drivers! This isn’t meant to replace every server in the office, but if you replace only email, it will make a big difference. Disaster recovery? That’ Google’s problem and with 1.75 million businesses using Google Apps, they have that taken care of. If you are really paranoid there are options for archiving.
Here’s some small businesses including the trucking company.
Surge protectors…now for your laptop, too
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Google’s outage today, the Sidekick loss of data and the gmail outage a few weeks ago, has convinced me maybe giving your data to someone else may not be the best idea.
I’ve worked at many places where 1 or 2 poorly trained hardware people are tasked with operating an Exchange server. Problems, outages, priv problems, admin shutting down people over a disagreement, etc. All that can go with Google’s apps.
I’ve experienced the outages and they are minimal in comparison. You can back up Gmail and numerous other services are coming. The comparison’s to Microsoft are not even close.
You should always have reservations about ANY software, but some are unfounded with Google.
Google outage only affected 14% of it’s customers. The gmail outage wasn’t really an outage, you could still get to your email from POP3 clients and no emails were lost. Sidekick customers didn’t really lose anything and the only people it affected would have been those people that reset their phone when there was no data on the server to sync with. They did have a backup, the news that they “lost” everything was premature.
You’re always giving your data to someone else. Just make sure who you’re giving it to can keep it secure and backed up.
30,000 Los Angeles City employees moving from Microsoft to Google. From the LA Times.
I know I mentioned this briefly, but if you have a small trucking business, get a professional sounding domain make an easy change at your domain and use google apps. Add and modify user accounts from google’s interface. Have a professional presence and be able to access email from cell phones, laptops or a public internet kiosk.