Nearly everybody's heard of Gmail -- Google's equivalent of MSN, AOL or Yahoo. What most businesses don’t realise is Gmail has a business alter ego called Google Premier Apps. This is mail on steroids and is firmly aimed at Microsoft’s mail dominance in the business market.
Sound interesting? If you run mail, need calendars, like collaborative working and would prefer to run your business rather than a complex IT infrastructure, this product is for you. You pay a fixed fee per user per annum (£33.00 pppa in UK) and you get:
Business GMail: 25GB storage (you can buy more), a lot less spam, a 99.9% uptime SLA, enhanced email security and backup.
Calendar: agenda management, scheduling, shared calendars, task lists, and mobile phone sync.
Google Apps: documents, spreadsheets and presentations which provide online working with 'office lite' applications and an area that can be extended and shared with your colleagues.
Google Chat: instant messaging for your business or with your clients.
Google Groups: user/business-created groups providing mailing lists, content sharing and searchable archives for the business.
Google Sites: secure, coding free pages for intranets and team sites.
Google Video: private, secure, hosted video sharing.
Postini: message security, data retention, encryption, message retention, outbound mail footer, extra spam and virus filters plus user account synchronisation.
Twenty-five gig is a lot of storage for files and mail, even without the extras. But, best of all, you do not need a mail server, just an internet connection. It integrates your mobile devices such as Blackberry, iPhone, Android and Symbian and keeps all the applications in synch on the move. It even works offline.
We have found that, when you do the math, this solution becomes very attractive to the Finance Director. But for us it’s the rethinking of mail with labels, conversation threads and availability from any browser that makes it magical.
Our clients generally agree that the web interface rocks, but some still use Outlook as the front end and don't even notice the server has been replaced. So, if Exchange is making you feel blue, there is now a cheap easily-migrated option out in the sky. A cloud nine dream indeed. Contact nick.morris@fmk.co.uk if you would like a demonstration.
For more information on our cloud computing services please click here