Andrew Eells dot com

Google Apps observations

After experimenting and persevering with Google Apps in a corporate environment I would say the following are the headline issues we have experienced:

Positives:

• Fantastic cost/effort reduction over homegrown or outsourced alternatives
• Simple setup and good online documentation and usability

Negatives:

• Lack of full product features in Google Docs versus MS Office
• Security features not entirely sufficient for a corporate environment

In general, for the cost, speed and effort with which you can set up a functioning environment I would say it’s definitely worth at least making sure you positively rule out Google Apps as an option for your corporate IT infrastructure.

The major issues we have found that might count against Google would be the inability to restrict usage to a certain IP range (i.e. the office) and poor Docs interoperability with MS Office. Until these are resolved corporate users will be slow on the uptake.

I think it’s a reasonable assumption that the products will improve rapidly – but I have found a lot of people with similar observations and no indication from Google that the security issues at least are being tackled!

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