Google Apps are a set of online applications (also know as Software as a Service – SaaS applications) which enable collaboration among your your enterprise users.  

What services are included in Google Apps?

Google Apps services include – Google Mail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites, Google Start Page (additional in Premier Edition – Google Video). The Google services are customized for a business domain name i.e. your email are like – john@yourdomain.com (and not john@gmail.com).

Do I need to install, download any software or purchase any hardware?

Google Apps does not requires any software or hardware installation and maintenance so no more extra cost for your company. You only required to have a domain name and you can start getting benefit from Google services for free (standard edition).

Who is using Google Apps?

Many small business firms, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations have already adopted and benefited greatly from Google Apps services. Google Apps are well positions to help small businesses and non profits in their endeavor.

Why should I use Google Apps?

Here are few reasons

1. The small to medium size business (SMBs) and Startup Business take hard route to save company cost which also includes the software cost. Google Apps Standard edition (which is free) is a great way to save money.
2. Google Apps gives you fast and secure communication software – custom email address, calendar, spreadsheet, document tools, presentations, and more.
3. Google Apps GMail allows user to send and receiving mails and offers large storage capacity. Large number or mails archived, attachments or mail address can safely kept without worry that you are going to run out of space. Gmail’s also has a very strong virus and spam protection.
4. Google Talk is instant messaging facility integrated to Gmail. Text message as well as voice message can be sent worldwide instantly.
5. Google calendar can be used to share events, fix up meetings and organize schedules. You can even publish your company events on the web.
6. Google docs allows your employees to collaborate online over spread sheets, documents and presentations. Now one can create, edit and share their documents and presentations. And you can publish your document so that anyone can access your contents. They allow you to have option to restrict access only to your team or to some individuals.
7. Email can be delivered to your mail clients, hand held devices like blackberry, iphone etc without any additional charges

How Google Apps Mail is different from Gmail

Google Apps mail is for your domain – i.e. your email are like – john@yourdomain.com (and not john@gmail.com).

Whether I should use Standard Edition (Free) or Premier Edition of Google Apps?

Google Apps provide their service with some limitation. For most small companies, the free version will be adequate. You can consider to use upgraded version when your organization become bigger and more complex. You can see Google Apps comparison table for free edition versus paid edition on theirwebsite.

The key additions in Premier Edition are – higher mailbox size (25GB in premier edition v/s 7GB in Standard Edition), Ad free online email interface, Additional features in Calender, Additional Service – Google Video, and Additional administration features to integrate Google applications in your IT systems.

If you use free edition, you probably need to find good support. While using free edition you can still go for a trial of premier edition (which is 50$ per user) if you need. Google gives an option to Standard Edition users to try Premier Edition for one month free of cost.

What benefits organizations have derived from Google Apps?

There are many benefits but the prime benefits are

• Lower costs
• Reduced strain on IT departments due to streamlined operations and low maintenance
• Higher business scalability through easily-deployed services
• Availability of up to date version of software
• More productive and efficient employees with best of class communication tools

I am setting Up Google Apps for the first time. What I should keep in mind?  

Setting Google Apps is relatively simple. There is ample help available on Google’s website. If you do not have a domain you can buy the domain through while registering with Google Apps. This will save you from additional setup work. If you already have a domain and you are not IT saavy – you can take help of a host of service providers available in Google Solutions Marketplace.

In all these cases the sites do not require a thousands of MBs as space. For most of your needs 10-12 MB is good enough unless you have lot of PDFs and Videos. As for the bandwidth (there is no problem if you do not understand these terms) also they do not require more than 2 or 3 GBs.

You search on internet and you will find many of the web hosting guys (read sharks) who want to sell the hosting plans. (This may sometime include me also). They will always lead you to buy the most expensive plan they have on some pretext or other. Some will say – “hey you need that bandwidth – go for premium plan” or “Our assisment shows that you need a virtual private server“. But remember for a small requirement like this you don’t have to go for them. If you have Google Apps (google.com/a) just stick to making a professional website using Google Sites(sites.google.com). Contrary to popular belief that Google sites does not have good look and feel or thay have very “templated” look -well if you customize it well and use the images smartly – the site can be very professional. You can try suing the Google Sites. And then if you need – you can always upgrade later on. If you feel Google sites is not good enough, then move on. Anyway here are some advantages and disadvantages who want to evaluate Google Sites.

Advantages:

• Google sites has the WYSWIG editors (even year computer savvy child can use it to create a site). Can be used easily by even someone who doesn’t know a thing about HTML. In fact many schools in USA have students using Google sites very regularly.
• No software need to be installed – this is one factor that separates, Google Sites from other free web designing sites. There is absolutely no need of web page development software like dreamweaver or front page. There is no need to learn any software, no struggles with FTP and you got nothing to do with complex scripting.
• Making a website in Google Pages is as easy as blogging. If you have ever blogged using Blogger or WordPress then you know enough.
• Things like creating a table is easy – all you need to do is to cut and paste from a word document.Or you can just create a new page of that type.
• Adding photos and attachments is as easy as uploading files is easy. By uploading files, you can easily help the reader to download, simply by clicking a link.
• Google Sites can be easily integrated to documents in Google Docs to present data.
• You can create site for your business domain. So your site appears when you typr your business domain name. If you use masked forwarding then the site visitor may not know that the site is created using Google Apps.

Disadvantage:

• It has links to Google Sites (so people will know that you have crated it using Google sites (what is they know?)
• Limitations like fixed templates, fixed site structure and no scripting are allowed
• You don’t have many choices when building the site. There are only a 15-20 of templates provided. You cannot use other templates from other free template sites, or make one using frontage.
• The only way to increase page size is to go vertical. It is also difficult to place links horizontally.
• Google Pages does not allow you to edit HTML of a whole Page, you can edit just sections of it.

I recommend readers of this blog to share their Google sites - sites.google.com