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Going Google

Going Google

More than 2 million organisations worldwide have moved to Google Apps cloud-based productivity applications. CIOs discuss why they decided to ‘Go Google’ and the implications for their operations

The case for Google Apps

MQU’s Marc Bailey says the move to cloud-based email posed challenges, but they were worth conquering since it would provide staff with an always-on, reliable service, accessible from anywhere in the world, and with 100 times more storage. Other benefits include brutal spam and virus filtering, better security, and Google’s legendary lightning fast search.

“It was a natural choice because there were only two games in town for us — Microsoft and Google,” Bailey says. “Having moved 68,000 students to Gmail trouble free, the answer started to look obvious.”

He says Google’s pricing and operational cost were more attractive, and it gave MQU the opportunity to have a unified email system for staff, students and alumni.

The IP concerns are not as vital as people would have you believe

“We had 40 islands of fragmented email systems across the university and choosing any one would unify the tribes. But why run your own mail system? Email is commoditised, it’s sent over the internet and the IP concerns are not as vital as people would have you believe. In the end, it wasn’t a technical or financial decision. And we’re not down on Microsoft in any way. Its offering just did not suit our operational needs. Universities are places of many diverse people and disciplines. Work is done on Macs, Linux, PCs, everything. Google is a safer choice for how it behaves in different environments.”

Altium's Perkins cites cost, security, search, and collaboration as the reasons Altium went Google. The firm drastically cut its running costs by reducing complexity and retiring 14 servers.

Before the shift, Perkins was shocked to learn that more than 90 per cent of Altium’s emails were sitting in .pst files and people were keeping them on their own PCs. They were not backed up. There was no ownership of data. Good quality history was being treated like garbage. With Google Apps and Postini, Altium has 10 years guaranteed recovery of any email, no matter how hard someone has tried to delete it.

“This has proved itself already in a few cases,” says Perkins. “One involved an ex-employee who went rogue. We were able to prove certain action on his part and in so doing make the problem go away.”

Then there is Google’s unquestionable ability to search emails. “I have more than 75,000 emails,” Perkins says. “The fact that I can find one particular email from 2006, instantaneously, is phenomenal. And having five people simultaneously editing a document is also quite something.”

Read the case for and against Google Apps.

The case against Google Apps

Critics — and there are many — claim Google is moving in too many directions, too quickly, to deliver the focus enterprises demand. They say it’s like butter scraped over too much bread. The issues, however, are both perceived and real.

Perkins says that apart from concerns about security — he doesn’t have any but he knows others who do — the one thing people talk about is outages.

“We have outages,” he says. “But under this model they are still better than what we could expect running our own servers. We’ve had a couple of times where people have been down for a few hours. It happens.”

For Altium, the biggest weaknesses of Google Apps are its user interface for enterprise management, and document formatting. “Google needs to make improvements for companies with thousands to tens of thousands of users,” says Perkins. “For example, it’s difficult to find out who is a member of what email list. You send out an email blithely to a list expecting that everyone will get it but that’s not the reality. The enterprise side of things is still a bit lightweight.

“And while there’s still some work to do in Google Docs to improve formatting, the power of collaboration is overwhelming. People will soon be less enamoured by formatting.” For Bailey the focus is a little different.

“While the recent Google publicity blips about Buzz and privacy did not affect us, it didn’t help either,” says Bailey. “It gave voice to some of the dissenters and made it more difficult to sell the service internally. In the middle of an implementation we just didn’t need such distractions.”

The only real issues for MQU — an organisation that prides itself on cutting-edge research — were legal questions about the privacy and intellectual property of the university’s email.

We didn’t expect that two years on we’d still have people using Outlook, but there aren’t many

“My strong suggestion for anyone contemplating a move to Gmail: Nut out all your legal issues,” Bailey says. “We sat down with our lawyers and Google’s lawyers to mitigate all these concerns. Our email data is stored in the EU rather than the US to bypass the US Patriot Act. Remember, some governments care deeply about where and how you keep your mail.”

Both Bailey and Perkins say that, as with all large-scale change, there are dissenters and outliers — those pesky users who just won’t let go of the established way.

“When some of our people were introduced to Gmail they hated it,” says Perkins. “But after a couple of weeks they came around. They were simple issues. Some of our people in Europe haven’t switched over, which disappoints me. We didn’t expect that two years on we’d still have people using Outlook, but there aren’t many.” Wise heads say that before talking about implementation or cost, CIOs should consider features and quality. For example, can Google Docs even compare to Microsoft Word? Others say performance is subjective. For many enterprise users, Microsoft products provide far more than they will ever need.

The argument is not “can Docs do what Word does?” The relevant question is “will Docs do what I need it to do?”

Is 80 per cent good enough?

Talking to 400 CIOs gathered at Google headquarters in April this year, Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, said his company was trying to build a whole new industry based on speed, simplicity and security.

“There are limitations,” Schmidt said. “Our applications are not full replacements for the incumbents. We are very clear and honest about that. Our strategy is not to get to 100 per cent, but to reach 80 per cent. Because of our cost benefit and our flexibility we think we can provide real value. You can get enough done with the 80 per cent solution.”

So the question becomes: Is close enough good enough?

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Tags productivityMicrosoftGoogleemailGoogle AppsMacquarie UniversityAltiumMarc BaileyAlan Perkins

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