Recently, we have had a client start an implementation with ASI Consulting. This client is a young and distributed organization without any central systems. They do not have a single email system (everyone uses their own personal email). They do not have a simple way to share documents, etc. The main problem that we first ran into was that without a central email system, we were running into issue as to which account we should connect iMIS in order for it to send out email notifications. Anyway, we made some recommendations on working with their hosting company to get a simply single user email set up with their domain to iMIS. I did keep it in my head on what we could do for other clients down the road.
The other day I was checking out more deeply what Google was currently providing to users. I have begun to use many Google applications in my daily life, but that is for another blog posting. Needless to say, I am a big fan, so I was looking more into what they have and what is coming.
That is when I came across Google Apps (https://www.google.com/a/). Google Apps at its core is a communication system using Google Gmail. Users can get email accounts (with your own domain, not just gmail.com), Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc. All of this is integrated together so people in the organization can share information together. They can communicate using Google Talk for VOIP communication or instant messaging. They can share documents and collaborate on documens in real time. Of course, you can also plug in many of the other Google applications and integrate to 3rd party applications. Finally, just to reiterate this - everything can be tied into your own domain.
The cost for this for a small business premier edition the cost if $50/user account/year. So the cost for a 10 person organization would be just $500/year. They have a more feature limited standard edition which is free. For registered 501(c)(3) non-profits, they can get all the features for free.
There is a lot of additional information at the Google Apps web site. I really think this might be a great system for many clients. For full disclosure, I have not yet set up or used Google Apps myself, and I do not have any financial stake in Google.
Thanks,
Beau
Google apps are a pretty neat way to get an email system
Google apps are a pretty neat way to get an email system with your own domain name. In fact I moved our family email there for a bit. You get the normal Gmail types of features plus the shared calendars and some other intranet types of features. And not-for-profits might be able to get it for free. (http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=46576)
However I have one problem with Google email. Should you wish to move later, it's very difficult to move your email from Google to someplace else. That is they have no IMAP support, and no standard rich email client support of any kind that I'm a aware of. Of course with most any sort of rich email client (Outlook express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) you can always drag a drop your mail from one email account to another.
So I've switched our family accounts back to an IMAP provider. With IMAP you have wide variety of clients available and the main thing is you can have folders and the same view from your web view and your desktop view. (POP3 implementations generally give one view for web mail, but does not share that with rich clients.) The provider I settled on was Fusemail. So far it's been reliable inexpensive. (1$ per account per month for 1 gig plus 1$ per month per extra gig of storage). I've used IMAP accounts over the years and always been happy with what they do.
The Gmail web interface is beautiful. And Google promisies "no evil". And in fact you can get you mail out of Google if you need to by using the POP3 features of Gmail. but you will definitely loose your tagging/folder structure if you decide you need something else.
It's a great suite. But Google is far less open than others in this and some of their other offerings, contrary to the impression they leave. Should Google add IMAP as has been asked for by so many of their customers, it would be the hands down best choice in any circumstance I'm aware of. Till then, they still have some competition.