As a mid-sized business, we are still finding new ways to take advantage of Google Apps, and seeing more potential every day. Even the ability to put our forms online has been a huge boon for our productivity. More importantly, the Google option was a way to tap into Google’s rich pool of innovation — and, in the end, that’s what we wanted.
The key decision criteria for us in evaluating Google Apps was about capability, the potential to partner with the right company, and to create better operating efficiency within our company. We saw in Google Apps a real technology for the future. With Google Apps, there are no boundaries.
If we were to keep our current system, we estimated it would cost $133 a year for each of its 3,000 employees – or $399,000 including annual software licenses. Google charges $50 per user, or $150,000 delivering more than 60% in savings. In return, everyone from city planners to police officers will now use a web-based email system similar to Google’s popular Gmail, but without the advertisements that support the free consumer version.
Smart Furniture will experience 100 percent growth in 2010 largely because of Google Apps.
In other words, for us, Google Apps does just what technology should. It frees up resources to focus on our actual business. It offers tools we didn’t have — or hadn’t integrated — before, including third-party apps from the Google Apps Marketplace. It replaces unnecessary layers of tech silliness with a simple, intuitive, integrated platform that actually serves us — our team and our goals.
Google Calendar alone increases our efficiency exponentially. Everyone can look at the same calendars, create new ones for events, projects or work groups, and share them, without having to master a byzantine instruction manual. Then there are the collaboration benefits. Before Google Apps, we’d constantly lose information as people changed roles or moved on to new projects. With Google Sites, we’ve eliminated the need for shared servers and their little air-conditioned server rooms, and replaced our entire intranet with one comfortably situated in the cloud.
In late 2007 we made the switch from a traditional email POP server and a ‘whatever you can find’ calendar and docs solution to Google Apps. We haven’t looked back since.
Within Google Apps, we mainly use Gmail, Calendar, and Docs. Because of the tight integration between the three services, as well as the ‘it just works’ nature of the products, we’ve definitely had a marked increase in productivity and user happiness. No more POP server being down, no more having to try and track down an email or document. It’s all there in the cloud, all the time, and easy to find because of Google search.
Our move into the cloud has freed IT staff time to focus on projects that provide more value to the city, departments, and the residents. We now have time to invest in new IT initiatives to help us grow our economic base. For example, we are working to build a newly-approved community data center – or ‘community cloud’ as we call it — which will provide access to services for small and medium business owners that typically only larger corporations enjoy. As far as we know, it is the first community data center in the country.
