Google Apps Pilot: Notes from the Inside, Part 2
Last week, I shared some thoughts on my ongoing trial of Google Apps in place of Outlook and Exchange. I wrote about some of the killer features in that post… however, where Google Apps succeeds in its simplicity, it can fail in terms of flexibility. There are some things here that could mean game over for a lot of people:
Conversation view — how about an option to turn it off?
Conversation view, conversation view, conversation view!
It’s terrible. I have finally gotten used to it, and I still think it’s terrible. If only there were an option to shut it off. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a feature that groups email of a thread together. But it isn’t perfect and it can be pretty awkward. Emails tend to get jumbled up, and sometimes mixed into the wrong thread. Someone high up at Google must have came up with this one because it is one of the most complained about features and still they wont give you a way to shut it off.
Mobile device integration is really weak.
Being a Blackberry Enterprise user, the move to IMAP is a big downgrade. Sent mail is important! Email in under 2 seconds is hard to give up; with IMAP, be prepared for a full minute, unless you manically hit refresh. Google offers their mobile mail client, but it leaves a lot to be desired, it gives you labels (aka folders) and sent mail, but it’s clumsy and lacks basic things like original email text in the body of replies and copy/paste, to name two biggies.
Google plans to release Blackberry Enterprise Server integration this summer, but my hopes aren’t too high. Since one of my goals is to live in the cloud, having a BES server at our office doesn’t fit into that fantasy. Plus, calendar sync is one-way, and email sync is “under 1 minute,” but — I have to say it again — BES and Exchange give me email in under 2 seconds!
Return on Investment
I am willing to overlook these inconveniences, and many others because the ROI from an administrative/business owner perspective is really that good. Take Instant Messaging as an example. If you wanted to implement a company-wide IM platform with Microsoft, prepare to drop $5-$7k on hardware, another $3k+ on software, and about the same on installation. Then add in maintenance, training, and once (if) it gets adopted and people can’t live without it, get ready to plan on backup, archiving and a data recovery plan. We are talking at least $20k to do it right.
With Google Apps, you want company-wide IM? Check a box. You want all IM messages saved and searchable? Click another box. Cost? $0. You want video and voice chat too? Done. Gone are the days of patching servers, mailbox limits, backups running during the day, defragging information stores, Google Apps’ greatest strength is in the fact that it’s not there. It’s everything a cloud application should be.
“In Google I Trust”
One of the biggest drivers in my support of the Google platform is my trust in Google to quietly innovate and release new features and updates. I trust they will get mobile device synchronization right soon. Maybe Microsoft will cave and license them the rest of Active Sync. But I still have mixed feelings about Google Apps. Life in the cloud is the future — if I was starting a new business, there’s no doubt I would go with Google Apps. Coming from a Company with 10 years of Exchange process and history, it’s a harder decision. But I still might choose the new pain over the old.
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[...] Next week, I’ll share more thoughts on Google Apps, focusing on some of its weaknesses. Update: read Part 2 here. [...]
Google Apps Pilot: Notes from the Inside, Part 1 « Control Group Blog
May 28, 2009 at 9:45 am
Colin -
are you concerned with your email messages being viewed by Google?
John --
June 29, 2009 at 11:09 am
Hi John,
Security and privacy is definitely one of the biggest concerns our clients bring up and one that I wrestled with for a while!
The bottom line is that I believe Google can offer better security and privacy than what most companies can afford to maintain themselves.
They have a very strong privacy and security policy that limits their access to your data. (you can explicitly grant them access to aid in t-shooting, but that’s it.) The have been used by companies who have to adhere to very stringent privacy requirements like HIPAA.
There are also very simple security controls in the administrative panel that give the business owner or administrator, more clear information about who has access to data than you would find in Exchange or other Email apps we’ve used.
Lastly with 20GB mailboxes, we have less PST’s and local data files floating around, so the chances of private data getting to the public because of a lost laptop is significantly mitigated.
In the end, you do need to trust your service provider, and I have seen some issues with smaller email providers causing problems when a client wants to transition away, I think this is a lot less likely to happen with a company like Google who has a lot at stake in developing and maintaining trust in offerings.
I realize I may sound like a Google spokesman, but it’s an evolution of opinion that’s been tested with a lot of different hosting providers. We’ve had experience with large and small companies offering services from Commungate Pro to hosted Exchange. – I have to say while I am not too worried about the privacy issue with Google Apps, there is a right solution for every business – if the client had the budget and need for a very high level of security, privacy and especially uptime (Think NSA or a Financial institution), Google Apps is probably not the right solution. But I think their service meets the needs of 80-90% of the businesses out there.
Thanks for the question!
-Colin
Colin O'Donnell
June 29, 2009 at 12:20 pm