Google, you’re so good to us

It’s been a great day. I just got home after watching the Mumlers for the first time in the most hospitable dive bar in Missouri (it’s non smoking). I opened my email and learned that Google just slashed its additional online storage fees! This is great news! I was about to have to pay $50 for the third year in a row to support my Picasa addiction. Instead, for $20 I get 80 gbs of additional storage.

This is wonderful timing considering my increasing dependence on Google Docs and the growing draw of the new DROID. Or am I actually more lured by Verizon…nah, it’s probably my disdain for at&t. The point is that Android 2.0 may be tempting enough to finally cut the cord with my iPhone. Decisions, decisions…

In case you don’t have Google additional storage but you do have a Gmail account or a Picasa account, you really need to hop on the bandwagon. How can reject 20gb of additional storage for 5 bucks a year?! Time to bust out that digital camera and start sharing pictures as they’re meant to be shared — not as email attachments.

Google Apps Sync for Outlook

Today Google issued a heavy blow in the fight for small business, non-profit, and education email systems. Google announced that they will soon be releasing a tool that will allow Google Apps Premier and Education users to synchronize all their Outlook data instantly and quickly with their Google Apps account. This new tool will behave very similar to how Outlook interacts with Microsoft Exchange server and will feel no different for users.

As somebody who has setup numerous deployments of Exchange and Google Apps I can tell you that this is the one thing my customers have been waiting for. Many organizations have been using Exchange Server since its early days. All of their employees are using Outlook to manage their email, calendar, tasks, and contacts and for these organizations training all their employees to use Gmail would have simply been too difficult and too great of cost. However, this new tool allows organizations to seamlessly transition to Google Apps without the difficulty of removing Outlook.

Below is a demo of the new Outlook Sync tool.

Microsoft really needs to step up their game if they want to continue to succeed in this market. I am not saying Exchange Server is going to simply vanish, but fewer smaller organizations are going to be considering products like Small Business Server in the future and will instead be relying on cloud file storage and services like Google Apps and Salesforce.com to power their businesses.

Move to Hosted Email

The time for an organization to host and maintain their own email system has passed. For many years, I have been a proponent of Microsoft Exchange Server and Small Business Server. I have helped many smaller sized organizations install and support these email systems. However, with the vast selection of free or inexpensive hosted email solutions available I can longer see any reason that would justify an organization maintaining their own email system.

The simple fact is that building and supporting an onsite email system is costly to setup and costly to maintain. Additionally, it is nearly impossible for any organization to maintain even a 99% uptime. A 99% uptime amounts to 3.65 days of downtime per year. With most paid email services and even some free ones an uptime of at least 99.9% is guaranteed. Even the free solutions, like Google Apps Standard, that don’t guarantee 99.9% will almost certainly maintain levels close to that level.

Atlas Bay switched from using Exchange Server as a part of Microsoft Small Business Server about 6 months ago and I haven’t regretted the decision once. The time we spend maintaining our email went from hours per month to nothing. We are using Google Apps Premier and love the uptime guarantee, spam filters, and virus filters. This level of reliability and quality would never have been available to us with an on-site email system. Additionally, we now know that our email will always be delivered, always be available remotely, and is secure.

Since Google Apps was released Atlas Bay has helped many organizations make the switch. We have setup single person businesses and medium business. Some people still like to use Outlook while others like to use only the web interface for gmail. The beauty of Google Apps is the flexibility. This flexibility makes it easy for employees to make the switch. To date I have not had a single person say they preferred using their on-site email system over Google Apps. Additionally, every single company is seeing drastically reduced support and maintenance costs. Most customers that are on Google Apps haven’t had to pay for a single hour of support with their email systems since they made the switch.

With the economy as it is and every business trying to save money I would urge you to consider moving your organization over to Google Apps. You will save money and more than likely have a much better and more reliable email experience.