If you were to devise a drinking game and needed a phrase that would keep participants knocking back their favorite beverage of choice, you couldn't go wrong with these two words: cloud computing. That phrase has been spoken billions of times over the last few years at tech conferences around the world. While it's true that the cloud has lots of potential to revolutionize IT, many system administrators still have reservations about putting vital corporate infrastructure in the cloud.
There are two sides to every story, and such is the case with cloud adoption. Many companies and organizations the world over have embraced the cloud as an important part of their IT service portfolio, and DeTect Inc. is one of them.
DeTect is a small business that specializes in avian and weather radar technologies. In mid-2010, DeTect IT Manager Matt James managed the transition from a hosted POP e-mail provider to Google Apps for DeTect’s 80+ users, and he was kind enough to answer some of my questions about his experience with cloud computing in general and Google Apps in particular. Matt also joined an online roundtable I recently moderated on Office 365 and Google Apps, and he brought a welcome, real-world perspective about the benefits (and drawbacks) of cloud computing.
DeTect IT Manager Matt JamesGartner recently announced that Google made about $185 million in Google Apps revenue for the last 9 months ending on Sept. 30. Those aren't huge numbers when you consider the billions that Google rakes in from their core search business, but it proves that Google is gaining some traction in getting businesses to consider Google Apps as an alternative to competitive cloud and on-premise solutions.
Analyst reports and sales figures are one thing, but what was Google Apps like to deploy and support? To find out I asked Matt a few questions about his own move to Google Apps.
Jeff James: What email solution where you using before you switched to Google Apps? When did you switch to Google Apps?
Matt James: Before we switched to Google Apps, we were using Web.com's e-mail service. It is a very basic service with only POP3 access to mail accounts. We started our migration to Google Apps in July of 2010.
JJ: What are you favorite features of Google Apps?
MJ: Based on user feedback, the size of the mailbox (25GB) is probably the top feature. This allows users to keep all of their mail in once place which makes the second feature possible - searching capability across all those messages. Searching gmail is light years faster and more efficient than searching in Outlook. The third feature that our users have commented highly on is the built-in chat functionality - great for asking quick questions.
JJ: What are your least favorite features of Google Apps?
MJ: I would say that the number one complaint has to do with learning the "search instead of sort" philosophy that gmail uses. Some users have a very hard time finding their mail without doing a sort and, unless they use Outlook with Google Apps sync, there is no way to get this functionality. The second largest user gripe about Google Apps is actually a double edges blade of sorts. Because Google is constantly changing and improving their software and you always get the latest stuff, it is sometimes hard to keep up with all of the changes. There are Administrative settings that can slow this process down a bit, but you're still somewhat drug into the newer versions - like it or not. Lastly, from an administrative prospective and related to the storage feature above, currently there is no way to add more storage to an e-mail account in Google Apps.
JJ: Any advice for IT pros considering moving their mail on-premise into the cloud?
MJ: We started with a pilot group of 10 users. We setup dual delivery so these users got mail in both their web.com and Google Apps accounts. This allowed us to do a direct comparison between the two services. The only warning here is to make absolutely sure you understand DNS MX records and how mail routing works with your existing provider. We had to play some tricks with alias domains to get the dual delivery to continue to work once we switched our MX records to Google. Once our pilot program was done, we decided to move groups of users at a time. This proved to be painful as some people were on Google Apps and wanted to share documents, view calendars, and chat with users that were not yet migrated. I would suggest a "big bang" roll out once the pilot is completed.
JJ: Does Google Apps meet all the security and compliance needs that your company may have?
MJ: Because we're a private company, we're not held to the same regulations and compliance requirements of larger / public companies. However, we have been asked to come up to those levels of compliance because of the types of contracts we work on with the US and Foreign governments. Google Apps by itself does not provide these types of compliance. Google uses an add-on service called Postini for message archival, content filtering, encryption, etc. We will probably be moving to Postini's message archiving solution within the next year.
JJ: Other than Google mail, what other Google Apps do you use?
MJ: We use most of the Google Apps suite including calendar, docs, sites, video, and groups. We also use Google Apps Sync for Outlook and Google Cloud Connect for integration with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. We've also started using a product called Gantter Project (free) from the Google Apps marketplace for use as an alternative to Microsoft Project.
JJ: Any comments on how difficult Google Apps is to license?
MJ: Google apps is super easy to license. It's $50 per user per year. The Postini add-on is either $15 / user / year or $33 / user / year depending on if you want 1 or 10 years of message archiving respectively. IF you're looking into some of the Google Apps marketplace add-ons, they can get cumbersome to license but those aren't directly sold by Google.