Google Apps Move Helps Contractors Connect With Customers

Spent are the days when running a small business meant outfitting each proletarian with a desktop PC, then loading up each nonpareil with individually authorised software. Thanks to services that live on the Internet, there's a swifter way to endue workers with productiveness and communication tools.

Google and Microsoft are the major players in and then-called "cloud" suites designed for a seaborne, ever-online workforce. The flexibility, portability, and low maintenance of their services appeal to a growing identification number of young businesses. In a best-case scenario, either Google Apps for Business or Microsoft Office 365 can improve productivity and reduce such costs as software licenses and paid IT help. Some packages include electronic mail, calendars, resilient chat, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, collaborative redaction, and much more.

Google Apps for Business is a paid suite–an expansion of the lineup found in the free Google Apps for consumers. Office 365, by contrast, builds on Microsoft's Concern Online Professional Services (BPOS). But it also has a desktop component in the Office 2020 retinue. Office 365 opened for unexclusive beta examination in Apr, with a final examination outlet set for afterward this year, while the full Google Apps is available straight off. Present's a comparison of the features and pricing of Google Apps for Business and Microsoft Office 365.

Some 3 million businesses use Google Apps–which includes "millions" of Apps for Business paid users. Google doesn't share a breakdown virtually how many customers are smaller companies. Microsoft counts "millions" of BPOS customers and hundreds of millions of desktop Office users. Much 100,000 organizations are testing Office 365.

Companies that use Google Apps enjoy more than a 300 percent issue on investment (Return on invested capital), at to the lowest degree according to a November Forrester report sponsored by Google. And productivity gains enabled aside features such as swift e-mail searches lead to even greater savings. Microsoft Office 365 besides promises impressive Return on investment for small companies.

Although Google appears to be ahead in this stringently online backwash sol far, the competition is just warming up, and there's no unclouded victor; businesses can choose the option that best fits their necessarily. All the same, in the fine-business case study below, Google Apps was the right hand choice for moving away from a mix of Microsoft Office and opposite tools.

Serious considerations remain in front your company abandons local apps and forcible servers for the cloud. But for many organizations, Web services win out for convenience and mobility.

Case Analyze: Contractors Improve Mobility, Customer Contact with Google Apps

The small, busy staff of PT President For plumbing contractors in Temple Hills, Maryland, can't waste sentence worrying about fastening computers. But its handful of workers were wrestle with prolonged PC viruses and an unreliable POP3 e-mail arrangement, and couldn't reach customers easily via mobile phones. The cluttered Web site was firm to update, with no simple option to take customer requests.

The owner was disgusted paying close to $500 all month for Verizon and Vonage VoIP services, and didn't want to furcate out more money for inexperient Microsoft Office licenses. In addition, a third-party IT professional person charged $75 per month for support, and $100 per hour for connected-site help. A $3000 pecker for fixing PC problems motivated PT Ford to try something new.

The Solution

The plumbing contractor called Migration Big businessman in nearby Silver Spring, an IT firm that specializes in ahorse micro businesses to obnubilate services such as Google Apps. Owner Shea Bennett aimed to save his node hundreds of dollars for each one calendar month in tech expenses. He besides wanted Atomic number 78 Gerald Ford to revel a independent system that would need support only in a case of hardware nonstarter.

"You're talk about changing the entire infrastructure of the company, how they've done their patronage for fivesome or six years," helium says of his assignment.

To it end, Bennett subscribed PT Ford's handful of users onto the $50-per-exploiter-per-year Google Apps for Business suite. This replaced the POP3 GoDaddy email system of rules that fed into Outlook with Gmail. He moved Microsoft Berth documents on workers' laptops to Google's servers.

He dropped Vonage service in favor of Google Voice, which routes calls to multiple cell and desk phones. Staff like a sho can access e-mail and edit documents on their iPhones.

PT Ford's Website moved from a dearly-won, hosted Web server to Google Sites, which offers easier redaction. Now employees pot discipline customer requests through and through a Contact Us form along the site. And Bennett set up the Freshbooks online invoicing and billing overhaul from the third-political party Google Apps Marketplace. Migration Martin Luther King Jr. besides convinced PT Ford to drop Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Google Chrome browser.

The Effect

Collaborative editing in Google Docs lets the plumbers record and respond to avail requests in real time. If they'Ra on the road superficial for a customer, they can tap a Google document on a smartphone for the speech.

The tech makeover also eliminated both Outlook e-chain mail PST problems and viruses that weren't caught by Norton 360. That in turn of events reduced the costs of paying for third gear-party IT documentation when problems cropped functioning. Bennett sick the company to MIcrosoft Security department Essentials, escaped for up to 10 PCs.

The migration took little than a week and cost $1000. Moving seven years of e-mail to Gmail took only several hours. So, how does a move to Google Apps not put IT pros like Bennett out of business?

"Reselling Google products requires engineers to have a broader knowledge of various technologies," he says. "You birth to know multiple technologies from multiple vendors. People rejoin because they hope you."

Although the migration was quick and inexpensive, Pt Ford continues to call Bennett for other high-level needs, such as setting up a cloud-hosted payroll system.

–Case examine submitted by Migration King

Shea Bennett is a U.S. Navy vet and small patronage owner with all over ten years of IT experience in senior-level Windows systems administration, virtualization, throw management, teaching, and teaching. His certifications let in VMware (VCP), Microsoft (MCSE, MCSA, MCDBA, MCP), CompTIA Linux+, and Cisco CCNA. Bennett holds a Masters in Educational and Instructional Technology, and a Bachelors in IT Management from National University, San Diego. You can reach Migration King online and at 202-503-9531.

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