Being relatively new to email administration and faced with the need to choose which email service Prudential Preferred - Chicago was moving to, Camden Daily faced a unique challenge.
It appears that he chose - wisely, and he has become somewhat of an internet poster child for Google Premier.
The decision to move in this direction was not one solely of cost or function. There was a larger picture, or future vision, that Camden was looking towards. Seeing where those choices have led in the past (see Google Earth Integration), this is/was a crucial step in the puzzle. Luckily, I could ask him about some of his thought process.
Could you outline your pros/cons shortlist of trade offs between a traditional in-house supported email system (MS-Exchange) that you needed to consider when choosing to go with a hosted solution?
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Are there any privacy, data retention, data security concerns that you have with so much information in the hands of Google?
Not really. So far, Google has not, to my knowledge, abused their vast data banks, except to more accurately target me for advertising. And, honestly, I trust Google’s backup methodologies more than I do my own.
What is the number one user feedback, wish list, or comment about Google Premier?
I have heard virtually nothing from our users, which, in the IT world, is usually a Very Good Thing. People don’t tend to comment on things that just work the way they should, all the time.
Do you plan to use all the services that Google Premier currently offers (Apps, Page Creator, or Personal Homepage). If so, could you expand on some of the more creative ways you are going to leverage them?
We do plan on using the personalized Start Page. I envision that to become the main, configurable ‘intranet’ page for our users. Email, calendar, maybe a gadget with a map of their listings, or open houses…there are a lot of cool uses for that page.
If we could somehow leverage Page Creator for agent web pages, that would be phenomenal. Let them tweak their own designs, and add a gadget that displays their own listings, or have a home evaluation form… very cool, but I haven’t really dived into the feasibility of that yet.
Docs and Spreadsheets, I believe, shows a whole lot of promise, but I am not ready to take my users down the lonely road away from MS Office. Now, if Google could just offer their long-rumored GDrive (a network hard drive to store files on) as part of Premier, with all of their Docs and Spreadsheets files available there, openable by MS Office, or Open Office, that would just be awesome.
How do you see Prudential leveraging the API interface to integrate Google Premier into the backend business logic.
We’re rolling out an Asterisk based phone system soon, and I would love to see some crazy, unified messaging capabilities become possible. What if the start page let you view your voicemails, and click to listen to them via mp3? Or see a list of missed calls to your office line, right next to your emails?
Are there any features that, if deployed by Google Premier, would really bring your conceptual ideas to a whole new level?
Two things: GDrive, to let our agents mount a network drive from any computer and store their files there (not likely any time soon), and even wilder, I want to see *phones*. And I’m not talking cell phones, I’m talking regular SIP based VoIP desk phones. We buy a block of numbers from Google in our area code, and they do the rest. I don’t think it’s nearly as crazy as it seems…
– Thanks Camden!!!!
I’ve been using a small portion of Google services for my office email. Gmail Hosted for your domain has been an excellent piece of software for managing my websites emails; I can certainly voice for that.
Your chart shows that hosted email solutions are more expensive than in-house solutions, but this is not always the case. There are hosted solutions at a number of price points, and the cost per user of many of them may be less than an in-house solution, depending on a number of factors but especially depending on the number of users supported.
A few years ago when we did the analysis, it turned out that a hosted solution was less expensive for my company, both in terms of real and opportunity costs. Hosted solutions have been a cost-effective solution for a number of my clients as well.
I would suggest that anyone considering whether to use a hosted email solution or host it in-house do their own financial analysis.
Matt - good points. I would definately suggest a lot of due dilligence because the choice isnt always solely about cost savings either. In other words, there may be tradeoffs for savings, and you reach a point that functionality gets compromised over cost. But each scenario is different for each company.
Thanks!!