Dear Dan: Are the business services and online applications offered by Google worth checking out?
Dear Exploring: Google Apps, as they are known, are “hosted applications” that you access online. There’s no software to install. Google Apps gives everyone at your business a custom e-mail address, tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, a shared calendar system and access to a flexible intranet. Security and compliance services are also available.
For details on how it works, go to www.google.com/a. Or click on “Business Solutions” at the bottom of the Google homepage. Here are potential benefits for your business:
1) E-mail everywhere: Access your e-mail – all of it – from any Internet-connected computer. Or get your e-mail from a BlackBerry, smart phone or your mobile device’s browser.
2) Outlook compatible: Use Gmail’s POP feature to send and receive mail from familiar desktop applications like Microsoft Outlook.
3) Storage galore: With up to 25 GB of storage you don’t need to delete or archive messages or attachments to a local disk. You can also save IMs and even voice-mail alongside your mail.
4) Never lose an e-mail again: Search technology built into your inbox lets you find e-mails, attachments and IM conversations fast.
5) Share docs with everyone or just a few: No need to upload, post and tag documents like in traditional document management systems. Just publish. Easily restrict permissions to the people who are supposed to view or edit the document. Because all of your documents are available to you on the Web, you can always access a file from any Web-connected computer.
6) Make scheduling easier: Publish calendars and deadlines that anyone (or just a select few) can view.
7) Find anything fast: Can’t remember what you named that important document? Google Apps search features help you find information within all of your own documents and in the documents shared with you.
8) Share online: Share documents, spreadsheets and presentations as online files. Everyone accesses the same copy, avoiding multiple versions.
9) Save documents to your PC: You can also take documents offline and save them as HTML files, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets or PDF files.
10) Go back in time: Easily see all the different versions of a document that existed over time, compare them and revert to an older version if you need to. Documents are safe since they are saved automatically as you work. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at
editor@business.com.
