5 reasons why you should use Google Apps

Google’s versatile tool belt of utilities continues to expand out of their Google Labs. Rather than just being our search engine or our email, we now have the Swiss Army knife; a tool set called Google Apps offered by Google for a nominal fee (or free if you want limited functionality) that can really change your IT environment. In the process of looking at Google Apps for municipal government use I learned the following things that can apply to your IT department:

1. Not having to rely on licenses for Microsoft Outlook, Office and otherwise. Google Apps contains all of the typical programs you would find in an office, and even allows collaboration so that projects can be easily located and shared among users, increasing efficiency and reducing redundancy or document version confusion.

2. Not having to keep up various servers, back up servers, and worrying about cross platform OS errors. Google Apps is a server side application, and thus really only requires Internet access: it can run on literally any machine that has access into the Internet which means a Mac or Linux user doesn’t need any cross-platform consideration.

3. Not having to grant special rights and complicated FTP access to average users if they need to update your web page. A built-in content management system will streamline the rights and access to the users you define, preventing the headache of educating those users or configuring them.

4. Not having to deal with back up headaches. Google will be handling your data, and as a result you have one of the largest IT corporations working for you. This has its advantages in that you control the data, but you don’t have to worry whether you can retrieve it or that they will suffer a massive complication that affects you.

5. Not having to worry about an end of life option for PCs or servers. You can migrate the data seamlessly as a user moves from one PC to another in its life cycle. You don’t have to employ any sort of recycling plan to deal with the excess end of life server hardware, thus reducing e-waste and helping to preserve the environment.

These five reasons are why the IT world has a great deal of capacity to change with Google Apps. If Google continues to provide viable alternatives to existing IT situations then we’re likely going to see a shift in the way we think about IT, and soon!