How we began to live better with Google Apps

Foreword

Back in 2005, we decided to start our own business (what our company does - it does not matter much for our story). Then we did everything hastily and solved the IT infrastructure issue spontaneously. By the end of 2007, we had 30+ employees in two cities and the following service option, organized by our admins:

• Single network - remote employees connected via openvpn
• Mail - SquirrelMail / IMAP
• SQUID as a proxy
• File / Print server on linux
• At the same time, the staff worked at the zoo of systems / operating systems (up to “bring your own PC” or PC work provided by the client).
  
• SVN (version control system) for documents (an important nuance of our business is versioning and working together on documents).

What did not suit us:

• File exchange only by mail or SVN:
  
  • Mail caused the reproduction of versions of documents, but was the only way to communicate with customers.
  • SVN - required a) installation and connection via open vpn b) availability of an SVN client - both are not always possible when working from a computer issued by a client (restriction of rights, policies, and so on).
• Difficulties and inconveniences for remote employees (some of them have never been to the company's office). Install openvpn mail client setup, etc.
• The lack of calendars and the ability to give access to them (when working remotely, this is almost mandatory).
• It required at least 3 physical servers to support the entire infrastructure.
• Everything worked quite unstable: either the mail or the squid was overwhelming (there was little money, saved on servers and components), so they were left without a connection once a day for a quarter.
• Filled with spam - 30-40 messages per day.
• A headache with a corporate directory — you had to do 3 operations to select a person from a directory (or quietly drag everyone to your personal address book). Especially strained when new employees came.
• In addition, we had as many as 2 administrators (and 10% of their time they were dealing with mail and what is connected with it).

What we wanted:

• What would all work (especially mail)
• Minimum spam (and better to not have at all)
• So that employees can just work (do not blow up the brain to new employees - not everyone wants to deal with IT gadgets, distracting from the main work)
• Calendars
• Availability of a company resource management system
• Simple exchange of documents and preferably joint work on them and versioning, with the ability to control access

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What started with:

We tried to put a platform (the most common IMHO) of a well-known company on the server instead of SquirrelMail.

• Calendars have appeared
• A normal contact list has appeared.

All other problems remained - and even fell more often. Two months later, they decided that it could not continue this way - a FINAL DECISION was needed.

Light at the end of the tunnel:

One of the partners drew attention to the Google Apps service - by that time most of the employees had an account on gmail as an alternative working mailbox, especially those who were talented simply redirected mail there. After an hour of analysis - what kind of “beast” is this, we realized that we were always looking for this particular set of solutions. Cheerfully a free account on google apps was organized and for 2 days we tested this miracle. Then the limitations of the free account, as I recall, were harder (25 accounts maximum, now - 50). But it didn’t bother us and we decided to go directly to the premium (then it was possible to buy only in packages - it seems at 25). We immediately bought 50 accounts (by that time the staff had grown to 40 employees) and paid 2500 USD for the first year of use.

Expensive? Come on!

It may seem expensive to someone, and we think that we saved and that is why:



It turned out that Google Apps is almost 4 times cheaper.

* The fact is that payment (then) is possible only through Google Checkout - now there are more convenient options for Russian users.

What is the result:

Within one week, our admins managed to transfer 3-year correspondence to Google Apps accounts and happiness came. Over 3 years of use, it only failed once for 2 hours (if you remember, last year). And yet - a great spam cutter, a great opportunity to work together with documents (now there are more formats than when we started), tables, forms (Cloud Connect was recently announced - this is something with something), custom applications, installation of solutions from Google Marketplace, Google Sites is a great solution for internal portals, and with a certain imagination for external sites and much more.

What else would like to tell:

• How and what do we use in Google Apps? What is new?
• What all these beautiful phrases mean in the description of Google Apps Premium, as well as when and why it makes sense to go to it. Recently I explained to the client - it turns out that everything is not so easy to reduce to one denominator.
• Comparing alternatives to Google Apps (recently conducted) is very interesting.