Enterprise email
This is work related and as usual (as ever), standard disclaimer applies: That this opinion is entirely mine and it does not reflect that of the company I work for.
Email is such an integral part of a company, corporation, that I cannot stress enough. (I was looking for some real moving words to have an effect here, but they fail me. Oh, never mind. But you know the feeling, right?) So what is this about, then? Well, it is about the big announcement from Google.
A few weeks before this happened, someone in my organization called for views about deploying third-party email solutions to contractors based in our offices. This obviously came out of the problems of having to set up relatively temporary mailboxes on the company domain and get things working for specific non-staff groups.
The discussion evoloved, and some of us who have been using Gmail and Apps put our force behind this thing, enough to raise a genuine interest in not only thinking about options to deploy for non-staff contractors, but also a possibility of deploying them for over 100,000 staff worldwide. It’s a definite possibility, there are people really looking this up and other aspects around it at this very moment.
Now, why would we, as employees, do such a thing? Well, there’s this thing about have your say in making your life easier (as if there was a better and brief way of saying it). Let’s look at the wind-down version of why we would support Google Apps.
Let me start with Email.
My company lets me work from home or from a remote place, when I need to or when I cannot be in office, for some reason. In such situations, more often than not, the only thing I need to access is my corporate email. Presently, the only way we can do it is via the VPN. Somehow, email via the VPN, except on one occasion, never worked for me from home. And I was forced to haul myself back to office, so I could be connected.
Our present solution is Outlook + Exchange. The first time I saw it, I cringed. (I even bought a used Outlook 2000 in a nutshell, just so I could be productive without wasting time learning some basic things. But as it happens, the 600 odd page book lies neatly on my desk, unopened.)
From what I see around, a lot of people have attachment issues, mailbox limitation problems archiving, not to mention searching, indexing and a whole lot of other stuff. People complain about it all the time, but there’s nothing much they could do. But now, the prospects look better, because there’s a better solution available.
For some of us, the only email we have ever had is the corporate address. For that at least, I think we deserve a lot more than a crappy system.
Gmail’s amazing feature set is a boon for corporate users in any environment. Comfy offices to extreme weather conditions of up to -30ºc in near arctic zones.
Calendar is another. We have a lot of events happening. Some, I end up skipping because I didn’t keep Outlook open. Google Calendar sends SMS alerts to your phone, and that’s a great way of getting a notification while on the move about your appointments, events, et al.
We have a lot of specifications that a whole team of people are working on at the moment. The progress is often at snail’s pace, and in a serial manner. If there was a way to collaborate officially, the comment and review system could be a lot quicker, thus reducing the time taken to complete such tasks.
Google Apps provides all those, just lets us get our work done, quickly, effortlessly and without experiencing pain. I just hope the company sees our POV.