Gregory A. Lussier

More and more enterprises learned that giving PCs to employees is a bad idea. Expensive maintenance, not so stable systems, viruses, large files stored on local hard drive make backups impossible, etc. The PC world has come to an end in large scale enterprises, thin-clients and terminal servers are back after many years left in a wardrobe. They are reliable, don’t contain any data and are cost efficient compared to PCs.

It’s easier for an IT department to see the improvement in stability, performance and maintenance needs on a terminal server than on a mail server. Many large scale enterprises still use decentralized Exchange or Domino servers to manage emails and calendars. Those solutions are completely obsolete and software-dependant. In order to insure a 99.9% uptime over many different branches, an entreprise would need to monitor the servers and have IT staff working at all banches simultaneously or available to travel from one place to another. The idea of cloud computing and hosted applications solves that problem.

Google Apps is a suite of applications that includes Gmail, Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Googl Talk (instant messaging and voice over IP), Google Docs and Spreadsheets (online document hosting and collaboration), Google Page Creator (web page creation and publishing). It costs 50.00 $ USD per user per year to deploy. It can be deployed over an existing install of Microsoft Exchange or IBM Lotus Notes by using some migration tools or hiring a consultation company that can handle the hassle of preserving data while sending hundreds of gigabytes to Google servers.

What are the benefits of using Software as a Service Google Apps?

• Data accessible from anywhere, on any computer platform
• 25 GB of email inbox storage per user with powerful search capability (these search capabilities don’t exist in Exchange and Notes)
• Simple and fast collaboration and messaging tools
• Data is never lost, even if your laptop dies or is stolen
• Sharing mechanism within Docs, Sites and Video enables a new level of cooperation.
• No hardware or software to install (Google Chrome browser with Google Gears can be deployed to take advantage of offline browsing on Google Apps)
• Very low fixed cost per user (50.00 $ / user / year)
• Intuitive applications that many users are already familiar with (webmail, calendar)
• Ability to move users incrementally
• Savings of license fees, hardware and data center costs (building, security, tape backups, maintenance)
• Open platform for integration (Google API)
• Decreased cost
• Increased employee productivity, enabling faster decision making
• More flexiblity to deploy changes and innovations fast
• Focus resources on strategic initiatives instead of operational activities
• Attractive IT environment for the younger generation of employees (advanced collaboration tools that can be used by any user who wants to)

Many users are used to Microsoft Outlook and wouldn’t like to change their habits. Google Apps Gmail supports IMAP protocol (the messages are kept on the server and just displayed in Outlook). User don’t see any difference.

There is no dedicated server, Google has datacenters with lots of blade servers monitored 24/7 by the best technicians of the industry. All the datacenters are replicated in real-time and are connected to extremely fast Internet connections.

Some of you might say that keeping the enterprise’s sensitive data on a remote server managed by a private company is dangerous. In fact, the protection that is deployed by Google to ensure that your data is protected is probably a lot better than yours. The controls, processes and policies that protect the data have successfully completed a SAS 70 type II audit.

These are the three main components to Google’s security practices:

• People – Google employs a full-time information security team including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and netowkr security. The team is responsible for the company’s perimeter defense systems, security review processes, and customized security infrastructure, as well as for developing, documenting and implementing Google’s security policies and standards.
• Process – Security is a part of Google DNA. Each application is built from the ground up with security in mind. Google applications go through multiple security reviews as part of the Secure Code development process. The application development environment is closely restricted and carefully monitored to maximize security. External security audit are also regularly conducted to provide additional assurance.
• Technology – Google Apps data is fractured and obfuscated across multiple servers and disks, making it human-unreadable. Data is replicated in multiple data centers for redundancy and consistent availability. To reduce exploit risks, each Google server is custom-built with only the necessary software components, and the homogeneous server architecture enables rapid updates and configuration changes across the entire network when necessary.

Each business working with Google Apps retain copyright and any other rights they already hold in content which they submit, post or display.

References

Cloud Computing – What is the Potential Value for Your Company, February 2009, CBS Interactive Inc.

Why Your Organization Should Consider Hosted Applications, October 2008, Osterman Research.