FAQs when evaluating Google Apps for your enterprise

I keep getting many inquiries from prospective clients who are evaluating Google Apps to migrate from their existing mail systems. Here are some of the common questions clients ask when evaluating Google Apps and my answers to them.

1) EMAIL: Is there an email client or is it web mail only? If there is no client (or we can't use one) then how I will read / respond to email without being connected.
Google's email has POP and IMAP access and you can use it with following mail clients:

Mail Clients for POP

* Outlook Express
* Outlook 2002 / Outlook 2003
* Entourage
* Entourage
* Eudora
* Eudora for Macs
* Netscape Mail
* Apple Mail
* Mozilla
* Thunderbird

(http://www.google.com/support/a/careerfc.com/bin/answer.py?answer=12103&topic=10233)

Same way you can set IMAP mail clients for most used clients


2) CALENDAR: Can I view my co-workers' availability when scheduling a meeting (like using scheduling assistant)?

You can view coworker's calendar if they share it with you. They have option to share with other persons.


3) EMAIL: Are there rules and out of office assistant type features with Gmail?

You can set Vacation responder (sends an automated reply to incoming messages. If a contact sends you several messages, this automated reply is sent at most once every 4 days).

4) GOOGLE APPS DEPLOYMENT: How does using Gmail this affect permissions and setting up of new accounts? Do we lose integration with ActiveDirectory?

Google provides APIs (for Premier Edition) which can help you in doing this:

http://code.google.com/apis/apps/

5) DOCS / SITES: There are a lot of powerful collaboration tools available within Exchange that many companies don't take advantage of like Public folders, sharepoint integration etc. Similar features in Google Apps?

You can use following services of Google Apps for collaboration:

* Docs (Users can upload, create, edit and share documents online, They can share with one or more users.)
* Sites (Interactive and collaborative sites which can be used within your company or shared outside. User can create, edit and share with others and can even give others permissions to edit)

6) GOOGLE APPS DEPLOYMENT: How to factor in the support cost of getting everyone ramped up on a new mail system.

Enterprise need to do a thorough cost benefit analysis before plunging on something which affects almost every one in enterprise. Extensive planning, risk mitigation (may be for some time run on both Google and Your Mail server) and thorough execution are required. May be one can start with a pilot on a subset of users and if satisfied can go with complete migration.

7) CALENDAR: How will we do meeting room scheduling?

Each resource like Meeting Room, Projector etc is created as a secondary calendar with auto accept. While scheduling the resource calendar can be checked for availability and if available they are invited.