Google Apps for your company/group

How can your company/group use Google Apps.  Let's first understand what Google Apps is?

Google Apps is a set of tools a group of people can use to communicate and collaborate online.  It includes:

• Gmail for email
• GoogleTalk for instant messaging
• Google Calendar for scheduling
• Google Sites for websites and group wikis, and
• Google Docs for online documents, presentations and spreadsheets.

To begin using, you need to own a domain name e.g.  geekwithme.com.  If you don't own one, and the one you want is not already owned, you can purchase from Go Daddy or surprisingly from Google.  So instead of a company using hotmail or gmail accounts, they can use Google Apps and instead be able to use email addresses like keith@geekwithme.com.  Additional users like ceo@geekwithme.com or janitor@geekwithme.com can be created each with their own email address and start collaborating with each other using the tools above.

The really good news is that the Google Apps Standard Edition is FREE with the limitation of 50 users and 7GB email storage!  So do you trust Google with your business data?

With all that Google is providing free, it is easy to find many scenarios where this could be beneficial.  Let's consider a few scenarios.

1) A small business that want to eliminate the burden of email and spam hosting from your IT staff.  The transition is as simple as updating MX records for the domain.
2) A small company or a startup with a handful of individuals could present themselves in a more professional manner using a company email rather than some free email addresses
3) Social groups and clubs can use to share calendars and documents.

4) A large company with over 50 users that wants to avoid the internal management of email servers and capital expenditures for servers.  The cost for the Google Apps Premium Edition is $50 per user per year.
5) Individuals who have a web presence and prefer using their web site domain in their email address.