Rob Howard's Blog

# re: Google for business email

Yes. Yes.... yes yes yes to Google.

Oh, and yes.

# re: Google for business email

Rob, We are testing that also, been using it for the last year along side Exchange. Tough descision for us - tough to write about since we provide a hosted Microsoft Exchange SaaS. Personaly I like has had some hicups but what doesn't.

# re: Google for business email

Rob,

Google Apps for Domains is a great solution.  About 6 months ago, my company moved from running our own Exchange box to Google.  The spam filtering alone is a huge plus.

The biggest downside we experienced:  you can only send 500 unique emails per day per account.

For example, if you have a web application with a lot of users and those people want email notifications of changes or updates, etc. you won't be able to send over 500 unique emails per day.  Pretty weak sause if you ask me.

The above actually happened to me and now I'm using IIS's SMTP service to send emails from my web app.  In order to do this while your MX record is pointing to Google, you'll have to create SPF records to allow additional servers to generate emails.  Otherwise, it will look like your SMTP server is sending out spam.

Other than that one item, Google has a great solution with GAFYD.

Otto

# re: Google for business email

It sounds scary! :)

My cell phone has really good Exchange support (as will the iPhone soon) and I'm not sure where that will leave me if we switch. I do really like the Exchange/Outlook combination as an end user, but I can understand the pains in supporting it.

(P.S. I do like the idea that *finally* I will get decent iCal/Mail.app support ;))

# re: Google for business email

Rob, I do not use gmail for corportate accounts though I have been using it to manage my domain mail for a couple years now. I was an early adopter in their beta program and have grown along with them.  I now have 3 domains that use gmail and it is great.  From a corporate perspective, I am not sure how you would manage things like calenaring.  I know it could be done with their suite (I have my wife's outlook calendar actually linked to her google calendar) but it certainly would not be as easy as it is in exchange for a compnay your size.

From purely an email perspective, it is solid.

# re: Google for business email

If you are worried about bandwidth Google mail will be worse as all email, even internal goes to the web!

# re: Google for business email

Short answer YES!

Google Apps for Domains rocks, I have quite a few domains hosted that way.  Otto, does bring up a point.  However his solution is the right one.  Just use IIS or some other SMTP server to send out automated emails.  

IMAP integration is nice, if you want to keep using Outlook.  I personally gave up on Outlook all together.  I use the web client, or the installable client for the BlackBarry.  

# re: Google for business email

YES... Outlook sucks

# re: Google for business email

As an employee, my vote is YES. :)

With all the dependencies upon email, and all that things that could cause it to be down, Google definitely makes good sense.  Email is too important, and spam is too much of a burden.

# re: Google for business email

If it's anything like the personal gmail & google calendar then hell yes.

# re: Google for business email

We've been looking into corp. gmail recently too, mostly because of the 99.9% uptime guarantee that comes with it. I'm sure if you're moving from exchange they'll have a migration path as well.

# re: Google for business email

Candidly, I'm a bit aprehensive. Email, calendar and tasks are vital to my workflow.

1) Is there an email client or is it web mail only? If there is no client (or we can't use one), that's bad bananas--I need to read/respond to email without being connected. Plus, not being able to embed images within the message body is a total pain.

2) Can I view my co-workers' availability when scheduling a meeting (like using scheduling assistant)? Can I send meeting requests to clients and can they easily accept if they are using Outlook?

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

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

5) There are a lot of powerful collaboration tools available within Exchange that many companies don't take advantage of. Public folders, sharepoint integration, etc

6) Also, don't forget to factor in the support cost of getting everyone ramped up on a new mail system.

# re: Google for business email

How will we do meeting room scheduling?  Also, one thing that bugs me with gmail is the inability to have it delete blatant spam instead of having it fill up the spam folder and make looking for false positives a pain in the ass.

# re: Google for business email

I've worked with both hosted exchange and Google Apps for Your Domain.  Each of them has their pros and cons.  Google Apps is not Exchange and that is the biggest difference.  In other words, a business contacts manager and offline access are probably the two biggest features that Google Apps is missing.  Google Apps has improved since they added the imap feature, however, which is much better than pop3.  Hosted Exchange can be just as good as Google Apps and is better for people that are Outlook dependent.

# Living in Gworld

Dan asked me to post an update as I explore deeper into the Google forest. I'm now fully committed

# re: Google for business email

I would guess that there are a number of factors to consider - What SLAs do they offer?  If your business breathes on email, is Google going to keep the oxygen plugged in?  What about support for when things go wrong?  Keep in mind that Google will have access to all your mail information including search indexes and mail history - is that something that your business can afford?  If you have any privacy or retention concerns, you might want to make sure that those are addressed as well...  Personally, I really enjoy how Exchange, Office and Windows are all tightly integrated such that I have a very seamless online and offline experience.  I've even moved my personal mail account to a hosted Exchange solution based on reliability and features.  Plus, I'm not sure what I'd do these days without SharePoint/Outlook integration!

# re: Google for business email

(1) Google's email is POP and IMAP compliant 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

(www.google.com/.../answer.py)

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

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

Not sure about meeting requests to outlook if they work?

3) 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). Is this what you were looking for?

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

code.google.com/.../apps

5) 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 in company the permissions to edit)

6) Yes, of course. Enterprise need to do a thorough cost benefit analysis before plunging on something which affects almost every one in enterprise. Extensive planning, risk mitigation (for some time run on both Google and Your existing 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 in due course.

# re: Google for business email

How will we do meeting room scheduling?

Each resource is created as a secondary calendar and scheduled in auto accept mode.

www.google.com/.../answer.py

# re: Google for business email

I'm using both in different environments with clients using both (Exchange and free version Google Apps) - and each have their pros and cons as detailed above. The only thing that hasn't been addressed yet above is security with online access (not POP/IMAP etc.). Having Exchange internal, it's easy to configure to require SSL for OWA throughout to guard against session hijacking, but for Google Apps (at least for the no-pay version - don't know about the corp), default access is SSL for login only, the rest is in the clear (your authentication cookie can therefore be hijacked at any point thereafter, with your session hijacked as a result as described at www.tgdaily.com/.../108). WIFI hotspots anyone? See Omar Shahine's experience at www.shahine.com/.../WhatWillYouDoWhenItHappensToYou.aspx.

Even if you configure your redirect to default to i.e. mail.google.com/.../domain.com so that everything stays encrypted throughout your mail session, you're still going to run into issues by the fact that your google login is used for all the other Google apps.

It's one thing for personal accounts. It's an entirely different thing when it's business.

# re: Google for business email

What about public folders? I know Google can tag emails (which I wish Exchange could do better) but we often will put emails from specific clients or related to certain projects in a shared Exchange public folder. How would Google support that?

What about managed public folders that have an email address? We have a number of folders with email addresses like "info@" and "support@" that only specified staff can access. We also like to set up rules on those public folders so some emails are forwarded to staff.

People have already brought up the "resource" scheduling for rooms and equipment. I think there may be stuff for this with Google but haven't tried it.

What about delegated access. Can I "send as" as a specified email address (like "info@...")? Can I delegate control of my inbox to a secretary? Can I get access easily to a ex-employee's inbox?

What about email restore? If somebody accidentally deletes old emails can I restore them? Can I restore an old employee's inbox from a year ago?

I guess I might give it a try for some businesses and I'm sure Google will address some of the shortcomings soon enough. It's also possible that Google can already handle some of these issues but I haven't researched it enough.

# re: Google for business email

I tried to find out some more answers:

MANAGED PUBLIC FOLDERS & EMAIL LISTS

There are email lists where in mail are forwarded to one or many users. Public folders I am not aware?

For public folders there can be a workaround. Create separate ids for public folders. Also create an email list adding users who have to access this public folder. Then create a filter in email id and assign a tag (name of that public folder) and forward the mail to mailing list. This way mail will be delivered to all users with the tag of public folder. Alternatively the content of mail can be shared though Google docs.

=================================

RESOURCE SCHEDULING

Resource feature is available in PREMIER VERSION.

www.google.com/.../editions.html

However in Standard version you have a workaround to achieve same (Google may not like it) as indicated earlier.

==================================

DELEGATED ACCESS / SENDING MAIL AS SOMEONE / ACCESS TO OTHERS INBOX

You can add multiple accounts in you id and use "send as".

I am not sure of delegate feature.

==========================

EX EMPLOYEE INBOX

Passwords are set and reset by admin user and hence ex employee mail box can be accessed.

=================================

EMAIL RESTORE

Postini - Policy Management and Recovery is an additional servive with premier edition which will help you in doing exactly same. (Google keeps the trash for 3 months only.)

# Moving into the cloud

Not too long ago, some others like James and Rob had mentioned using Google Apps as a way of moving service into the "cloud", so to speak. Google Mail is one that has intrigued me for some time. I have a Gmail account, though rarely use it. I knew Google

# Taming the email monster - Microsoft Outlook best practices

I receive upwards of 100-150 emails per-day and a lot of people have asked how I manage my inbox. Someone

# microsoft » Blog Archive » Taming the email monster - Microsoft Outlook best practices

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# Taming the email monster - Microsoft Outlook best practices

I receive upwards of 100-150 emails per-day and a lot of people have asked how I manage my inbox. Someone