What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software you have to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on any computer that's connected to the Internet.

Benefits

Lower infrastructure costs - All your email will be stored securely on Google's Cloud servers, so we'll no longer have to maintain email servers on-site.
Ability to consolidate our platforms - We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to Google Apps.
Lower support costs - Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer.
Innovative solutions - We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide employees with powerful, easy-to-use tools to get work done.
Highly scalable environment - With Google Apps, our email capacity will grow automatically as our organization grows, and we'll avoid the complexity of internal systems.
Access to services from anywhere, at anytime - A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world.
More collaboration features - With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, customers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before
Instant messaging - Because Google Apps includes Google Talk, we can now implement an instant messaging system for our organization.
Easy Migration Feature - You Can Migrate your Apps Mail on your google apps account.
Lots of storage - You get a full 30 GB of online storage for your email (much more than the you have now), so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.
Enhanced message organization and retrieval - With Gmail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.
Easier calendar sharing - Google Calendar lets you and your team quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.
Real-time collaboration - Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more, that you and your team can view and edit at the same time. You can still use your products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your document.

Migration

Our Google Apps Deployment team has assisted many organizations, both SMBs and Enterprises switch to Google Apps. To ensure that your implementation is a success, we’ve developed step-by-step tools to guide you through the process, and best practices to make your transition as smooth and easy as possible. We can import your existing mail, contacts, and calendar events to Google Apps. We know that one of the top priorities while making transition to Google is the safe, secure transfer of your company data. Mail Migration ensures that your email from your existing server (Exchange Server etc) completely ports to Google Apps Cloud Servers without losing anything.

Training

If you are planning to deploy Google Apps or have already migrated – Google Apps Training is one of the critical step to ensure change and buy in from users. Our experienced Google Apps Trainers can help you get your users trained on Google Apps for a faster adoption of new services. Our training module includes overview and practice on using Google Mail, Google Calendar and Google Talk, Understanding and learning to collaborate using Google Docs, Using Google Messaging, Google Video, Creating Google Sites etc. This Training course is advisable for users companies who are transitioning from an office environment to a Google Apps environment.

Support

One Cloud provides support and maintenance on Google Apps (or any of its services) at very low cost. Our services are ideally suitable for Small & Mid size business who have implemented Google Apps and are looking for cost effective options for support. This support service is in addition to 90 days free support you get when buying our Google Apps Setup service. We offer both hourly and unlimited (per user per month Google Apps support packages).

Case Studies

REPUTED PHARMA COMPANY WITH GLOBAL CLIENTS - FACTORY IN JEEDIMETLA AND OFFICE IN HYDERABAD

Scenario
Company has about 60 email users.
About 23 of them should communciate ONLY within the company, they should not send any emails to outside.
Others should have full access.
Key email users such as Directors and GMs want email on their smartphones and home laptops as well.
Departments should be able to collaborate on MIS reports for top management on different documents for regular updation.
Users want calendar to sync their appointments, deadlines and group meetings.

Problems
Company had severe Email and Collaboration Issues
Company Maintained a locally hosted internal mail server at office location and external mail was hosted on Yahoo Business Mail.
As a result, each user had 2 sets of IDs and resulted in lot of cross mailing and lost mail.
Yahoo Business Mail did not have a good spam filter, 66% of user emails were spam.
A dedicated IT admin was assigned to the internal mail server. Despite this, internal mailing was mostly down for days together because of leased line problem between factory and office.
Due to this, the communication cut off between factory and office resulting in delays in acquiring raw materials, engineering items, production, dispatches etc.
Each Department had MIS reports to fill in regularly to update the Top Management. Users within departments had collaboration issues when using File Sharing for this.
Users frequently missed deadlines, meetings etc due to lack of efficient calendar system

Solution
One Cloud successfully migrated existing domain email of the company to Google Apps.
No email was lost and there was zero downtime.
Domain restrictions were placed so that users who were supposed to communicate within the company could not email outside. By doing this, One Cloud REMOVED THE 2 ID system, and all users had single IDs with different permissions.
There were no locally hosted servers, so no downtime due to leased line.
If users had problems with desktops, they could access email from web interface on any device of their choice.
All accounts were setup as POP or IMAP as per the user’s choice.
Using Google Docs, each department users were given shared access to certain MIS reports, thereby making collaboration very convenient.
All users had access to Google Calendar setup, they never missed any deadlines again!

FAQ

Why should I switch my business to Google Apps for Business?
We've listened to many businesses share what's important to them in building and growing a healthy business. What we've found is that businesses are looking for a low-cost, reliable, and secure messaging and collaboration solution that supports their business rather than challenges it. If your business finds itself identifying with some of these challenges, then you might be interested in considering the Google Apps solution for your business. Take a look at the business advantages of Google Apps other customers have found out for themselves.
Business challenges: How Google Apps solves these business challenges:
Why should I use Google Apps instead of an on-premise mail solution like Microsoft® Exchange?
Google launched Google Apps for Business in February 2007, and we have seen an incredible rate of market adoption, including more than 4 million businesses. We are signing up over 5,000 businesses per day on the Google Apps platform. And let's not forget that Google Inc. itself is running its company of 20,000+ employees on Google Apps. Our customers continue to find that Google Apps for Business is a great alternative of a hosted solution to other alternate on-premise solutions, such as Microsoft® Exchange. Here are some of their reasons why: To help your business make the switch to Google Apps easier, we've enabled a smooth IMAP migration from other platforms to Google Apps.

How secure and private is my data if I switch over to Google Apps?
We understand that employees want to be able to work where they want when they want, to do so they are taking the data with them. Businesses are finding themselves in the position where more and more employees are burning corporate data onto CD/DVD, thumb drives, putting data on their home machines to work on in the evenings and weekends. This has created serious security concerns, because not only do these incidents expose the data to unwanted eyes but often times we lose the data permanently since much of data resides on laptops or desktops. As such, we take the privacy and security of our Google Apps customer data very seriously. We fully believe in the security of our Google Apps environment that we store our own Google corporate data in the same environment. Also keep in mind the following:
I want to sign up for Google Apps with my own domain name. Is this possible?
Absolutely. If you already have a company domain name, or need to create a new one, Google Apps can meet your needs. Each user at your domain will get a Google Apps account branded with your own domain name. Email addresses take the format 'username@yourdomain.com.'

Can I run an on-premise solution like Microsoft Exchange alongside Google Apps?
Businesses who want to run an on-premise email solution alongside Google Apps are looking to either: Both scenarios are definitely possible with Google Apps. Google Apps for Business generally provides the flexibility to do whatever you need to do with your email, it's just a question of how much configuration you have to do on your end for your specific business needs. Once everything is in place, and incoming/outgoing email is being captured in Google Apps, you will be able to move over seamlessly to Google Apps should the need arise. We think that as you come to be comfortable with the cost, reliability, and convenience of Google-hosted email, you and your users will be able to transition over to Google Apps as a complete solution.

Does Google Apps work with Microsoft Outlook and other clients?
Google Apps can work with Outlook and other application clients, so your employees can continue using a familiar interface on the front-end, while Google Apps' servers works on the back-end, helping you save on significant costs for your business.

My company has multiple domains. How is this handled with Google Apps?
It is very easy to have multiple domain names use a single Google Apps account where you own all of the domains. There are two ways for one organization to use multiple domain names: with multiple domains or with multiple domain aliases. ith a domain alias, the same username in both domains must refer to the same user. There is no charge for adding domains or domain aliases; you pay for total number of distinct user accounts regardless of how many different domains they belong to.

I have to send out a lot of emails on a daily basis. Does Google Apps have a sending limit?
Each account can currently send email to 2,000 external recipients per day to prevent abuse of our system and to help fight spam. If one of your mail accounts reaches the limit, the account will be temporarily unable to send mail.

Does Google Apps work with BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, and other mobile phones?
Google Apps is accessible from a variety of mobile phones, including BlackBerry devices, the iPhone, Windows Mobile and many less powerful mobile phones. We offer multiple syncing capabilities so that you can access your Google Apps account when you're on the go.