Google Apps

Better collaboration for your business.

Google Apps™ is a suite of cloud-based collaboration applications (including email, calendar and office documents) that enable all businesses to benefit from enterprise-grade levels of functionality, security and system stability. This reflects the changes in computing power and the growth of the internet over the last few years. After all, it’s more likely that you will have a better PC or laptop at home than you do in the office these days. It’s also likely that you will have internet access through home broadband or even mobile 3G services that matches the provision at work.

Such facilities make it easier than ever to work wherever you happen to be located. But legacy office-based communication tools and historical software licencing structures have restricted the goal of flexible working practices. With Google Apps, though, this is no longer the case. You simply pay a small yearly fee for each user, and you have access to all the existing suite of applications, and any new additions too!

To see how much Google Apps can save your company in comparison to a Microsoft Exchange hosted service, have a look at this comparison table. Google Apps offers more features and more flexibility for less cost!

The Four Lakes solution

Four Lakes Internet Services has extensive experience in implementing Google Apps within businesses. We can ensure that the migration from your current facility is smooth and trouble free. We can help you set up flexible working processes, including home-working and mobile access to email, calendars and documents. We can also provide training so that your workforce can utilise the power of the Google Apps collaboration suite from day 1.

Many companies, large and small, are benefiting from the switch to Google Apps. But don’t just take our word for it…

The Google Apps suite

The Google Apps suite of collaboration applications consists of:

GMail

25GB of storage, integrated Google search, unified communication facilities through embedded text, voice and video chat. GMail is the way email should be. With access via POP3, IMAP and the web, you can use your favourite email client to manage your emails, even different clients in different places (e.g. Microsoft Outlook™ at work and Thunderbird at home). For mobile workers, all major smartphone platforms are supported, including Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android.

Google Calendar

Trying to find a time when a group of co-workers are all free? Check the box next to each co-worker’s name, see each calendar appear alongside your own, and scan for the empty space. No more guessing only to find out that people have existing conflicts. Google Calendar is accessible from any computer with a browser, integrates with Microsoft Outlook, and is available from many different mobile phones, so you can manage your schedule from anywhere.

Google Docs (word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations)

With access to your documents wherever you have an internet connection, Google Docs really enables the mobile worker to be effective anywhere and everywhere. But that’s not all, having a central document store allows the whole company to collaborate more effectively, document edits happen on the master copy rather than having multiple copies being emailed left, right and centre. Automatic saves of revisions further enhances collaboration.

But Google Docs not only helps your workforce collaborate more effectively, it can save you money on expensive office software licences. Because document editing can all happen in the browser, there is no need to install office software on every PC, and no need to spend more money on upgrading to the latest version. However, all Google Docs files can be exported to the relevant Microsoft Office file format if needed.

Google Sites

Google Sites allows you to create internal or public websites quickly and easily, using templates to give you a head start. Requiring the minimum of technical knowledge, this allows you to rapidly enable new collaboration areas for internal use, or even for use with customers, partners or suppliers. Alternatively, you may want to create a temporary public online presence, perhaps for marketing purposes. With Google Sites, this can be achieved in minutes rather than days or weeks.

Google Video

Text documentation is the perfect way to train people, assuming they actually read the words. Or maybe your boss wants to share the latest update with the whole company. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video can communicate a message better than any other format. Google Video works like YouTube, but it’s safe and secure so you can share videos internally within your company.

Google Talk

Email conversations sometimes are just too slow. Why wait several hours for a response you can get in ten seconds? With Google Talk you can chat right from your inbox, including video and audio chat! Google Talk users can see their colleagues’ status (online, busy, offline), allowing them to send a chat when you need a quick answer, they can even chat as a reply to an email message. And it’s easy to connect with your co-workers, because their IM accounts are connected to their business email accounts.

The next step

If you are interested in implementing Google Apps at your business, or would like to arrange a demo, then please fill out the form below and we will get back to you immediately.