Google Apps & Small Business

As we continue to move further away from the previous methods of contact, many clients ask me about how they can get themselves on the web. Consider how many things are no longer used regularly or are phasing out.

• Fax
• The Yellow Pages
• Postal mail
• Phone calls! (not totally, but for long-winded conversations e-mail is more efficient)

But keeping up with the times can be challenging! Who the hell wants to have an IT guy when you're running a company laying down tile or fixing motorcycles? For mom & pop operations that are below 5 employees and even some above that (as I'm just pulling that number out of what seems right, rather than any cited reference) nobody has the time to learn how to upkeep a website or setup company e-mail.

Google Apps has the capacity to be the salvation of a small business owner. The setup can be a bit intimidating, fiddling with MX records and CNAME entries (DNS gobbledegook) but the benefits are definite. A company can be immediately afforded the same structure and reliability of a medium-to-large organization with a dedicated server running Microsoft Exchange.

How it works: Instead of being on a server that your company keeps in its office, Google provides the necessary hardware and backend. This is called a 'hosted solution'. Some people do have concerns regarding the security of this. It really isn't a problem in my experience, so long as you follow common-sense rules like appropriately secure passwords on administrative accounts.

E-mail as presented by Gmail is awesome, flat out. They consistently beat out every other free provider of e-mail with a clean interface and smooth operation. The calendar can bring unprecedented coordination between different employees for companies that have not tried electronic scheduling before. Contacts serves as a very functional company rolodex, pooling client and vendor contact information into a single repository.

In its most basic form, Google Apps is free like beer. For greater allowances of storage and other bells & whistles (Outlook Integration, SSL, etc.) it goes for $50 per user, per year. It ties together with your existing domain name so that nobody has to get new e-mail addresses unless you would like to have company branding on your e-mail. There are a few technical limitations, but for a business that has yet to experience the kind of connectivity that larger companies enjoy, it's a damn good step forward.