Binary Business

A crucial part of the solution set that I recommend to my clients is Google Apps. For those who have no idea what Google Apps is, please let me explain. Google Apps provides email, calendaring, chat, web site hosting and document services. These services are all online and allow for interactivity via the ability to share all of the services with whomever you want. Of course you are also able to limit access in many of the same ways that you can with a server sites in your office. The paradox of these services is that online access, while the true strength of the service, also makes people nervous or even afraid to use it. Another sticking point is force of habit. For as long as I can remember I have used MS Office both on my Macs and Windows PCs.

At the same time I have never actually paid for Office as I have always received free copies through work in IT or through these colleges I attended. After both of these options were removed I balked at purchasing a copy of the software. $300 dollars seems more than a little excessive. Around this same time I also launched my first small business and needed an office suite solution. Luckily enough I stumbled across Google Apps for Domains and there has been no looking back. I now use the service with all of my businesses and almost everyone of my client businesses now use the service as well.

The first question that I always hear concerns compatibility with MS Office. Almost everyone in the business world uses MS Office and the ability to interact with everyone else is paramount. No problem here - Google Docs is fully compatible with MS Office even the newest version. This can not even be said for MS Office 2003. Without going into details you can open, edit, save, and email to anyone else just as you normally would.

While the service has been great there was always one crucial thing missing. More than a few times I have heard the question - "What happens if my Internet connection stops working or I am somewhere with no access?". This was a very valid concern and for this reason the clients had to fall back on creating and editing documents using MS Office and then uploading the document to the Google servers when they got online. This obviously required the purchase of MS Office negating much of the cost savings. About a year ago I remember seeing a technology that Google was working on called Google Gears. The idea was great. You could use online applications such as Google Docs while disconnected from the Internet and when you got back online the software would simply sync the offline files from your computer with the Google servers. Well sometime in the last few days they released the service for Google Apps.

Why should you as a small business owner care? Short answer - money. Specifically huge cost reductions. Microsoft provides these same solutions via the combination of MS Office and MS Small Business Server. To properly implement these services you would need to add Anti-Virus, Anti-Spam, and Backup software. You would also have to have a adequate server to support all of this. At last check a mid-grade setup that meet these requirements would cost ~$7000 from Dell. This excludes the maintenance costs that would result from hiring an IT professional to set everything up and keep the server running. These costs could easily run another $6000. Then you have to factor in the cost to supply everyone with MS Office. To put MS Office on 25 computers would cost a staggering $10,000. For simplicities sake I have based these costs on a 25 user network. However it should be noted that due to how both Dell and Microsoft sell and license their products much of this is a fixed cost. So all told the cost of the Microsoft system would be ~$23,000.

Ready for a shock. Google Apps for Domains costs exactly $0. Let me state that again. The cost of software and hardware for Google Apps is $0.00. Google provides the hardware, software, backup system, anti-virus, anti-spyware and system administration. The only costs you will incur are labor costs to setup and maintain the system. Maintenance costs for the system really only consist of adding and deleting users. Just for arguments sake here are some numbers from an existing client that has 75 users. To setup the servers cost $500. To setup all $75 users cost $3500. Maintenance cost another $2000 or so. Note this last number should be taken with a grain of salt. Due to the industry in which this client operates, they deal with a higher than normal employee turnover rate. This rate would likely be much less for other companies. So all told, the cost of the Google Apps setup would be $6000. That is a savings of $17000 in the first year alone.