mail has been a staple in business ever since it made its debut, we grabbed on and haven’t let go. For many businesses having their own company branded email (@yourcompany.com) meant setting up a Microsoft Exchange server. Exchange has been around forever, or so it seems and it still remains to be a solid workhorse. Although, its success has come with many of its downfalls such as corruption, backup restoration issues, maintenance problems, and much more, it remains the de facto. For a time, Exchange was the only option for corporate email because every online vendor was similar to a poorly secured AOL or Yahoo email account which made it difficult to manage and scale.

In 2004, a new web-based email vendor emerged called Gmail, only known for their search engine Google shocked the industry with their simplistic views and incredible spam filtering. A feat that was incredibly difficult even for the stalwarts who dominated the industry. In 2006, Gmail introduced Google For Your Domain which allowed businesses to bring their digital business, including their email to Google. Gmail was available by invitation-only until 2007 when it became available to the general public. It was taking market share away from every web-based email vendor at a staggering rate but corporate email had remained untouched. Then in 2009 Google released Google Apps, which included almost every product Google offered, but now it worked under the umbrella of your domain name. This allowed you to take your email, calendar, contacts, documents, chat, and much more to Google. Effectively, allowing you to eliminate your Exchange server entirely. This was the beginning of massive change for business.

Google brought a product to the market that had not been done effectively before, it integrated with everything. Every mobile phone, smartphone, computer, and server can be connected.

With Google Apps you can log in once and have access to your email, calendar, documents, and contacts whether they are individual or firm-wide. Google has been praised for their spam protection and for a firm of 10 they could put the 279 hours employees normally spend dealing with spam to better use.

With 99.99% uptime, our average firm will get 270 hours of additional productivity each year. When maintaining your own server in-house, downtime can seriously inhibit productivity. With Google Apps, the average firm will experience more reliable access to files and emails with no planned downtime. Other server systems have at least 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime a month. If your firm isn’t planning downtime to manage updates and monthly maintenance, you could have a disaster waiting to happen, rendering that perceived reliability useless. Along with the uptime, Google provides 24/7 phone and email support for critical issues so you’ll never be left on your own.

Security is always a concern when considering an email solution, let alone moving your solution to a web-based vendor. You can be confident that Google is not only SAS70 Type II compliant but also the first cloud based messaging and collaboration suite to achieve FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) certification, indicating that the General Services Administration has reviewed and certified their security processes and documentation. Their security is unmatched allowing for up to 10 years of archival storage to maintain compliance as well. A special feature also allows owners to prevent certain emails from being deleted, should litigation become a concern or issue. Google even prevents employees from sending confidential information and spreading useless jokes and videos.

Recently, Google released a new feature for Google Apps for Business which allows firms who currently have a Microsoft Exchange server solution to use Google Apps for Business as a fail-over solution. So should your Exchange server experience corruption or fails your employees can immediately log into Google and be working as if nothing happened. Their email is synchronized as it is received while the server is working properly. This feature should be enough to sway many owners to at least consider this as a form of redundancy and disaster recovery.

There are two different versions of Google Apps, one that is free and the one that costs $50/user. The free version is ad-supported and does not come additional features such as the extra storage, Microsoft Outlook interoperability, Exchange synchronization, select security features, or support. It is my opinion that if you’re serious about switching or implementing a redundancy solution then you should be paying for the Business edition. Many may consider if the cost savings is worth it and while it’s estimated that a firm of 10 will save 559hrs./yr. and $61,070/yr. I think every owner should look at this decision very closely.

Many will ask if Google is the ultimate solution, there is no doubt that Google has produced a compelling offering for businesses that do not have the resources to put together such a robust solution. Many have criticized Google for being too ambitious and claiming that taking a business onto the internet is giving up control and question how their personal information is handled. Google has a track record of being transparent and honest but some question their motives. Regardless of where you stand, every owner must weigh the benefits and decide what’s best for their firm. If it was up to me… I’d go Google, and I have.