Google Apps and Windows 8: An early look

With the release of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview yesterday Microsoft has shown that they're all-in when it comes to mobile. The Metro interface is a dead ringer for the recent UI re-invention of Windows Phone and the Xbox 360. We're just now putting the new operating system through its paces so we won't speculate on how consumers and businesses will adopt such a drastically different user interface. In the meantime we've got Windows 8 running on our Samsung Series 7 Slate and because of some smart decisions on Microsoft's part we're very confident that users of Google Apps will like what they see.

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What We Use #2: GMail

Here at TechMinds we're big fans of Google Apps. At $50 per person per year the email, contacts, calendar, and document service from Google forms the back-bone of our IT infrastructure. It's quick, easy to use, and works perfectly from the web, in Outlook, or from our iPhones, Android phones, and Windows Phones. But the real power in the Google Apps platform reside in how updates work. On your Mac or PC (or smartphones and tablets for that matter) there is a weekly deluge of updates which you must choose to install or not.

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Your Technology Infrastructure Matters

There's nothing more frustrating in the IT consulting world than to see a client spending significant effort fighting their technology. This is 2011, there is absolutely NO good reason why a busy professional should have to delete the same email message from their phone, tablet, and every computer they use. We've written before about the evils of POP email and if anything the situation seems to have gotten worse.

When a company builds their technology foundation of email, contacts, and calendar on top of something flimsy like GoDaddy or Comcast POP email there is very little that can be done to get things working the way they should.  Often busy companies put up with the lack of a centralized calendar and always-in-sync email because they just don't know any better.  Our point of view is that businesses shouldn't have to be experts on their technology, but because their providers don't care hundreds of man hours per year are wasted fighting the solutions which are supposed to be helping.

As a Google Apps authorized reseller we have a dog in this fight.  But as human beings who really want small businesses to succeed (especially in the current economic climate) it's extremely frustrating to see people suffering through bad implementations of technology.  So please, if you're reading this and your email, contacts, and calendar aren't in sync across all your devices run, don't walk, and get Google Apps or Office 365 for your company.  The savings in productivity and frustration will dwarf what you save in money.

Microsoft Office 365: Still not for small business

Why is this the only option for Small Businesses?

The only deal-breaker we wrote about in May is now an official feature of the Office 365 for Small Business and Professional Plan. It's crazy that Microsoft does not allow you to keep your own website when using this plan which starts at $6 per month. Instead your company is either forced into the more expensive Enterprise level plans (at $16 to $24 per user per month), or to dump the website you spent time and money on for a cheap replacement with a dozen amateurish templates.

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Increase your Google Apps Storage for cheap

Announced this morning by the Google Enterprise Blog enterprises which subscribe to Google Apps can now leverage the massive cloud storage capabilities of Google for very little money.  Starting at only $5 per month for 20GB and ranging up to 1TB of storage it's now feasible for an organisation to back up all their documents to a secure cloud, integrated with all of the other services included in Google Apps.  This announcement comes right on the heels of Google Cloud Connect which can automatically back up your documents to Google Docs.  The combination of these two services displays a concentrated effort by Google to innovate and get ahead of the Microsoft Office 365 launch later this year.

Google Cloud Connect is here: Keep your Microsoft Office documents in sync with Google Apps

Until today businesses which have made the transition to Google Apps have had a love/hate relationship with Google Docs.  While the instant collaboration and sharing features are time savers, the compatibility issues between Microsoft Word and Google Docs can be extremely frustrating.  That's why we're excited about the Google Cloud Connect announcement today.

We've been beta testing this program for over a month with some really amazing results.

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