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Google Apps for business – a leap of faith?
REGULAR READERS of this series of articles will be fully aware that Aspasia Cloud has been written using the Google Apps for Business infrastructure, allowing users to manage email, documents and calendars all within one product. Over four million businesses worldwide already use Google Apps and over 5,000 more sign up each day. The reasons behind this – improved teamwork, increased productivity, enhanced mobility, increased organisational flexibility, impressive ROI – and those are just the headliners.
There are still people who prefer the familiarity of the Microsoft products and we are often asked why we have moved away from this with Aspasia Cloud. We believe that the property world is changing and agents need to be more flexible – outsourcing and homeworking is increasing requiring greater flexibility in both physical and technological infrastructures, technological advances offer new opportunities to cut bottom line if unrestricted by PC networks, competition gets ever harder increasing the demand to make operations leaner and heighten customer service levels to retain profit margins. We recognise that change can be daunting, but history shows that dramatic progress can only be made from radical and not incremental change. Microsoft delivered that radical change with Windows over two decades ago, but have since reverted to a series of product updates which are scaled developments of Windows technology. Google is the company that has made the next radical leap, with Microsoft becoming the market challenger, often copying Google’s innovation. In our view, Google’s position is largely unthreatened and here are some of the reasons why we stand by our decision to integrate their technology into Aspasia Cloud.
ORGANISATIONAL FLEXIBILITY iPad, iPhone, tablet computers – the choice of
communication media is now vast and decisions on usage varies person to person. Thus we feel it is important that people can use the App they want to from whichever media they prefer. With
Google, the only pre-requisite is a standard web browser. With Office 365, the Office Web Apps require Microsoft office to be installed which typically narrows down the media choice to a brand of desktop. With Google Apps, Agents can now make unrestricted hardware purchase choices and exploit what the latest handset revolution is offering. The Google Apps Marketplace offers a multitude of applications relevant to businesses such as project management, often at no cost. Office 365 allows you to search for other applications which will mean paying for additional licences if you decide that you want them. It also requires their products to run on the Office platform which can dramatically reduce choice.
With people working in different locations, and the increased reliance on electronic communication, real-time collaboration is vital to effective teamwork. With Office 365 there are variances by product and users sharing documents created in different version may also face access and editing problems. With Google Apps, whether you are sharing a document, worksheet or presentation, multiple people can access the same document, and see author- specific revision histories. Within an agency network, this opens up a plethora of opportunities both in terms of customer service levels – for example giving a vendor access to their property details, with no concerns of which version of Office they have – and cost savings through heightened staff productivity and reduced duplication of effort.
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES The pace of IT development remains dynamic
and Google is proven in releasing new versions of apps to all users as they become available. Office 365 updates are intrinsically linked to existing software functionality thus necessitating regular desktop updates and patches to facilitate access to the new Apps. This heightens the need for large teams of IT experts to keep everything up to date. For those companies who have moved to the cloud, dramatic cost savings have been made in this area. As mobility increases, staff require access to email and documents from their mobile. Google Apps includes mobile apps for Gmail and Docs and new apps are being released all the time. They provide an interchangeable and consistent experience for users to access content from any mobile device. To access the full Office 365 mobile capabilities, Windows Phone 7 Mango devices are required due to their utilisation of Office Mobile 2010. This again restricts choice and ability to exploit advances in the wider technological world.
CUSTOMER SERVICE Whilst you undoubtedly place high importance
on the relationship you have with your customers, we believe the relationship with suppliers should also be reciprocal. With the heightened reliance on data, security is clearly of paramount concern. Whilst we would struggle to find any company offering 100 per cent guarantee of security, we feel that transparency is important. Gmail’s uptime was 99.99 per cent in 2011 and the Google SLA (Service Licence Agreement) doesn’t include loopholes for planned downtime or maintenance. They publish a public dashboard showing current and historical uptime per product. Microsoft do not report the reliability statistics publically and their SLA does include clauses for planned downtime and maintenance. As mentioned above, these points are just the ‘headliners’ in terms of the advantages we feel that Google Apps have over Microsoft’s equivalent. Our decision to develop Aspasia Cloud remains one of total confidence and we look forward to seeing Aspasia Cloud support its users in reaping the benefits.
Need more information? There is much more information in relation to both Aspasia Web and Aspasia Cloud on our website at
www.aspasia.net.
Alternatively call us on 01344 750100, we would be happy to chat things through with you further.
PROPERTYdrum MAY 2012 13
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