- No or Low Costs
- High Quality Servers (that don't need a person to repair them)
- Constant Updates to softwares
- Newer Features
- Remote accessibility
- Safety and Compliance Driven
Editor's Note: Please welcome our guest blogger, James Ferreira, Chief Information Officer for the Office of the New Mexico Attorney General. He provides IT services to the largest law office in the state. James Ferreira has the privilege of serving the New Mexico public as Attorney General Gary King's CIO. Mr. Ferreira is tasked with the responsibility of facilitating the communication between the public and nearly 200 office staff, including attorneys. Additionally, Mr. Ferreira has served as a member on many committees including the NM Information and Technology committee, NM Technical Counsel, Department of Information and Technology Project Review Committee and the Conference of Western Attorneys General WAGGY committee.Please join us for a live webcast on Thursday, November 12, 2009 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 7:00 PM GMT where James will be on hand to answer your questions about his office's switch to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange (3rd party registration required).
Attorneys rely heavily on documents like pleadings, deposition transcripts, exhibits, briefs and other legal materials. In the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office, we have 120 attorneys and 200 full-time employees whose jobs revolve around documents. And it's not just the attorneys. Imagine the news releases, media advisories, scripts and other materials that our communications department has to produce.
We essentially use email as our day-to-day file and case management system, so it is mission-critical. Our previous Microsoft Exchange email solution was falling short – especially regarding the need to safeguard and backup sensitive emails. We looked at moving to a clustered system of in-house email servers for failovers, but we calculated the cost at $300,000, not including continual upgrades.
We began searching for something with ample inbox storage, easy backup and data redundancy and perhaps most importantly, a system that offered high security and reliability. Google Apps Premier Edition emerged as the clear alternative. To put it in perspective, Google Apps and Gmail can support any attorney over the course of a whole career, storing and backing up every email he or she ever sends. Google Apps Premier Edition also passed muster with well-known third-party security auditing organizations.
The move to Google Apps took minimal time and effort, and our users now appreciate the reliability and large storage quotas of their new email system. We have realized many additional cost savings. For instance, we have created a prototype Google Docs archiving solution, using the Documents API. In addition, a few years ago, the department paid more than $50,000 for replication software to store data from a SAN to a disaster recovery site. It didn't work very well – but is no longer required with Google Apps. We also spend less time and money on licensing. In the past, I often joked that we needed to check if we needed a license for the license with our former software vendor. With Google Apps, we get the whole deal up front.
Google Apps Premier Edition was a good fit for the Attorney General's Office. It provides secure, available, and searchable access to documents and emails, while reducing costs and lessening workloads for our busy IT staff. It has reduced the "paper chase" across the board, from attorneys to our busy communications staff. I hope you can join me on a live webcast this Thursday where I'll take your questions about "going Google."
Here are other Google Apps Benefits:
Google Apps helps businesses work smarter
Learn how to migrate easily from Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes.
Google's web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.
End users can use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, contacts and calendar as they transition to Gmail and Google Calendar.
A leading research firm found that Google Apps is as little as 1/3 the total cost of competing solutions.
Want to see how much you could save with Google Apps compared to Microsoft Exchange 2007? Estimate your savingsWith several options for accessing their information while on the go, employees can be productive with Google Apps even when they're not at their desks.
We guarantee that Google Apps will be available at least 99.9% of the time, so your employees are more productive and so you can worry less about system downtime.**
Each employee gets 25 GB for email storage, so they can keep important messages and find them instantly with built-in Google search.
When you trust your company's information to Google, you can be confident that your critical information is safe and secure.
Google's information security team, including some of the world’s foremost experts in information, application and network security, are focused on keeping your information safe. Google and many other customers trust this system with highly sensitive corporate data. Learn more
Businesses get these customizable security features with Google Apps:
- Custom spam and inbound mail filtering tools, powered by Postini, to complement powerful spam filters that automatically work with no up-front configuration.
- Custom outbound mail filtering tools to prevent sensitive information from being distributed, powered by Postini.
- Custom information sharing rules to determine how broadly employees are allowed to share with Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Sites.
- Custom password length requirements and visual strength indicators to help employees pick secure passwords.
- Enforced SSL connections with Google Apps to ensure secure HTTPS access.
- Optional email archiving, up to 10 years of retention.
Administrators can deeply customize Google Apps to meet their technical, branding and business requirements.
Integration options let you connect Google Apps to your existing IT infrastructure.
- Single sign-on API connects Google Apps to your existing authentication system.
- User provisioning utility and API connect Google Apps to your existing user directory system.
- Email routing and email gateway support let you run Google Apps alongside an existing email solution.
- Email migration utility and API let you bring mail from your existing email solution into Google Apps.
System branding and data ownership give Google Apps your look and feel, and ensures customer ownership of employee data.
- Custom user accounts on your compay's internet domain.
- Custom logo and colors in the applications.
- Contractual customer ownership of employee data.
Google Apps is highly reliable and easy to operate, but support is available for administrators should you need it.
Support options include:
- Phone support for critical issues
- Email support
- Self-service online support
* You will be asked to provide a credit card number to sign up for the free Google Apps Premier Edition trial. However, you can cancel at any time before the end of your free trial and your card will not be charged.
** The 99.9% uptime SLA for Google Apps is offered to organizations using Google Apps Premier Edition, as described in theGoogle Apps Premier Edition Terms of Service.