You’ve arrived at this page because you’re interested in Going Google or maybe you’re just interested in all the fuss that is Cloud Computing. Maybe you’re frustrated because you can’t work out how to take your thinking to the next stage. This site has been designed to specifically help you do just that. But before we point you in the right direction to save your organisation tens of thousands, and provide collaboration capabilities intrinsic to the products available on this site, let us face, head on, the questions that are running around your head.
I think I’m ready to switch to Google. Shouldn’t I be talking to Google directly?
3000 businesses a day are doing just that. Some of these organisations have messaging users in the tens of thousands. Google has a finite resource of experts that are almost all totally deployed on these large projects. Google expects its named and managed partners to pick up the reins with smaller organisations. In return the partner receives a subscription based margin.
What is the role of a partner apart from processing licences for Google?
The main role of a partner should be to dovetail in to your own resources, no matter how small or large, to provide expertise and training alongside project and change management skills, to ensure 100% success in terms of adoption with the least disruption possible for your work force.
Sounds complicated and expensive!
Not really. As long as you follow some guidelines its pretty straightforward. In terms of first year costs (the most expensive) you should budget around 20,000 pounds for every 500 messaging and collaboration users plus the time spent from people in your own organisation to make the project a success. Follow on costs in subsequent years should be around 50 to 75% of that number. Please remember this includes everything you need. Compare that to all the costs associated with your current systems i.e. the licences, the hardware, the spam filtering, virus protection, 25Gb storage per user, no backup servers and software, no costly SP type upgrades, the admin overhead, BES etc etc. We can help you do this comparison before you commit to anything as part of the process flow we recommend.
How long would the switch over take and how much disruption is involved?
The first time your users are aware that there is something different is during training and adoption. They are not impacted in any way even if we are to migrate all your data across as part of the project. In terms of time taken we recommend a pilot phase. This is to cover two things: firstly to emulate your existing environment and examine the opportunity to improve your business processes; and secondly to make ready a number of your selected employees as ‘Google Guides’. These are the people that are going to help IT implement Google Apps across the business, with our ongoing support. This is by far and away the most successful adoption technique. The pilot can take up to 30 days and then you’re ready to Go Live which is provisioning the rest of the business. This can, in some circumstances, be done over one weekend.
What should I look for in a Google Business Partner?
Firstly the obvious thing is to ensure they are an authorised partner. Then look for the following qualities:
- Experience of migration from your legacy systems to Google Apps
- Knowledge of Google Apps
- Strong Face to Face Training Capabilities
- Strong Integration Skills and Offerings
- Offers Support above and beyond that offered by Google directly
- Offers at least a 3 year relationship
- Migration tools. If they have their own migration tools then its a strong indication of their knowledge around Google and your existing systems.
- Agility and Flexibility. Do they work to your own processes or do they force feed their own on you.
- Do they offer any sort of Guarantee of success at Guaranteed Prices?
I’m nervous of handing over my data to Google or anyone else for that matter.
Here is an important point for you to remember. You are not giving over control of your data to anyone. That data is contractually yours. You can have it back any time you wish and in a form that you can recognise. Google does not look at your data nor does it allow anyone else to do so, under normal circumstances, Google simply manages your data.
How do I find out more before making any sort of commitment to do anything?
Talk to us. Without any obligation we will come and help you assess whether its the right thing and more importantly the right time. Visit our contact pages or you can talk to us via:
Phone : 01372 888097
Email : contact@cloudsolutions.co.uk