Google announced on Thursday, the launch of Google Apps Team Edition, calling it "the simplest and fastest way for groups of employees and students to collaborate within an organization using Google Apps." The question is, while schools and some small departments within larger companies will use Team Edition, how will this help or hurt the typical IT department?
Google announced on Thursday, the launch of Google Apps Team Edition. The question is, while schools and some small departments within larger companies will use Team Edition, how will this help or hurt the typical IT department? (Photo: Google)
Google Apps is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform. The idea is to outsource and host several business applications and to lower internal IT costs by doing so. SaaS is great for some business like SoHo (Small Office/Home Office) or offices with a handful of employees. Large enterprises are skeptical, and reluctant to trust their internal documents and email to an outside source.
While some reports on Team Edition are warning IT departments there is a new tool to monitor and worry over, the fact is, it isn't as bad as some reports make it out to be. The fear most news reports are stressing is usage of Team Edition in places like finance where information is strictly controlled. Healthcare was another industry mentioned. Team Edition offers basic security. In Doc's for example, nothing is shared or visible to anyone until the document creator invites someone. In small offices and teams, this is perfect, and in large controlled environments, it is unlikely the employees will risk their livelihoods on sharing a rough draft for an internal memo.
Once a user has signed up for Team Edition using a verified business or school email address, they can instantly invite others to join, or easily identify people within their organization already using Google Apps, to collaborate and share documents.
“More than half a million businesses have already chosen Google Apps to collaborate and share information across the organization,” said Dave Girouard, Vice President and General Manager of Enterprise, Google. “With Team Edition, groups of individuals at school or work can just as easily get the benefits of Google Apps by simply signing up online.”
In an interview with Dan Farber of ZDnet, Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps said, "In previous versions of Google Apps, Standard and Premier, the IT department had to get involved in verifying domains and centrally managing users. With the Team Edition a project group can use Google Docs on a project or the Calendar, and individuals on a team can sign up just using their email address." Confirming that Team Edition was aimed at employees in focus groups or workgroups rather than IT managers.
After using Google for some document management and other tasks here at Tech Herald, it is a trusted tool. It’s secure and allows all of us to remain in contact even as we are all separated on different continents.
Overall, Team Edition from Google will be a strong offering for someone to bring to the table in a group effort. IT managers who worry about sensitive material should ensure that trusted people are the only ones who have access to that material and enforce the protection policies as normal. It isn’t that far of a stretch to include a cause for using Team Edition within the network. Likely the ones to see the most usage form Team Edition are small clusters of office workers working on the same projects, like a marketing department or a group of developers writing QA documentation.
To sign up for Google Apps Team Edition or to watch a little video for it, visit www.google.com/apps.
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