Google Apps – The myth, hype and reality.

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POST UPDATED 13.12.11

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”

Bill Cosby (1937 – ) American Comedian, Educator and Actor

Last year (2010), I discussed Cloud Computing and whether Cloud Computing (or as referred to by a few readers – Internet Based and Grid Architecture/A managed or hosted service) was, well, ready for use as an IT system within the cloud. I still believe that Cloud Computing is definitely ready to be used by new start-ups as an IT system. Established businesses that have an investment in existing IT systems will have to manage this by considering an organisation’s requirements very carefully.  Like any other project, any move to the cloud, has to be managed as a project. I mentioned this, in my post, What is Cloud Computing? Its Pros/Cons and making it work and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) – Past, Present, Future and successful implementation .

An organisation’s management has a large role to play within this decision making process and involves excellent communication within the business.  It also has to be recognised that IT could be leveraged for competitive advantage.

Last year, I was approached by a business to advise on setting up a new IT system. I had a look at their requirements and decided that there was no need to invest in a traditional IT system based around an in-house data centre and associated hardware; i.e. servers etc.  Further research showed that Google Apps could be used as their main IT system. The version, I chose was Google Apps for business ($50 per user per annum) and the link preceding this text compares the FREE version with the business version. Recently, (2011), Google has incorporated all the tools that were available for FREE, when users signed up for a regular Google/Gmail Account. This included my favourites, such as Alerts and Google URL shortener. For some reason though, Web History is not enabled on Google Apps, so if you want to use that feature, you will have to resort to your normal Google/Gmail account.

There is a FREE version of Google Apps for Educational bodies and Charities (US based with 3000 + users get a 40% discount). Now, Google are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart as they are a commercial entity. It is a long term strategy. A quick question for all of you. Who leaves education to control future markets and organisations? Yep, its students, and if Google can get them to use Google Apps, it might just push them to stop using Microsoft. The stakes are high and Google are muscling in on Microsoft territory. As I said a few weeks ago, Microsoft’s problem is that their software solutions are predominantly premise(s) based, while Google started life within the cloud!

I have kept close contact with the tech leads provisioning and setting up the system and my findings are as follows:

• Google Apps has been able to provide a solution that incorporates most of the IT requirements for a new business. These mainly consist of Google Docs (Word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and drawings package), Email (25GB of space per user), calendaring facility, Google Groups to create mailing lists and to share calendars, docs, sites, chat and Google Talk, videos (300MB per user) and the sites functionality.

• The tech team were quite impressed with Google sites (template driven system with new templates added daily) that allowed them to create numerous sites for use, both, within the business and externally. The feature that particularly impressed them was the ability to enable any internal site (For example, an Intranet site) to be accessible externally quite quickly by changing a few settings and the ability to map (point) the site to another website or domain. For example, the default for any Google site is: http://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com/nameof yoursite , and you could map your Google site to one of your sub domains (the prefix prior to http://www.yourcompany.com) so that it displays in the browser as, for example, http://www.widgets.yourcompany.com .

• Email security is good with the inclusion of the Postini service that  protects against Junk (spam) email and provides virus filtering. This includes junk and virus filters for blocking unwanted email messages. The junk filters include an overall filter as well as specific category filters that let you or your users fine tune how aggressively the service filters specific types of junk email. By default, the overall junk filter is set to level 2 (out of 5 levels) and the virus filter is set to On.

• The chat feature that is available within email as an integrated window allows Google Talk gadget functionality and supports: chat, voice calls, off the record chats and chat history. In addition, the gadget recognises Google Video, YouTube, Picasa Web Album, and Flickr URLs and converts them into playable video or slideshow within the chat window! Multi-user chats and ‘Invisible’ status are also available only in the gadget.

• This is my personal favourite; the ease of setting up mobile working and mobiles is easy as it is an integrated part of the Google Apps service.

• Google marketplace is the equivalent of the stores such as SalesForce.com’s AppExchange and iPhone app store and is available for both the FREE version called Google Apps and the subscription based, Google Apps for Business. Once the Google Apps system was setup, it was time to visit the Google marketplace to find solutions for the business.

• Google marketplace allowed the techs to incorporate a social media solution, called Socialwok (Standard Edition – FREE – Service terminated 12.7.11). Why, well there are many reasons and most of them can be gleaned from their case studies; Complinet said“Before Socialwok if I found an interesting news story or development on the web then, I had to remember who to send it to within the company. Now I simply post a status update to the ‘industry news’ feed in Socialwok. I know that all of my colleagues around the globe will see it. We use socialwok as an internal tool for sharing information quickly and efficiently. It is particularly useful for getting the views and opinions of different team members across the globe. The Socialwok team is also every responsive to questions and open to new ideas. This is important to us as it means that the product is always developing and improving as our organisation expands adoption of Socialwok.”
  – Paul Tasker, Head of Product Marketing

• Those of you that follow my blog would also know that I am a BIG mind mapping fan. This is something that the directors’ of the business really wanted.  I took a look at the Google marketplace and found MindMeister ($9 per user per month), a software package that I had already reviewed and was quite impressed by. Imagine my surprise when I found it in the Google marketplace!

• The final piece of the puzzle that had me thinking hard about the solution was the relatively new incumbent within the ERP arena, MYERP vs the Salesforce platform and SalesForce.com’s AppExchange. After revisiting the requirements and the business budget, MYERP (First two users FREE followed by $29 per user per month) was an obvious choice for the short term. MYERP is an integrated suite with modules for CRM, Projects, Purchases, Accounting and Sales fully integrated with Google Apps. It is managed by an open source MySQL database with provision for API’s in the future to connect with other IT systems. Salesforce does, however, have some competent ERP solutions such as LessSoftware, Ascent and Glovia. As such, if in the future, Salesforce needs to be used for its CRM (Probably much better than MyERP’s CRM), ERP or development capabilities, Force.com could be utilised.

ISSUES ENCOUNTERED WITH GOOGLE APPS:

• A few problems were encountered but no real show stoppers and the Google support team’s response was quite good. These calls were intentionally logged as low priority calls due to their low impact on users (No loss of productivity). Users had a few issues with being presented by different login/logout screens at different parts of the day. Users did not enjoy Google Apps inconsistentcy. For example, the business setup login/logout screen was configured to use the business logo and colour for login/logout but Google Apps still resorted to the default Google Apps logo and colours. While Google were searching for a solution, the tech team wanted to enable Single Sign On (SSO) to enable Google marketplace apps and as such chose MyOneLogin ($3 per user per month – Service termination from Feb 2012) that resolved the problem and the team closed the call.

• There was a problem with enabling sub domain aliases and as such emails sent to joe.blogs@widgets.yourcompany.com were not being delivered and this took a while to resolve for various reasons, some beyond Google’s control.

• For organisations and users accustomed to Microsoft (MS) Word, Google Docs may not be suitable. Certainly, I advised this business to purchase the MS Office Suite for its users to not only create a buy in for Google Apps but also to supply the users with a suite that they are very much accustomed to while Google Apps, plays catch-up. Google Apps has some interesting features, for example, the ability to share a document and the ability to edit it in almost real time (useful for meetings – exchanging ideas with your colleagues during the meeting), interesting form functionality and its gadgets features. The problem is that some functionality, that we take for granted within MS Word is simply quite cumbersome in Google Docs. For example, Print screen is used by everyone but to make it work in Google Docs, you would have to save the image in paint and then insert it as a .jpg etc.

• There are various ways to use the Google Docs storage system up to a 1GB storage limit (only applies to non Google format documents – Max upload of 500KB – 10MB for .ppt – Possibly more for the future). The Max upload for word processed documents is a problem as it is so easy to create a document that exceeds, in today’s terms, this miniscule size.  There are options and features to save the document in a Google format that:

• I. Reduce the size of the document.
  II. Do not count towards the 1GB storage limit.
  III. Allows Save as (If word processed doc) as HTML, Open Doc, PDF, Rich Text (RTF), Plain Text or Microsoft Word.
  IV. Allow Sharing/Email as attachment as HTML, Open Doc, PDF, Rich Text (RTF), Plain Text or Microsoft Word.
  V. The Google Sites storage system allows 10 GB plus 500 KB per user for shared storage.
  VI. For more info on getting to know Google Docs size limits, please CLICK HERE
  VII. For storage quota for Videos, please CLICK HERE
  VIII. Purchasing additional storage (If you exhaust your 1GB/25GB Email facility) – CLICK HERE

• The problem above brings me to my next workaround (or solution). From the Google marketplace, the team told me that they chose the Epicenter Document Management solution (1^st user FREE , $9 per user per month) that allows 50GB of pooled storage. This created an accessible repository with role based permission policies, version control, online editing, document approvals, sharing features, text searching, detailed event logging and access auditing coupled with a single drag and drop feature for stored documents within Epicenter and Google Docs.

So, in summary, Google Apps and its marketplace constitute a competent suite of products for cloud computing (managed service/hosted solution). Salesforce is already tightly integrated with Google Apps and the Google marketplace (released 29^th March 2010), is gathering momentum with innovative companies joining the Google realm. The next few years will decide the future of cloud computing and whether it will be accepted by larger and more established businesses. Google has firmly stuck a stake in the ground and is clearly betting on its cloud based solutions while attracting impressive solution providers through Salesforce and the Google marketplace. Microsoft, HP, IBM, Oracle, SAP and others are also positioning themselves for Cloud solutions. So, does every cloud have a silver lining?

Do you really want to read more?

Firms fail to see cloud’s silver lining

Google Apps FAQ – Standard vs Premier (Google Apps for Business)

Related articles

• Google Apps highlights – 5/20/2011 (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Why We Chose Exchange Online, Not Google Apps (pcworld.com)

Mind Mapping – The guru fights the web

Welcome back to all my readers and I that hope 2010 proves to be as good as you expect it to be!

I first came across mind mapping when I read, “The principles of success”. Mind mapping as we know it today has been developed by Tony Buzan. I consider Tony Buzan to be the guru of mind mapping as he has been the main proponent and driver behind mind mapping. Obviously, there will always be the debate that Tony Buzan did not invent mind mapping. I became aware of mind mapping a few years ago. Coincidentally, around the same time, one day, I was sat with my daughter and she appeared to be drawing a diagram. Initially, I did not pay much attention but as I continued to peer over my shoulder, it increasingly looked like a mind map. As I curiously asked her whether she was drawing a mind map, she confirmed that she was (She was 13). So, schools have started to teach mind mapping and people of my age (early 40s) have only just started to learn it! Another reason for this post – To build awareness of this wonderful tool.

Anyway, during the Christmas break as I was researching ways of utilising social media to find myself an appropriate position that could utilise my CIO, programme management, leadership and commercial skills, I found myself facing the predicament that I had so many thoughts, articles and action items based on my research that I was starting to drown. I must admit, I don’t use mind mapping regularly (although I should) and I find it the best tool to organise my thoughts, especially when I suffer from information overload. Mind mapping software became the obvious choice as I also wanted to share the mind map with my job search coach.

As is often the case with me and my blogging, I am usually looking for ideas for my next blog posting. The kind of ideas that I look for my blogging posts are usually areas of IT and sometimes even business that I feel would help others by applying my twist of IT knowledge and knowledge gained through research across the Net. Regular readers of my blog know that I tend to shy away from reviewing software myself as that kind of research has usually been conducted elsewhere and all I have to do is provide references to these articles etc.

As I am a fan of Tony Buzan and consider him the guru of mind mapping, naturally I downloaded the trial version of his iMindMap software, even though there is a huge variety of free and subscription based mind mapping software available at the moment. The main reason, I like his software is that I believe that as he is behind mind mapping as we know it today, his software would reflect that. Now you may ask yourself, well, how do I create a mind map – Click here for the answer?

Mind mapping software saves time and there are many reasons why mind mapping software should be utilised including increasing productivity. There are features to look for when purchasing mind mapping software and it can even help with project management. As I had created my mind map, I decided that it made sense to do a post on mind mapping.

The problem, I face now is that even though iMindmap and Mindjet MindManager seem to lead in the reviews, I am not entirely sure that in today’s, Cloud Computing, web connected world these software packages are the correct choice. I would love to use iMindMap as it has been created with Tony Buzan’s involvement but in today’s connected world, it has no application for iPhones/smartphones. Mindjet MindManager is similar, no iPhone/smartphone application either. As I researched, I found mindmeister that was not only web based, had an iPhone application and was considered to be quite an innovative business. This is a real predicament for my choice, as I want Tony Buzan’s iMindMap software but I want it in the cloud so that I don’t have to worry about saving files on my laptop. I want the freedom to access it from anywhere in the world as I now have the fast connectivity available globally, albeit a few places (an minor inconvenience where I can resort to saving files on my laptop).

Now, we move to question time:

Which software would you have opted for and why? (To help you, I have a list of reviews at the end of the post)

Further resources:

• Top 10 mind Mapping tools
• Top 10 mind mapping software sites
• Five best Mind Mapping applications
• Web based Mind Mapping applications
• Mind Mapping software review, ratings and voting
• 3 Free Mind Map Web Applications Offering Map Embeds
• NEW – 8/6/10 – Inspiration software

The future Graduate and the IT and Computing skills shortage

I have wanted to write this article for a while now.  When I was in university, the IT skills shortage stood at 3 million and the popular IT/Computing magazines were half full of employment adverts. That era has long gone but we, in the UK are still suffering as IT skills shortages reach the highest level in 10 years,  we continue not to learnt from the past and it seems that while we continue to churn out graduates, they seem to lack skills that employers want/need. In addition, the coming generation shun the industry because of a perceived lack of glamour and a reputation for hard work. It doesn’t all end there as recent reports suggest that The UK’s software development industry will suffer the same decline as the country’s manufacturing sector unless action is taken to tackle the skills shortage.

Have we become a nation that is forced to import talent from asia? Do we import talent because its, well, cheaper? I will let you decide.

This topic  is close to my heart as I strongly feel that the UK can become a leader in the IT/Computing arena. Well, if that is the case, how do we go about doing it?

I have realised now the secret of success for new graduates is to locate a degree course that equips them with the theoratical and practical knowledge of performing well in their area of study. Students would do well by using ‘pre-job board’ sites like Careerplayer. This site holds hundreds of videos with real people/graduates in real jobs, talking about their job and what it really entails, good and bad – sharing their honest view of their role. Using a site like Careerplayer will help them to de-select the IT/Computing career paths, if its not for them.

While researching this topic, I found an interesting article by Felix Redmill of Redmill Consultancy . I totally agree with all that has been said by Felix but would want to add by saying that both the government and industry have a role to play to ensure that the UK has a future equipped with suitable graduates, in essence creating a pseudo standard for such degrees with a vision for wider adoption.

I have split IT and Computing into three areas as I feel that these three areas need a slightly different kind of graduate and at least two of these areas have a pseudo standard that should be adopted/followed UK wide. In actual fact, to raise the bar of these degree courses, I would go as far as to say that all IT/Computing/gaming degrees should be validated by the government, with a minimum agreed of modules that are standard within all  three areas identfied below:

1. Information Technology Management

This is an area where government and industry have been brought together by eskills UK to validate IT management courses.  Read the following for more information:

News in Brief for new Information Technology Management for Business (ITMB) Degree course

HP teams with Thames Valley University to address UK Skills Shortage

eskills and IMTB

Universities offering the IMTB degree course (14)

Sample IMTB degree content from University of Manchester

 2. Software Engineering (Programming)

I couldn’t find any resources to indicate even any pseudo standards. This area would be covered well by a region by region basis and associated demand for programmers according to industries served within that region. For example, the universities near the UK’s silicon valley (Reading area) could offer courses on .net, Oracle etc due to local presence of these industry behomeths.

3. Computer Games Progamming

Again for games programming, 81 universities offer courses but only 4 are accredited by Skillset. Again, this suggests a lack of any standard degree for gaming.

It is no wonder, then that when graduates graduate, employers seem bewildered as to the calibre of graduate that they are taking onboard. I have even known of students that have completed their degree courses, employed by employers as programmers only to find that they do not know how to program in the language being used by that employer!