Google Apps

The current buzz is about Google Apps Premier Edition which gives you access to Google Apps without advertising plus extra tech support. They'll even throw in APIs to tie your existing apps into the Googleverse (did I make that up just now or am I subconsciously recalling it from somewhere?), all for the low price of $50 per user per year. But I'm not seeing a great amount of discussion about Google Apps for Education, which is more intriguing to me. (My current position is as the entire IT department for a local K-12 school district.) This is a shame because it could be very interesting in a school environment.

What's in Google Apps?

Google Apps for Education includes the standard Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and Docs & Spreadsheets. Additionally, they throw in the aforementioned APIS and tech support. To sweeten the deal, they give a start page with a WYSIWYG HTML editor to create a page for your staff and/or students to access. This is the same package as the Premier Edition. The difference between the two? For qualifying educational institutions, this will cost the grand total of FREE.

Of course, you never get something for nothing. You'll have to put up with advertising in order to take advantage of the deal. Curiously, Google will allow you to block ads in Gmail but not the rest of the apps. My question is how closely Google will be monitoring the ads. I would hate to subject young minds to inappropriate advertising. Also, with CIPA-mandated web filters in place, Google will have to be careful that the ads will actually be viewable by users in schools. Otherwise, the advertisers are getting the short end of the stick.

Pros

From the perspective of the Lonely Tech, this program (either the Premier or the Education Edition) has a few things going for it. First, you can offload your email infrastructure onto Google. Imagine no more corrupt Exchange databases, no more email server backups or patches, and no more email system upgrades. Heck, that's a pretty good selling point right there.

Our school system outsources the email server to a host. I can't fault their uptime, it's been terrific. The biggest complaint I get from users is that the Exchange OWA setup they use does not allow offline email viewing. If they allowed POP3 access, I doubt I would even look at Google Apps. Gmail does allow POP3 access, so my users can access email with Outlook or Outlook Express they are already used to. (Heck, maybe I can get them to use Thunderbird!)

Additionally, you get a barebones document management system. Docs & Spreadsheets allows for collaborative development of documents. Again, this is all offloaded onto Google, so there is no additional storage or installation of software to make this work for you.

Finally, you get Google Calendar. This is a pretty good way to share a calendar with a select few or the entire world. You can even set up a master calendar and include it on your Start Page to keep the entire organization up to speed.

Cons

Additional Reading

Your data: safe in your hands? by ZDNet's Phil Wainewright -- I can't believe people commenting on the launch of Google Apps are still recycling the tired old mantra about hosted applications being untrustworthy. It's users that can't be trusted with important data, not SaaS vendors.

The first thing that springs to mind is: What might Google do with all the information that will be stored on its servers? Could they sell information to marketers? Could sensitive information end up exposed to the web? Probably the bigger question is: How well am I protecting my organization's info? It's likely Google would do better than you at protecting it. Still, it is a legitimate concern and you had best verify compliance with whatever regulations ail you before diving in.

The next thing (and a bigger concern than privacy, IMHO) is application upgrades. Currently, if I want to teach my fellow employees the new ribbon interface for Office 2007 then I can go ahead and upgrade from Office 2003. If I don't have the time or feel that the employee's aren't inclined to learn, then I can hold off on that upgrade. With Google Apps, everyone is getting upgraded when Google decides to upgrade. I am giving up some control in this exchange.

My final concern is the pricing structure. Sure, it's $50 per user per year for Premier and free for Education now. What will it be in the future? Can anyone seriously guarantee prices won't drastically rise someday? And if I opt out at that point, I'm going to be scrambling to scrape together an email server and get an office suite installed quick!

Wrap-Up

All told, I can't overlook the price with my current budget. Google's uptime is rock-solid and while giving up control over certain aspects is a little scary it is also liberating. Google Apps could give a whole new level of interactivity between the students and teachers (and administrative staff) for no investment.

I'll be sure to post if we go through with this and give updates as to the process. In the meantime, let me know what you think of Google Apps.