Horizon Info Services More of IT for Less

Today’s Google’s Enterprise Blog features Horizon Info Services, one of our customers, and the web developer that brought us together.

So how do spam trends related to cloud computing? It all depends on how you block and fight SPAM.

According to the Q2 2009 Spam Trends report published by the team at Google Postini Services, spammers have developed means of releasing days worth of spam in just hours. If you are manage spam from within your network, this means your Internet connectivity and servers are more susceptible to performance degradation and failure.

Across our customer base, ~92% of email is spam. Most spam is sent to invalid email addresses. This traffic chews up bandwidth inbound. If it hits your servers, it increases the disk space used for log files as well as outbound bandwidth for non-delivery report messages.

If you stop spam in the cloud, you protect your network and server performance regardless of the volume of spam targeting your domain.

Click Here and Here to learn more …

On February 11, Keith Ferrell posted a blog entry at bMighty.com entitled Google Apps: Right For The Small Business Buck? (And Does Google Even Want Your Bucks?). In the article, Mr. Ferrell confuses the market positioning of Google’s Message Encryption Service, part of the Google Apps Security and Compliance Suite, with Google Apps Premier Edition as these services apply to small and mid-size businesses.

In my response, I clarify the differentiation between services targeting companies with internal messaging infrastructures and those for which Google Apps can provide the messaging services. I also point out that Google is not walking away from companies with fewer than 50, or even 250 users.

When Google announced the launch of the Google Apps reseller channel on January 14, the technology press and reseller channel pressed jumped on the story as this is big news for the industry. Google continues to prove it is serious about enterprise computing and challenging the status quo models for in-house computing. With the opening of the official reseller channel, Google is demonstrating a commitment to ensure that businesses get the support, integration, and training services necessary for any successful platform or application rollout.

To much of the media focus, however, has been on how Google Apps Premier Edition compares with Microsoft Office. While Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentation are pretty cool applications with some amazing collaboration and integration features, they are not as mature with respect to traditional features — fonts, formatting, styles, etc. — as the Microsoft suite.

More importantly, these applications are not the best reason to use Google Apps Premier Edition. Google Apps provides a hosted environment for communication and collaboration that delivers features, capability, and value that few, if any, other providers can match.

Here are reasons to consider Google Apps Premier Edition:

Hosted Email and Calendars

• The easy-to-use GMAIL web interface
• Full IMAP support lets you use pick nearly any email client, including Outlook
• Private, shared, public, event, and resource calendars
• 25 GB of space per mailbox
• Free blackberry and PDA integration
• Secure Instant Messaging with searchable archives and VoIP telephone service

Collaboration Tools and Solutions

• Embedded collaboration in Docs, Spreadsheet, and Presentation saves money on fee-based web conferencing services
• Google Sites enable easy and fast creation and management of Intranet and internal project sites
• Secure customer portals with no network adminstration required
• Google Forms for simple information gathering and management

Content Management

• Embed content within Google Apps dymanically into public web sites, including calendars, events, and response forms

In summary, Google Apps Premier Edition provides a better solution for companies already using hosted email, calendar, and collaboration services and can provide a more cost effective means of delivery these services than upgrading current in-house systems.

Regards,
Allen