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Of all the technologies that run your business, chances are good that none impact your company as much as good ol’ e-mail. While larger organizations have the hardware, infrastructure, and human capital to manage e-mail in-house, small businesses with tiny to non-existent IT departments don’t have that luxury. Here’s how to get big-business e-mail efficiency on a small-business budget.

For businesses with 25 to 150 users or more, hosting your own mail server just isn’t worth the effort and expense involved, and can actually lead to more downtime than going with an outside service. While it can tempting for very small companies to simply rely on free e-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail, there’s something about having your own domain name that makes your business look more legitimate. Using a free e-mail account is a dead giveaway that your organization runs on a shoestring. Fortunately, both Google and Microsoft offer affordable and robust hosted e-mail solutions.

Recently, Google had a huge lead as the most cost effective hosted solution, but Microsoft recently slashed its prices in half to give the Google some real competition. Still, Microsoft Exchange Online at $120 per user per year is  more than Google Apps Premiere Edition (GAPE) at $50. Both Google and Microsoft offer 25GB of storage with their accounts.

A huge factor for choosing hosted Exchange over Gmail was to use Outlook. Of course, Outlook supports Google Apps by way of IMAP, but since it’s a mail-only protocol, you won’t be able to share your calendar with coworkers without connecting to the Web. This is a make-or-break feature for lots of people. But Now with Google Apps Sync for Outlook that’s not true. With Apps Sync all your contacts and calendar will sync automatically

Google Apps Premiere Edition also has many strong advantages. If you’re a Gmail user, you already know how useful labels can be, and you won’t find them in Outlook. Google also has the advantage of being browser agnostic, you’ll get the same experience regardless of whether you prefer Firefox, IE, or Chrome. Until Exchange Online migrates to Exchange 2010 (still not launched), you’re limited to Outlook Web Access Light when using browsers other than Internet Explorer.

If you’re already a Google Docs user, you’ll enjoy having a single sign-on for e-mail, Google Docs, and other Google services. Of course Microsoft also offers a plethora of additional online features such as SharePoint, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Live, but you’ll need to upgrade to Business Productivity Online at $120 per user per year to use them.

Both Google Apps Premiere Edition and Exchange Online can synchronize with your organization’s Active Directory domain controllers. This reduces the number of passwords your users have to remember and enables a single sign-on experience.

Google Apps Premiere Edition gives small & medium businesses the best bang for the buck, by a narrow margin. Which guarantee of 99.9 percent up-time is no beat.

To Know more about Single Sign On for Google Apps contact Google Apps Reseller

Many small and mid-sized businesses are re-evaluating their email service. In the past, the de-facto email standard was Microsoft Exchange installed on a Windows server that you hosted in house. In the past couple of years, many new options have emerged and are being considered seriously by small business. The two major competitors in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market are Google Apps and Microsoft Hosted Exchange.

Why hosted email?

Before we can get into the pros and cons of Google Apps and Hosted Exchange, we first have to examine why people are moving over to hosted email in the first place. I think it is safe to say that most users expect email to work ALL the time. For small companies with a small or non-existent IT department, providing a service with 99.9% uptime is fairly difficult and expensive. Anytime that there is a disruption in service, such as the server going down or being compromised, the IT admin has to scramble to get everything up. Any downtime whatsoever results in extremely unhappy users and an exhausted and stressed IT admin. Another big issue for expanding companies is scalability and how much it costs to do that scaling.

How does hosted email solve this problem?

A hosted email solution with a reputable company offers extremely reliable email service without all of the headaches and costs. Scalability is a non-issue, as a company like Google or Microsoft is already handling hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of email accounts. Keeping their system up and running is something that both take extremely seriously, and pump millions of dollars and very talented engineering into. Basically, economies of scale allows these large companies to provide a better email service at a cheaper price.

Conclusion

I would go with Google Apps. The main reason for that is cost, Microsoft is simply charging too much. As you can see, Google Apps just beat out Hosted Exchange. The key was all those extras that Google throws in and that Microsoft does not.

I’m confused by the value of the offerings for Google Apps from Google.  Premier and standard edition ??.

I’m thinking of moving my corporate / business e-mail to a hosted solution.So, I am exploring the options that are available for Google’s email solution.

Here is what I am looking for:

• First and foremost  is availability. I want it available always (100% availability) Since nowadays email runs businesses.
• Value! ! I don’t mind paying but I expect to get additional value for the paid service when comparing it to a free service. Support is very important
• IMAP and POP access to e-mail accounts.
• Emails, contacts and Calender should be in Sync. I don’t want to open my outlook to see meetings. Want to access them from my Blackberry directly.
• Clean and usable web interface to e-mail. This is going to be used by non-technical staff  (sales & marketing) , so ease of use is very important.
• Decent amount of storage space. Decent is defined by me to be 10 GB of storage.

Google Apps Standard  edition does not have support.  No SLA (Service Level Agreement)  for availability which mean no uptime Guarantee ….Sorry not for businesses. But on the other hand Google Apps Premier Edition offers powerful messaging and collaboration apps that meet business-critical needs:

• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• 25GB of email storage per employee
• Blackberry and Microsoft Outlook interoperability
• Mobile email, calendar and IM access
• Industry-leading security
• Full administrative and data control
• Helpful support choices
• $50 per user per year
• Proven cost savings

These above feature make it enterprise and business ready hosted email solution.

Compare Google Apps Standard v/s Google Apps Premier

Google Apps an integrated suite of Google applications that includes an email program, online calendar, instant messaging client with voice capabilities and a web-based word processor cum spreadsheet software and many more…

Business organizations, educational institutions and even individuals can use the Google Apps service . And since Google Apps require little or no technical expertise, it is a blessing for small business /SME’s in India who have little budget for IT.

To get started with Google Apps, you’ll need a web domain name. If you are planning to use an existing web domain with Google Apps, just make sure that you have access to your DNS settings, which is generally available with the domain host. Google Apps is available in two editions – the standard (free) edition and a premier (paid) edition. Standard edition one does not have any support from Google. Whereas premier edition has 24×7 email support and phone support for critical issues. So, standard edition is not for businesses / not recommended for businesses.

The premium edition offers 25 Gigs of storage per user means that in-box quotas and deletion schedules are a thing of the past with Google Apps. It provides Integrated instant messaging, Built-in voice and video chat, search felicity, Protection and security for sensitive information and Mobile integration for the companies top brass who use the Blackberry or the iPhone, free of cost.

For more details visit  Google Apps Reseller

FAQ : Google Apps FAQ