Google Apps review by Inspector Jones

In a word, Google Apps is quality. I’ve been really impressed by Google’s offering - it’s one of the most mature in the industry, and clearly one of the leaders of mail and productivity. I recommend Google Apps to enterprise customers.

Google Apps is a full productivity suite. It covers Email, Calendar, Storage, Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations.

Before you choose Google Apps, here are the key things you need to know

First, their product and quality of service. Google Apps doesn’t just provide a long feature list, it’s great to use. Google have been focusing on usability and design over the past 12 months, and we feel that this product suite works well. We’ve found lots of satisfied customers, and good quality 24x7 support.

Second, industry best-practice security. Google Apps are compliant with my favourite standard, ISO27001, which is the international standard for Information Security. However, be aware that your data is stored on the same systems, shared with other customers, and your data is sent over the Internet, and may cross different legal jurisdictions. For some people, this can be a scary thought - especially given the sensitive nature of email and documents typically stored on the service.

Finally, Google have suffered a number of outages, which have been heavily publicised due to their size and industry profile. Some include September 2011, December 2012, March 2013, although there have been more smaller incidents. In these outages I was impressed at how Google has responded decisively and addressed the root cause of the issues. However, do be aware of the contract with Google, which covers only minimal compensation in the case of problems.

I recommend Google Apps for businesses of all sizes who are looking for email and calendaring, and a full productivity suite.