Why Google Apps?

We are pleased to announce that we've chosen Google Apps for our new email and calendar platform. You have recently received your new Google Apps account and can sign in and begin using Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and all your other apps, right away.

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software you have to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on any computer that's connected to the Internet.

Why did we choose Google Apps?

Based on our recent growth and cost trends, we looked for an email and calendar solution that could provide with us the following benefits: <<edit list>>

• Lower infrastructure costs — All your email will be stored securely on Google's servers, so we'll no longer have to maintain email servers on-site
• Ability to consolidate our platforms — We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to Google Apps
• Lower support costs — Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there's no more email client software to maintain on your computer
• Innovative solutions — We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide employees with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done
• Highly scalable environment — With Google Apps, our email capacity will grow automatically as our organization grows, and we'll avoid the complexity of internal systems
• Access to services from anywhere, at anytime — A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world
• More collaboration features — With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, customers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before
• Instant messaging — Because Google Apps includes Google Talk, we can now implement an instant messaging system for our organization

What does Google Apps include?

Your new Google Apps account will include the following services: <<edit HTML table, depending on services enabled>>

What are the key benefits? <<edit list, depending on services enabled>>

• Lots of storage — You get a full 25 GB of online storage for your email (much more than the [XX MB] you have now), so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.
• Enhanced message organization and retrieval — With Gmail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.
• Easier calendar sharing — Google Calendar lets you and your team quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.
• Integrated chat — With the Google Talk instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with other people in our organization right from the Gmail interface. In addition, all your chats are automatically saved, so you can always retrieve important information later.
• Real-time collaboration — Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, and more, that you and your team can view and edit at the same time. You can still use your [Microsoft Office/other] products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents.
• Easy-to-build team web sites — With Google Sites, your team has the ability to quickly publish a robust internal web site on which to gather all sorts of shared information, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, files, and videos. You can even embed Google calendars, discussion forums, and other gadgets on your site!
• Powerful video sharing — Using Google Video for business, you can easily share videos with your team or throughout our organization for a whole new level of communication and collaboration.