Comment 2V3R Re: Google Apps for Business

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Google Apps for Business (Score: 2, Interesting)

by erichill@pipedot.org on 2014-11-17 17:09 (#2V3F)

Excellent email, Google Drive does all the document collaboration you could ask for including offline access and multiple platform support, great calendaring, chat, etc. It's $50/user/year. You can't even buy a server for that.Google sites will take care of the intranet needs. What am I missing here?

Re: Google Apps for Business (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2014-11-17 18:29 (#2V3H)

I was going to say the same. I'd been working for a company that was on google for a couple of years until we got bought. Now it's Microsoft whatever.

As a remote user on a Mac, Microsoft blows.

Downsides of google:
No Gantt/project planning software.
Google drive is flexible and unstructured. Sometimes it'd be nice to have a more rigid document layout and enforcement.

Really stellar upsides:
Email
Calendar
Google Hangouts (super useful for remote users)
Drive has been very useful

Re: Google Apps for Business (Score: 2, Insightful)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-11-17 19:53 (#2V3J)

I'm going to keep playing the devil's advocate here, not because I disagree but simply because it leads to more discovery. My current company standardized on a bog-standard Microsoft shared drive, which for lack of curation/management turned into a corporate document landfill. I find Google Drive to be the cloud version of the same. Yes you can store a load of documents in sub-folders and such there, but it doesn't offer more sophisticated features like check-in, check-out, versioning, and so on (as far as I know).

Re: Google Apps for Business (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2014-11-17 21:31 (#2V3R)

Nope - you're totally right about google drive. On the plus side it's totally cross platform (if you include web access).

On the downside, managing it means someone has to manage it. If you have small teams and everyone picks up after themselves, it can work well. Otherwise (for those of us in the real world), it tends to get real messy real fast.

I don't know of any good solution to the problem.

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