Archive for the ‘features’ Category

Google Apps gets serious

Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

Google Apps For Your Domain has recently added some new features and, like my boss likes to say, opened its kimono. They are definitely gunning for Microsoft’s Exchange market now (they offer a solution to migrate away from Exchange, can’t be clearer than that.)

But what about us little guys, us geeks with our own domains who aren’t multinational environment shaggers? There are a couple of new features which are very welcome.

Firstly you can keep it free and get 2gb per account on your domain or you can pay $50 per year and get 10gb per account. The $50 option also offers some guarantees, migration tools, an email gateway and integration tools. Not much for us small guys so I think the free version will continue to be fine. You can see a comparison chart here.

The interesting bits are:

  • URL mapping. So instead of http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com you can have http://mail.yourdomain.com. Very, very nice that.
  • Google Docs is now available to everyone using Google Apps For Your Domain.
  • Domain alias so you can control two or more domains as one.

I see you can also now register a new domain with Google. I haven’t found out yet if you can transfer existing domains.

So a nice update even for us free loaders and some useful features for bigger users.

Posted in Domain, Gmail, Google, Microsoft, Post, docs, exchange, features, google apps for your domain, update | Comments

Empowered employees

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

Don Dodge (via Jeff Clavier) reports on 7 features enterprise software needs. The interesting point is that they can just as easily apply to non-enterprise software. Isn’t this part of realising the independant and powerful nature of employees? Realising they aren’t cogs or resources? That we are demanding ownership of the tools we use in our companies.

The 7 features:

  1. Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
  2. Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
  3. Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
  4. Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
  5. Personalized user experience - customizable
  6. Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
  7. Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.

No more shall we use Lotus Notes because IT says we must.

Posted in 7, List, Software, consumer, employees, empowered, enterprise, features | Comments