Google Groups in Google Apps

Adding Google Groups is another shot across Microsoft's bow. Striking is the speed in which companies like Google can innovate with web-based applications, compared to Microsoft's long development cycles. Designing for the browser is so much more efficient that you have to wonder how much of a lead Microsoft can hold in face of the fast development cycles from Google and others in the enterprise collaboration space.

In 2007, Google Apps had three products: Gmail, Google Docs and Google Calendar. Today, Google Apps includes 24 products. The cost for Google Apps is $50 per user/per year. In the current Microsoft desktop model, the costs to develop products make it seemingly impossible to keep licensing costs as low as Google Apps. The customer investment is magnified by the technology investments that IT departments need t make in order to keep desktop applications running inside the enterprise.

Features

Google is adding groups to address the challenges for both the IT administrator and the user. In Google's view, managing groups is a significant administrative burden for IT. The user, in turn is dependent on IT to create the groups.

Google's answer is to create a group environment that can be controlled by the user or the IT department. The IT department can control all groups that are created or it can give complete control to the user.

This will all sound familiar if you have ever set up your own Google Group. The process is pretty straight forward. The time it takes to set up a group is minimal. You give the group a name and create a group email and web address. You then add a short description and set controls for who has access.

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