Cloud Computing Pilot Evaluation
What is the scope and purpose of your evaluation project? Let us assume you are considering migrating from GroupWise, Exchange or Lotus Notes to Gmail. Cloud solutions will assist in your pilot project. We will make all the technical adjustments required to your systems to enable emails to start to flow into Google Gmail for the evaluation process. In order to evaluate Gmail for your company we have outlined below a suggestion on how you plan for this exercise. Our qualified engineers will be on hand to manage the complete process for you.
Evaluation of Gmail
Google offer 30 days FREE evaluation which for most SMB's, is enough time to determine if the public cloud offering of Google Apps and specifically, Gmail, will work for your company. The larger the organisation the more detailed the evaluation period must be as the integration issues become more complex.
We recommend the evaluation should be divided into several phases; phase one should focus on the end user experience, including:
functionality and user friendliness
performance and realiability
conversation threads vs. email
labels vs. folders
local and Asian language support
task and calendar use including calendar sharing
searching functionality and ease of use
corporate branding
If this phase passes with flying colours then the next area to consider is:
Integration
Many organisations use Outlook today. As an option, users can continue to use Outlook once the switch to Gmail has taken place or it can be a transition tool only until the web client is understood and preferred. This can assist in migration of a user's data across to Google. A smaple of other areas you may wish to evaluate include:
multiple email addresses, email accounts and alaises
adoption of Postini as your preferred anti-virus and spam management tools
shared contacts and your global address book
mobile phone and iphone integration, including calendar alerts via SMS
Chat and Video chat
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
VMware vSphere is the industry’s first cloud operating system, transforming IT infrastructures into a private cloud—a collection of internal clouds federated on-demand to external clouds—delivering IT infrastructure as an easily accessible service. Enable the next generation of flexible, reliable IT services with the efficiency and low cost of cloud computing—featuring uncompromising control over service levels.