Case Study | Google Apps for Business and Google Message Discovery

CapeNature enhances employee productivity and IT security with Google Apps for Business and Google Postini Services Organisation CapeNature is a public institution with the statutory responsibility for biodiversity conservation in the Western Cape, South Africa. The company has 400 employees and is driven by the vision to establish a successful “Conservation Economy” – embraced by all citizens of the Western Cape and to transform biodiversity conservation into a key component of local economic development in the province. Challenge CapeNature decided to move away from their previous mail and collaboration infrastructure after suffering multiple downtime sessions that were slowing business operations to a critical level. The limitations of the previous solution were evident as other products and services were promising more advanced business and collaboration tools. These tools were identified as a must-have to streamline CapeNature’s business operations. The previous solution also provided a real challenge to the IT department, as it did not provide the platform or tools so that the IT department could confidently control and manage the solution from the top down. One serious threat to CapeNature’s corporate email infrastructure at the time was the growing importance of e-discovery and email archiving legislation. The significance of these laws are not to the same degree compared to most developed countries, but the failure to comply to email discovery laws is a pending threat for South African companies. It is because of this that CapeNature was also looking at a solution that could provide them with improved email archiving and discovery tools.

“With more than two years of active investigation on most mail solutions out there, listening to independent proposals and opinions, I still have to see any better alternative to Google Apps.” —Arno Scheepers, Senior Information Systems Manager

Solution CapeNature investigated most in-house, hosted and cloud-based alternatives, but some were too expensive and also demanded more staff in some instances. During the evaluation process, CapeNature discovered that none of the solutions providers, except Google, could meet their requirements or overcome their challenges. After Google was selected as the vendor of choice, further investigation on the challenges and usability of Google Enterprise solutions took place to ensure the switch over would be hassle free. Not only did Google Apps perform positively during the trial period, but after the trial was done the migration to Google Apps was a seamless procedure. Google Message Discovery was then chosen as a premium email archiving add-on to ensure CapeNature’s mail infrastructure became completely secure and compliant.

About Google Apps for Business Google Apps for Business offers simple,

powerful communication and collaboration tools for enterprises of any size – all hosted by Google to streamline setup, minimise maintenance, and reduce IT costs. With Gmail, Google Calendar, and integrated chat, voice, and video IM, users stay connected and work together with ease and security, within or beyond enterprise domains. Google Docs, which includes word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools, enables real-time collaboration and file sharing, keeping versions current, organised, secure, and available wherever and whenever users work. Google Groups enhances information-sharing among specific groups or project teams. Google Sites makes it easy to create and publish web pages on intranets or public sites, and Google Video supports the easy, secure sharing of enterprise video content. Google Apps for Business minimises IT costs and complexity, provides built-in spam filtering, and includes a 99.9% uptime SLA. For more information visit: www.google.com/a

About Google Postini Services

Google security and compliance products, powered by Postini, make your existing email system more secure and compliant. Built on a hosted service platform, these products block spam, phishing, malware, and other intrusions before they reach your network, and provide content management and archiving to help you meet legal challenges. Google’s hosted model offers several distinct advantages. Leveraging the “network effect” of tens of thousands of email networks, Google technology detects new threats in real time and blocks them across the entire Google security network – without requiring on-site updates. Similarly, economies of scale in storage, simple deployment, and maintenance-free service drive a low total cost of ownership.

Some companies have concerns around switching from on-premise appliances but according to Scheepers “It’s the old story of users that have been ‘Microsoftlised’ - this is not a bad thing as they don’t have to change in this regard, but it only emphasises the general principle of resistance to change”. The IT landscape however is changing and the technologies provided by vendors like Google offer companies innovative, industry leading alternatives that do not require on-premise installations. “My opinion is that Google Apps is a fantastic solution for small to medium organisations, and even large organisations in South Africa” Scheepers continues. Furthermore he states that “Google Gears is beneficial for SA companies that struggle with bandwidth issues, as it can potentially save on bandwidth usage.” Results CapeNature does not encounter anymore downtime and there is minimal stress on IT. It has “huge” advantages according to Scheepers. Users take responsibility for their mail boxes and they now use web mail more often. Communication is improving all the time with Google Apps in their organisation. CapeNature believes Google Gears is a must to utilise the full potential of Apps, because Gears extends your browser to create a richer platform for web applications. CapeNature doesn’t have to look after hardware nor co-ordinate any significant actions on the current hosted solution. There are no additional dedicated IT staff required to manage the corporate mail infrastructure. “Google Apps is a fantastic e-communications solution for any type of company,” Scheepers remarks. “By having Google Apps in our organisation e-communication is improving constantly like never before. The cost, IT support, capacity and functional advantages are significant. With more than two years of active investigation on most mail solutions out there, listening to independent proposals and opinions, I still have yet to see any better alternative. To this day no one could give me, as a Senior Information Systems manager, any good tangible reason or advantage to make use of another solution taking all factors into consideration. “Our organisation has been using Google Apps for a couple of months now and it does all it promised. It lifted a tremendous burden of IT support and services. One of the factors we enjoy the most is how fast this solution evolves and one can use it immediately without software upgrades and additional cost. No more buying of yet another software solution or upgrade that is more complex or slower that the previous one,” says Scheepers.

For more information visit: www.google.com/postini “No more buying of yet another software solution or upgrade that is more complex or slower that the previous one.” —Arno Scheepers, Senior Information Systems Manager

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