Google provides self-service collaboration

Stephen Withers
Friday, 08 February 2008 06:49

Business IT - Technology

Google has put a new spin on ad hoc collaboration with Google Apps Team Edition.

While it has always been possible to share documents through Google Docs, the new team edition makes it easy to identify other Google Apps users in the same business or educational institution (as determined by the domain in their email addresses) and then invite them to share documents and calendars.

Where such services aren't already provided by the organisation's IT department, it can be a time-consuming process to get that changed.

Google Apps Team Edition encompasses Docs, Calendar, Talk and Start Page.

This move appears to be a way of encouraging grass-roots use of Google Apps, which could lead to more organisations signing up for the paid Google Apps Premier Edition. That version allows administrators to control which applications are available, which users have access, and to set the default sharing options.

Priced at $US50 per user account per year, Premier Edition also provides additional email storage, a 99.9 percent email uptime guarantee, Postini-powered policy management and message recovery, and APIs to support enterprise features such as single sign-on and user provisioning.