Microsoft has truly changed course with Office 365

A few years ago I created a post on how far behind the curve Microsoft was with cloud offerings. I had personally placed more clients within Google Apps for Business at a rate of 100 to 0 over Office 365. Now the tides have tremendously turned. Many of the clients who went from On-Premise Exchange to Google Apps for Business have transitioned to Office 365 Enterprise or Office 365 Business Premium. There is a pattern in why these clients are moving back to a Microsoft platform. Some are more apparent than others. I will discuss some of the reasons and changes I have come across as well as my personal thoughts on the service and what it has meant for my clients.

To begin, I would like to first go over the current trend I work with on a normal basis. Many of my small and medium business clients who were still holding onto Windows SBS infrastructures, are now transitioning to Office 365. For the most part, these are the clients who were holding onto their equipment for as long as they could, or were waiting on budgets to align. These were also many of the clients that found that Google Apps for Business was not the right fit for their organization. After sitting down with many of these clients, and discussing what Microsoft currently offers with Office 365, verses building a new exchange server on top of upgrading outdated servers, they were finally more interested in moving their exchange services to a solution that was off-premise. For most of these clients the transition is fairly smooth: migrating mailboxes, creating a new Outlook profile, configuring new DNS settings, AD sync, and all of the details for a proper migration. Most organizations elect to go for the full license of the Office 365 suite and Lync, while others keep their previous Office suite volume licensing. These small and medium businesses are welcoming this change because of the availability for multiple device access, and remote or after-hour use. Many are already comfortable with accessing their email on their company provided or personal cell phones. With tablets and ultrabooks, the transition to mobile workstations has surpassed desktop sales for most of my clients. Very few businesses I work with have purchased a desktop computer in the last three years. Though Windows SBS offered Remote Web Workplace and Outlook Web App, very few of these clients tapped into the on-premise features that were open for remote use. As a result the organization was not in alignment with the technology they had at hand. Fast forward to the present time and they are requesting a remote cloud based solution. So why now? For starters when you begin displaying to the client that the servers are getting long in the tooth and that a critical element of their day to day tasks sit directly in their office, they realize that the responsibility lies directly on their shoulders. When something breaks, there is usually a technician dispatched to try and fix the problem (after the technician exhausts all remote options). This is the song and dance that has continued for many years. The ability for them to take the hardware and maintenance cost out of the equation, and have a service that is primarily up >90% of the time, budgets begin to shift from down time while awaiting the technician to arrive and then correct the issue, to rarely ever calling the technician for a full outage. The mobile aspect and push for greater uptime with less responsibility are two of the key feature these organizations are reaching for in this transition.

The next transition I would like to discuss is one that has sort of caught us off guard: existing Google Apps for Business clients shifting to Office 365. I say “caught off guard” but the reality is more in line with the number of businesses that are making this transition. We expected for some of our clients to transition due to the fact that they are still heavy Microsoft Office platform clients. During the transition from on-premise exchange to Google Apps for Business they requested the Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook (GASMO) tool as well as only using the storage portion of Google Drive. The pattern again here is the technology is not in alignment with the organizations daily operations. Google’s spreadsheet formatting was not optimal for their use in the majority of the scenarios. GASMO was restricting common calendaring features that were not supported by Google. For these clients the end result of migrating to the Office 365 for Business or Enterprise was just a matter of a few features, and the ultimate end goal of the technology being in alignment with their business operations. Some of the particular features, which may sound small to some but can make a huge impact to others, are things such as having a Global Address list integrate seamlessly with Active Directory, Excel documents integrating with CAD and REVIT drawings and diagrams, calendaring, and syncing color coding of entries seamlessly across devices. The last feature is the web interface of the platform. Microsoft has gone to great lengths in the last years to provide as many of the same features and user experience in the web platform as they offer in the desktop platform. With all of this being said, their reasoning the majority of the time is “We prefer the look, feel, and integration of Microsoft”. One of the other statements we get is that an executive or executives would just prefer Microsoft. So after a few years of organizations waiting out Microsoft’s shift, and improvements in their hosted services, clients are gaining a new found comfort in going back to the Microsoft business solution. This process of migration has also made a low impact on the required resources needed to migrate as well. Many online resources are available to transition from Google to Microsoft and visa versa. At the same the cost of migrating platforms in this manner is reduced in comparison to the cost of an on-premise migration.

Through both of these transitions I have displayed what some of my clients points of views are and what they have faced. I would like to now introduce my thoughts of the transition process.

The transition from on-premise to Office 365 has a greater impact on many organizations than you might think. The move to off load resources on-premise to a cloud solution being the most significant. This reduces overhead and cost of ownership. It alleviates the stress of relying on local hardware and the imminent factor of unforeseen minor or major disasters that range anywhere from a power outage to a life threatening natural disaster. These stresses on a physical server can begin to cause degradation on both the server and the attached storage housing the information. With a hosted solution many of the organizations resources are still available as long as the user can seek any type of internet access. Financially, the transition changes from usually a high dollar one-time project cost and ongoing maintenance costs to a long term subscription solution. This subscription fee also increases as the number of employees and features increase. In the same token, a growth in employees and features could increase costs if your on-premise solutions are contracted out as well. It really depends on the organizations structure. In the long run what this solution does benefit from is the removal of outdated equipment and the cost to upgrade once again within the ever shortening life cycle of close to three years for both servers and software. Granted these can be stretched past this theoretical life cycle.

The transition from Google Apps for Business to Office 365 has for the most part been pretty seamless. These clients making this transition are already hosted in the cloud. Moving data out of Google does have a window of 2GB per day per account no matter what service you transition to. That limitation alone needs to be factored in to properly manage the migration project. The majority of the labor on this transition is conducted at the desktop level. This includes setting up the Microsoft Office suite and loading the profiles. One of the distinct complications I have come across in this transition was primarily calendaring. Again much of it with color coding and personal settings within Outlook. Aside from the calendars, the contacts are the usual suspect and the first thing end users see as hardships in the transition. Contacts have been the stifler for every migration I have conducted. I can not count how many times the end users have improperly merged contacts on numerous devices they use. Aside from these few short comings, leveraging a third party to extract the data from Google is strongly recommended as it reduces the actual hands on hours in the migration.

For the most part the feedback on Office 365 has been fairly great. I can clearly state from a support stand point and the interactions with both Google and Office 365 support, Microsoft is very active in finding the resolution. Google on the other hand is, in my point of view, engineering centric with a very hands off approach to the end users. Many of the clients who are now on Office 365 are submitting less requests based on compatibility issues. They are also more focused on utilizing more features within the platform. The collaboration process has grown with clients using Lync, developing their SharePoint sites, and learning how the semi-confusing OneDrive for Business operates. As an employee of a Managed Service Provider, I can say that the one area with the greatest learning curve when transitioning to Office 365 for the end user is their online storage. OneDrive for Business is directly integrated with SharePoint. Many of the end users are accustomed to their cloud vaults being very easy to access and setup. This is one thing DropBox and Google have in common that make their services stand out. I personally feel that even if the backend is SharePoint based, Microsoft can integrate the links into the OneDrive profile a little more seamless than in its current configuration. Then allow the end user to paste additional SharePoint folders provided by the company or shared from individuals.

To close I would like to say that though I do not personally use Office 365, I can vouch for many clients that have made this transition. Office 365 for my organization would not be in alignment with how we operate. We do on the other hand have our own Office 365 account  which is primarily used for both testing and training both in the cloud and on the desktop. I hope that some of the insight and knowledge you have read in this article will either help you in your transition or will provide a minor insight as to what impact moving to Office 365 will have for your organization.

Microsoft's own stalemate is helping push Small Business to the cloud.

A growing trend I've seen develop over the last months are many small businesses moving from SBS to Cloud. Companies are opening their eyes and seeing all of the opportunities of hosting their data verses housing their data in house. When a company thought of SBS they imagined a scaled down enterprise grade environment that would be iron clad. For the most part that vision is true. If you began your business three years ago. A major shift in business is just beginning. The name it carries right now is Cloud Services. If you look at where the curve began you can see where Microsoft failed to get ahead of this curve. Step back ten years ago there where many smoke signals displaying the shift that was going to happen. Palm and Microsoft started a great push in mobile technology that fueled what we have today. Many other players as well such as Nokia and Blackberry. Some of these companies road the lip of a wave too long. As you can see now both companies are surfing close-out waves. Both companies are pointing toward mobile management solutions. This is a trend I personal do not see fading.

I spoke of small business but let me push focus to a large scale environment for a moment. A few years ago Government was tied into the Microsoft ecosystem heavily. If you can understand the scale of equipment and cost it is very obvious this was not only a heavy upfront cost but a high maintenance cost as well. With technology this has been a given. The only way to truly bring this cost down is versatility. Though having active sync and web based access to you data and applications was a possibility it was not a friendly option. During my days of service with the 82nd Airborne I used a Palm i705 to access active directory and exchange while jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. Being the second man out of the bird directly behind my commander I had to have all communications up and live before my commander had time to lock and load his weapon. I had purchased the i705 personally. The military had not moved beyond toughbooks for access to email and data at the time. An advantage that I put into the hands of my commander was access to not only battlefield comms but quick and reliable access to email, calendar, and files. Before operations I removed my email account and loaded my commanders, as well as loading any Word, Excel, and Access data files he needed. I quickly saw a need but at the same time I saw a limitation. How could I push this envelope securely and give my commander more information. So I developed an in-house company website housed on a small server that only we had access to at the time. Now my operations data could be put on the internal website, updated, and we had real time data at our finger tips (stylus rather). Again this technology was not abroad in the military. Fast forward to today and you can understand that this vision has been but in play by all aspects of Government. Battlefield commanders have access to non secure data at any point during an operation. Secure data still has a tight lipped channel and solutions that differ and wont be spoke of here. A shift in having direct access to information has began to move from encrypted connections internally to devices that can decrypt the data in your hand remotely. An essential reason why Government can make the shift from a Microsoft environment to a Google Apps environment. Encryption happens at both ends. Devices can be remotely wiped and locked. Something that was available by Microsoft but at a higher cost. Files can be accessed remotely with a simple dropbox account. Workstations can be securely accessed via Remote Desktop Protocol. Anything now can be accessed remotely.

Lets shift back to small business. If anything can be accessed remotely then why fork out a high overhead in equipment for an internal workspace only option. Its understood that access can be granted to SBS servers and data can be remotely available. Equipment can have a heavy upfront cost but factor in maintenance and support and the cost continues to rise. Future development relies on the current equipment to be compatible and well tested. Hard drives fail and the equipment needs proper ventilation and cooling to maintain operations. Now you need to include warranty cost etc. The bill continues to rise for ownership of the equipment. Not to mention backup needs. For years we have thrown a lot of money at this solution that really doesn't fit properly for small business profit gains. The majority do not have in-house I.T. staff to shuffle this task and need 90% of it outsourced. Microsoft has not built directly around this concept and left most of these business needing more and spending more. Small Businesses want to buy iPhones because they can use them for business and personal. Complete an email, respond to a phone call, then shoot a photo or video of their child having fun. Where is the Microsoft equivalent device that fits this business model. Slowly getting out of the crawling phase and trying to run a marathon. Now visualize the documents you have created in that great Office suite you bought. It works well on your computer at work. It displays well, emails, collaborates, and functions great on the workstation in the office. Though can you find a good Microsoft provided option to use it mobile. Not without a third party workup that has minimal options. Without a notebook or netbook you can not recreate the experience properly. Many alternatives are available that is understood. That is why Cloud has become a common Small Business word. If you can not get all of this from the equipment you house then what is your alternative. A hosted option. Even though the hosted option has its own drawbacks and limitations the outcome out weighs the pitfalls.

To conclude: unless Microsoft moves quickly the only shift Microsoft will see in its favor is its own software being used for Enterprise Management. Sitting still and working on an OS that will serve two purposes is not the answer. Microsofts stalemate is not deciding between itself to separate the desktop from the mobile scene.

Maturity in the business world does not happen over night.

Having spent many years of my career supporting Microsoft products (not so much for the love of them), I really feel that Google has moved the business of hosted products to equal if not the better choice.

Google Docs has brought the office suite that you can take anywhere. Something Microsoft failed to provide until Office 360. Though I must admit Google Docs has a flaw that is hard to over come. In App support. If you have an application that exports a word or excel format and have your office suite hosted in the cloud then you lose export functionality in that application. Now I am sure there is either an API or plugin to fix this. Which leaves you limited to your vendor support.

Gmail has become an email service yet to be matched by any other out there. I have about a dozen email addresses from all sorts of mail providers. In previous years I used a few accounts for spam, family, business, RSS feeds you name it. At the time it was easier to sign up with a service and filter traffic through different accounts. With Gmail it is complex yet simple enough to precess a large inbox and have the noise out of the way as soon as you check your messages. It's unmatched.

Google+ in Google Apps. Facebook has brought a lot of attention to business. Social media has become a perfect marriage for marketing products to broad audiences with very little effort. Almost every business markets themselves on social media. Google+ allows companies to tie their employees social side of business right into their Google Apps profile. Though Google+ currently does not feature business integration as far as company profile, I can see no reason why it would not be a comfortable choice for companies who use Google Apps to adopt when made available. As a company, the ability to show your company enthusiasm by having your employees Google+ profile attached to a company Google+ page creates a positive image for the company. It's the elevator pitch of a life time if done right. "Hi, this is our company. Here is our marketing team. Here is what our company is about. This was our goal we hit. This is why we love you as a customer!" You can add the company to a circle. More so you can drill down and add just the marketing team because that is who you normally deal with. Then in the marketing team you pull out a few favorites and add the to a more personal circle because you have common interest or business with them specifically. What better way is there to be social other than face to face. Done correctly Google+ could tie social media into the business suite with less headache and effort.

There are quite a few tools tucked away into Google Apps but the last one I will cover today is message continuity. As I have only begun to discover this function the positives are weighing heavy for the business application of this feature. Some businesses will always swear by exchange. Which is fine. To each their own, but having the option to duplicate your mail in the cloud to extremely reduce down time for messages during outages is hands down important. Some Postini configurations, additions and configurations to exchange, and you have a redundant mail client that goes with you and synchronizes between Gmail and Microsoft Exchange. This my friends has become the best of both worlds answer that will make cloud backup a positive note for business.

Though a serious subject I smirk at the "Go Green Save a Tree" bit:

Don't get me wrong I'm all for saving the environment. Though I must say people really go about this the wrong way. Now take away what you wish from my post but this is my opinion and not a full researched one. So before you criticize I'm saying up front I could be completely wrong. This is just how I see it thats all.

My first note is about companies like Apple who produce advertised eco-friendly products. Now it is great that they are using these materials. But! The whole Apple business plan is for you to buy their new product. They are very brilliant marketeers. I give them that. How do they make their sales numbers pop? They entice their customers to buy something new every year with options they omitted in the prior product. How many people buy an iPhone and upgrade as soon as the new one comes out with more features? Quick answer for you. Watch a Steve Jobs Keynote. Now is this a bad business practice. No it's not. Though I do find this is when a company as large as Apple should look into providing solutions and incentives for customers to donate their old product when they upgrade. I use Apple products despite the fact they have a closed platform. I'll go into that in another thread. I also recommend them to many people because they are great products. We can compare the same theory to the automotive industry but I'm a tech guy. Very few of us want our sports cars or race cars not running on fuel. We want performance and appearance that suits our taste. So we need to find a happy medium. My opinion for this happy medium is for companies offer a trade-up program that is eco-friendly. Thus reducing waste.

The next thing I want to go into is paper and software. We hear a lot of recycle paper and we're wasting so many trees. Part of this is true but here in America our tree farmers actual replace the majority if not all the trees during their process of harvesting trees. Though many will not complain when they get their fresh Christmas tree at the end of the year. If your going to be on the wagon use all of the wheels. A missing wheel can make for a wobbly ride. Again where is the happy medium when it comes to paper. This day and age there are always connected smart phones and computers. Becoming paper independent is actually a little easier than people think. Apple has an option build into the Mac OS, Windows has a free app called CutePDF, and other paid software that allows you to print your files in a .pdf format, and Linux has a built in function all the same. For those who don't understand this option; you actual are just printing your file into a format that you can use almost anywhere. Your phone, home computer, work computer, and so on. This is only a eco-friendly option. Of coarse there is always times you will need a paper format. On the why you should print to pdf vs paper: that file can travel in your pocket in a phone with out getting a wrinkle, you can store many pages with limitations usually based on what viewer you use to open the file. What will this help accomplish? One is that this file is going to save you ink in your printer and use of paper. Two as I mentioned earlier is portability as in you can take it any where. This helps in reducing paper but not having to go completely paperless since you can always print this file when needed.

Onto the software. One of the largest problems in computing which changed I think in the late 60's "I'm still young so correct me if I'm wrong" was proprietary software. Meaning software companies made it so you had to buy their software to view or edit their files. I will pick on Microsoft for this one. Lets look at Microsoft Office. Until recent years the only option was to purchase Microsoft's Office suit to create and edit a Word document. If your asking what impact does this have in the eco-friendly environment, then consider how large businesses must constantly purchase new software and hardware to stay current with business needs. As an I.T. Director I purchased more equipment that was tailored strictly to the Microsoft environment because there were no options for using current equipment to handle the workload Microsoft was putting on them. Yes that is part of growth and staying a high tech business. But for tasks as simple or complex as editing documents; this should not be the case. I am not on the same page as a full blown FOSS (free open source software) I still think that companies need to earn their money but there needs to be a happy medium. Quick example. There would be no Pepsi if we could only drink Coke. Two different drinks that are classified as a cola. In the computer field I think the happy medium is for software vendors to focus more on offering their functions (options) over format. A recent case for example is Bluray and HD DVD. Both formats were capable of delivering great content. We chose to make a final industry decision to ditch the other. Thus we created a huge HD DVD waste.

My point in this post is to shed a little light on the whole go green campaign. Yes it is a good thing. Yes it makes for great advertising. But there lies our problem. We have turned a debate into a profit. When it should be more like knowing you need to brush your teeth in the morning. It should not be a burden or an expensive change in life style.

Though I'm not a heavy eco-friendly person I have began to make some changes. Here to list a few.

1. I've gone from a custom built top of the line computer down to a netbook only option. Limited but its capable. Before I migrated I stored my data on large drives and donated the machine to a family member in need.

2. I've began to store my files (except private information files) in the cloud (online) using multiple sources. Examples: I no longer have to purchase that $80 planner anymore by migrating all my calendar info to Google calendars and sharing is not a hassle. I have told people I need to share files with about Windows Live Office and its 25GB storage option. Create, edit, and share your docs right from there. I also use Google Docs. I use multiple file hosting and sharing sites that integrate into computing and mobile environments well such as box.net, dropbox, Windows Live Mesh, ZumoDrive. All have folders that you can sync between computer, cloud, and mobile for greater access to your files.

3. For printing I use Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro which installs a pdf printer for paperless printing. Though the occasional paper print is still needed. At one point in time I had a digital picture frame for viewing my personal photos. With smartphones, tv's, Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, and networked BluRay and DVD players I can view my favorite prints on almost any screen.

All of the products we use in this technology age produce a high carbon foot print. But we are not going back decades to change our habits. So lets find the happy medium and go about it from every angle not just a way to create profitable marketing.

The friends and family must haves.

There are a few apps I want to throw out there that are almost must have for your friends and family users. Most are Vista and Windows 7 but some can apply to the still using XP users.

With the exception of all XP users; this download adds the new features for Vista users and adds the missing features for Windows 7 users. Two main features that most home users will use most from these services are Live Photo Gallery and Mail. Most of the users I recommend this software to enjoy the Live Photo Gallery for the tagging and the new facial recognition process of organizing and enhancing their photos. While not perfect it gives Windows users a great free tool to manage photos in a fashion similar to iPhoto. The option to sign into your SkyDrive, Flicker, Facebook, YouTube, and others including the option to add a few select others such as Picasa Web etc. (Click the picture for the link to download.)

The second part to Live Essentials requires a Hotmail or Live mail account to access Windows Live SkyDrive. With SkyDrive you get 25 GB of online secure storage that you can use to upload Photos, use as a backup drive for computer files, or share files across multiple computers you may use. In addition to getting free online storage; with the Live account you have access to Office Online to edit Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentations, and One Note for Notes. None of these require the application installed on the computer but does require an active internet connection to change edit. (Click the picture for the link to signup.)

The next application I would like to share is Trillian Instant Messenger. We all know our family members use IM or Facebook to communicate every now and again. Trillian has a great interface, tons of options, and connects to almost every chat client you can throw at it. To include: Facebook, AIM, Yahoo!, GTalk, MySpace, IRC, Skype, and so on. Not only can it chat; it also sends you notifications on arriving emails for the attached accounts. For social sites such as Facebook you can view wall posts from friends and comment right inside the application without opening your browser. Double click and it brings you right to the page in you web browser. (Click the picture to download Trillian.)

The last application I want to include is TeamViewer. This is the best remote desktop application I have personally used over the years. It is free and has a Business solution for Premium users. Almost four days out of the week I tend to receive a call to work on a friends or family members computer. The first thing I tell them is to load this program. Once installed you receive a unique set of numbers that represent the computer it is installed on. It also provides a alphanumeric password that changes daily automatically. Or for the more worried user you can click and change it with one click if you like. It has the essentials needed to do almost anything such as; remote control, presentation, chat, file transfer, video and audio, and the option to record the session etc. A must have application if you ever need to work on your friends computer or just want to access your home computer from the office, smartphone, or laptop (thumb drive app, iPhone, and Android apps available). Click picture to download TeamViewer.)

Wise Registry Cleaner. Each plays a key role in keeping a computer running great. Though user error can never stop most problems that accumulate viruses, spam, and such. I can personally say after years of use practices and working in the I.T. industry these are the apps I recommend. All free and not to heavy in the resource area. A few quick details on their uses. Microsoft Security Essentials will scan you computer for virus and malware. ccleaner scans the hard drive and registry for temp file, unused data, ect. Basically rids all the things left unused. SpyBot S&D checks for spyware; usually downloaded from the internet and sends back data from your computer. Lastly Wise Registry Cleaner will rid the registry of unused components that can begin to degrade Windows. Hope this list will help users enjoy their computer use and aide in productivity.

Tech Blogs or Rants and Raves! [IMO]

The majority of post running out there in the wild have been more rants or opinions that are displayed to be facts in the title. Once you start reading on there seems to be a lack of any proof or supporting data. No one really has been putting out real note worthy posts any more. Half of the time you spot a headline and think to yourself here is some more BS. Like "why a company is doing this". Then you get a crap load of someones opinion. If it is your opinion state it clearly as an opinion. It is getting to the point where post are nothing more than an experiance of sifting through every friends new game acheivement in Facebook. Look I value peoples opinion. But if your post is all about what you think about a product or service then make it say so in your title. If you have hard proof then lay it out there as such. SEO means squat if you are putting out a good title and subpar writing behind it. I don't claim to be an Lit major but I'm sure in Literature 101 they teach value of content or how appeal to your audiance. Digg has become flooded with these post. I used to enjoy findind news and opinions there. The Engadget and god forbid Gizmodo have fallen heavy in this realm. And they pay these people for their content. When I see certain writers under the header I don't even bother to read any further. There just needs to be more to tech news than SEO. For those who may not understand that term it is search engine optimization. It's to try and get you a high ranking in search sites. I feel as if our tech writers are following a path such as FOX news. You watch it and think "wow really that is news". That's all I got today. Enjoy.

[IMO] What Google is Contributing:

I was an early adopter of Google and their products as soon as they came on board. So this post may seem one sided. That is why IMO begins its title.

We are all seeing Google vs Apple vs .... But what the general population is failing to look at is what Google is trying to build. Their ecosystem is starting to really come together in ways that people and businesses alike can do almost anything an operating system has to offer on the web. That is their goal. By adding a mobile platform that can adopt all of these technologies in a similar fashion you now have the ability to actually have a convenience of being away from your computer and be almost as productive. It goes to show that Google is trying to build a web friendly environment that can adopt all of the favorite things you like about the web and most of what you like about you personal computer.

To start with lets look at Google's search engine. Google was started as a web experience improvement company. They saw a way to improve search and search habits. They brought more meaningful advertising to companies by search habits so your search shows a more relevant company selling a product similar to the topic you are looking for. Instead of someone paying a premium price to always be at the top of the list with no relevance to what you may be searching for. They also have the most "keep it simple stupid" approach in their search home page.

Now lets look at Gmail. The approach here was to offer you more control over your email. Sure business had its corporate email and Office suite while we had our personal Yahoo! and Hotmail. So how could you adopt the best of both worlds. Google introduces Gmail. with tasks, calendar, and email all tied into a web mail client. They have expanded Gmail with many options. Labels(otherwise known as folders), filters, the best spam filtering, chat built in with Google Talk, and many other option under labs. It is the email client that has made the Yahoo! and Hotmail of their time to adapt to more of what people were looking for in a email client. A business option with a personal look.

Lets look at Maps now. Nothing new as there was MapQuest already on the scene when it came out. We were used to looking at Maps and getting directions but what we did not have was the ability to search for a name of a place or a product a place may sell and then see a map of the locations to find the closest one to us. This app has not changed a whole lot since its release but more and more options are now starting to exist in their layers and new labs features. What really gave this app a refresh was street view. They went across nations in vans to give you a in-depth close look at what to expect when you get to a location and what you are hunting for. Their mobile version is actually more robust than the web as of date.

Videos: Well when they first started in the video market they failed. Not miserably but could not compete with the college fan based rival YouTube. So they buy the competition. IMO it was a good move. Now we have a better option of searching for videos right out of the search box. YouTube has evolved into a video service that is a house hold name and a service that is now moving into our living rooms. The option to see user based content right on the big screen is now a reality and not a myth. So what came of the acquisition is a far better search option in finding a video right in your homepage of your browser. They did not invent the wheel but again created a better web experience.

News: Here again nothing new. They just made searching a news site and linking the content less of a task by combining the top news feeds into one location. Much like people use their personal RSS feeds. You have options to search for topics of your choice if you do not like the default layout. Again using their search algorithms you can find content specific headlines to your taste. If you need a more personal feel then you do your own homework and use their Google Reader app. RSS feeds are pulled and categorized to your specific needs in the content from websites that you visit most. So you get the content that you are looking for directly. It is almost like printing your own newspaper with the info you are most interested in.

For your office productivity needs Google offers Google Docs. Here you have a suite of apps that cater to you documentation, spreadsheet, forms, and presentation needs. Though there is a learning curve on the format side there are very similar functions in which users are used to using when creating these files. All of which give you sharing built right in to the app. Something that was tied mainly to the corporate world. The added plus to this app is the fact that your documents are available to you at any time and any where. Some have completely moved to using Google Docs over your standard purchasable applications for these added functionalities and the simple fact that it is at no cost to the end user. Though putting certain docs in the cloud has a lot of users worried about security. So the comment "user discretion is advised" need be applied here. Still Google claims its security is its main goal and we all have to be open minded and consider the risks of personal and professional docs in the open cloud. With Google Apps on the corporate side this is a little more security assured but all in all it is a very safe gamble to use this service if your contents are not a security risk for you.

Blogger was added to give the public a free platform to post their views, ideas, or anything else. It is a no brainer approach for you to share your content with the world. You can design a page to your likings and put out information on your views of anything you want. It can be used as your voice to the world. Not a new concept and probably not the best but guess what it is all built around your Google experience. Its a platform for you to put your thoughts and views out there for the public to see. Mine is based on technology since that is the field I am most prominent in. Here I can write about anything I want and anyone interested can see my views on a specific topic. Not only is it a chance to put my views out there but by using Google adsense I can actually gain some income from it if the blog becomes popular. So Blogger is what you want to make it. Personal to the sense that you are putting your thoughts out there for the public to see.

A newer project put out by Google is Google Voice. They purchased Grand Central so users could have their own personal voice mail service. Still growing in popularity as it was closed to invite only Google Voice not only gives you the option of voice mail but also gives you a free text messaging platform. With the acquisition of Gizmo5 we may see more features to this app but only time will tell. Here you get to pick a phone number or you have the option to import your own number and use it as your personal PBX. With options to block numbers, group your contacts for specific options and greetings, and text your contacts on any service provider for free. The most advance feature I believe is the transcription of your voice mail into text. It is not perfect but it gives you the options to see the content of a voice mail and see if it has merit for listening.

Google's latest creation Google Buzz. I know I skipped out Google Talk but as we all know it is a instant messaging client. So instead of going over Talk here I am going to voice my opinion on Buzz. What Buzz offers is a platform similar to what we have grown to use. The only difference is going to be this one is part of your ever growing Google ecosystem. Today we use the Twitters, Facebooks, and countless other social media apps to share what is going on to others on a day to day bases in almost a real time fashion. With Buzz this finally opens the door to get your Google profile as much recognition as these other options. People have rarely used their Google profile for this reason until now. Your Google profile gives the public and private people a peek into you own Google ecosystem. By adding a social platform for your profile you can now show others what you have been working on all in one location and give them up to date information that is going on in your life and specify if you want to share this to the public or just your private contacts. It is the gateway to getting you own Google domain out there finally. With the option to have all you eggs in one basket. That is how I see it being useful.

The last Google products I am going to discuss is Google Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android. The reason for this being the last portion is this actually sums up what the ecosystem is about. Google's Chrome browser has started turning heads. It is fast and is starting to gain on Firefox. I have been a very avid Firefox user since its debut. I must say that I am very hungry to see how Chrome can take over my Firefox use. I have lately made Chrome my default browser to compare my experiences with each. The most intuitive feature that has caught my attention is the separate processes per tab. One of the hugest advances I have seen that has help keep my system from being bogged down. Firefox has grown to be a very memory hungry browsing experience for me. The fact that web pages are providing this hungry content means that browsers have to find a way to keep this experience enjoyable without over killing the computer. Though my computer is only a couple years old it has the highest specs of that time. Hand built by me I know this. So Chrome, the much awaited Chrome OS for the netbook world, and Android are the tools that are making this ecosystem a manageable reality. Google is pulling together all of these services and giving us the tools to use them in a so called Google environment. Some may say monopoly. I say it is not a monopoly for the fact that there is competition out there for each and every product Google offers. They just give you the option to keep your content in one convenient place. They do not force you to use their services nor do they block you from using other services. It is what (and I use this term loosely ) open source is all about. You the consumer unless you purchase their branded phone pay nothing to Google.

So the whole contribution of Google products Search, Gmail, Maps, News, Reader, Docs, Blogger, Voice, Buzz, Talk, Chrome, Android, and Chrome OS etc when used appropriately give you a central location to do just about anything. All of these features have functions even on a mobile platform. Google has built a option to take what ever you do on a personal computer and given you options to do something equivalent anywhere at almost anytime. The most dependable factor is connectivity. To even top that factor Google is working on making connectivity a smaller factor in the whole equation. Free WiFi in areas and their new 1Gig per household project are paving the road to a better web experience. Is that not how they started out in the beginning.

I say thank you to Google because not only have you made leaps and bounds you have made many more companies do the same to keep up with times. There is your contributing factor. Competition.