Google Apps for Business - anyone here use/admin it?

[sclitheroe]

Have a couple questions, just throwing this out there to see if anyone has some experience transitioning from other services to Google Apps for Business.

Mostly I'm interested in what happens to users with existing Google consumer type accounts - let's say they have an existing Google account tied to a GMail email address - can I migrate that user into the Google Apps for Business and not have them lose their YouTube, G+, etc? I don't want two accounts; I want to migrate the current Google account to Google Apps for Business and retain their online presence with Google (eg. G+ profile, YouTube subs, Google Now, etc)

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Have a couple questions, just throwing this out there to see if anyone has some experience transitioning from other services to Google Apps for Business.

Mostly I'm interested in what happens to users with existing Google consumer type accounts - let's say they have an existing Google account tied to a GMail email address - can I migrate that user into the Google Apps for Business and not have them lose their YouTube, G+, etc? I don't want two accounts; I want to migrate the current Google account to Google Apps for Business and retain their online presence with Google (eg. G+ profile, YouTube subs, Google Now, etc)

http://lifehacker.com/5934343/how-ca...unt-to-another

I think that answers what your asking.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

http://lifehacker.com/5934343/how-ca...unt-to-another

I think that answers what your asking.

Thanks - that's a help in getting me down the right path. I guess what's really confusing me is that I already have my non-Google email address set up as an alternate login for Google - I actually log into all my google services as scott@clitheroe.ca, not scott.clitheroe@gmail.com.

So it's not clear to me what would happen if I turned up the Google Apps service to handle the clitheroe.ca domain.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

Thanks - that's a help in getting me down the right path. I guess what's really confusing me is that I already have my non-Google email address set up as an alternate login for Google - I actually log into all my google services as scott@clitheroe.ca, not scott.clitheroe@gmail.com.

So it's not clear to me what would happen if I turned up the Google Apps service to handle the clitheroe.ca domain.

That's an interesting question. Microsoft does a good job of automatically merging the two (should you decide to try windows live for domains (outlook.com)), but I've had google apps from the beginning so I'm not sure what happens in that case.

[Ozy_Flame]

You can transfer your domain ownership to be managed by Google Apps. You just need Google Apps to register the CNAME and have your custom domain point to dhs.google.com if I'm not mistaken.

[sworkhard]

Originally Posted by Ozy_Flame

You can transfer your domain ownership to be managed by Google Apps. You just need Google Apps to register the CNAME and have your custom domain point to dhs.google.com if I'm not mistaken.

But if you already have a name@domain.com address that your using with google services (but not gmail), and you point your mx records for domain.com to google apps, and then create name@domain.com as an email address in google apps, does the old google (non gmail) account merge with the new google apps account? I think it does as I seem to recall a message notifying the user that their account had been merged in that situation when I setup google apps for someone once, but I'm not 100% sure.

Edit:

Well that's interesting. It appears that Google no longer allows you to sign up for a Google account without creating a Gmail address. I was going to try test this situation, but it didn't let me.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by sworkhard

But if you already have a name@domain.com address that your using with google services (but not gmail), and you point your mx records for domain.com to google apps, and then create name@domain.com as an email address in google apps, does the old google (non gmail) account merge with the new google apps account? I think it does as I seem to recall a message notifying the user that their account had been merged in that situation when I setup google apps for someone once, but I'm not 100% sure.

It does, but it was hella messy in my experience, and didn't bring over everything - it mainly seemed to be able to carry over my YouTube setup, but not Google+.

In the end, I said to heck with it - renamed my @domain.com Google account (which didn't have a GMail address associated with it) to an @gmail.com account, proceeded with the Google Apps setup, and I'll just re-create my G+ setup. I didn't follow that many people on G+ anyways, and only ran one community, so it won't be that bad to migrate across manually.

I had some other truly weird issues with Chrome and my pre-Apps profile (Chrome becomes a managed entity via Google Apps), such as all links showing as previously followed, my bookmarks toolbar disappearing in a puff-of-smoke animation (on the Mac, not sure what it does on a PC) and resyncing on every launch, that lead my to nuke and reinstall Chrome, but its all working nicely now.

Regardless, the family accounts are on Google Apps now, and I'll be able to retire the Exchange server at home - it was a bit eye opening doing the math and realizing that the home server was 10-15% of the monthly power bill, in exchange for a service that was less reliable overall.

[normtwofinger]

Not sure how it's done but the company I work for has a name@domain.com that runs through gmail. I sign in as name@domain.com, then I have linked a second account name@gmail.com. Both run simultaneously through the gmail app on Android.

[FurnaceFace]

From a document stand point I'd make sure you and the company have a clear understanding of Google's policies and understand how using the service differs from traditional file management. I'm no expert in this but there are some differences and there may be privacy concerns or IT policy/practices which would need to be altered to ensure the company is protected. I was on the periphery of the decision, but there were requests from a division to use Google Docs but Legal and security both flat out said no as there were major concerns over the possible loss of IP.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by FurnaceFace

From a document stand point I'd make sure you and the company have a clear understanding of Google's policies and understand how using the service differs from traditional file management. I'm no expert in this but there are some differences and there may be privacy concerns or IT policy/practices which would need to be altered to ensure the company is protected. I was on the periphery of the decision, but there were requests from a division to use Google Docs but Legal and security both flat out said no as there were major concerns over the possible loss of IP.

It's for the family Running Exchange at home is fun, but it's a bit of a pain too.

I completely agree about the data risks for an actual company - Google Apps and Office 365 are multi-tenant, and depending on your risk posture, they certainly pose a level of risk that is potentially greater than private cloud or locally hosted resources.

[Azure]

Any specific reason you went with Google Apps instead of Office 365?

We use Office 365 at work, and absolutely love it.

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Azure

Any specific reason you went with Google Apps instead of Office 365?

We use Office 365 at work, and absolutely love it.

I wanted to see how the other half lives

In all seriousness, I feel like Google is articulating a more complete, larger vision than any of the other cloud players (MS and Apple) right now. I don't find Google and their data collection creepy, I find it empowering. Google Now in particular has caught my attention in a big, big way - it's closer to how I envision computing should work going forward than anything anyone else is espousing.

Office 365 strikes me as more of the same old (but a great fit for many, don't get me wrong!), and junk like iCloud (Apple has not a clue), and even tools like Dropbox feel primordial compared to where Google is aiming (although I continue to subscribe to Dropbox for now - it's still best of breed for that one piece of the puzzle).

Platform agnosticism might be becoming a bigger deal for me too. I'm not yet using Android anywhere; you can pry my iPad out of my cold dead hands, but Google seems intent on delivering a comprehensive and rich ecosystem on the iOS platform right now, so I'm happy to load the iPad up with their apps.

[RedMileDJ]

Nm

[Azure]

I agree that Office 365 is more of the same old. Even having access to 'cloud' versions of Word, Excel....our users don't really like it. But as far as just doing Exchange, they do it well, they do it with great support, and they do it for a great price.

Can't ask for more.

But in terms of going beyond that, Google Apps seems pretty well suited.

[Azure]

As far as DropBox is concerned, we use it to sync files from our office to our showroom, and it works well enough, but if you are a business and are willing to pay for more features, Box seems well suited.

And I say that someone who was highly annoyed at Box as a consumer product aimed at individuals. Dropbox is much better in that regard.