Google in The "Clouds"

Link to us: http://sn.im/googlecc

Being one of the major leading organizations in the field of cloud computing, Google offers cloud services through Google Apps. Google Apps is a general term referring to Google’s web-based applications. Certain Google Apps requires users to pay an amount of fees before users can user the function, whereas some are available for free. Until now, Google and Microsoft are leading cloud computing service providers that are competing to monopolize the cloud computing market. Thus, the applications’ overall features are somewhat similar to one another but with different names. Here is the list of Google Apps, their functions and the equivalent application in Microsoft:

Gmail - Gmail is an e-mail service that has a storage capacity of 25GB with spam filter and enhanced e-mail security features. Works just like Windows Live Hotmail.

Google Calendar - Allows users to mark, and manage eventful dates through an online calendar.

Google Docs - Allows users to create documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations online. It is the Google version of Microsoft Office.

Google Groups – Allows users to categorize contacts into groups for mailing lists, easy content sharing and for easy searching. Users can manage contacts according to different categories such as Family, Friends, Colleagues and others.

Google Sites – Allows users to create secured and coding-free web pages for intranets and team manageable sites. This eases most users because users don’t have to learn coding.

Google Video - Provides private and secured video sharing functions. Users can share videos online

Here are some of the other Google Apps applications: http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/#utm_medium=et&utm_source=catch_all

There are also different editions of Google Apps, which are for premier, education, standard and others. The standard version of Google Apps is available for the public for free. Many features are not available in this edition. The applications available for this edition includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Google Docs. The user accounts allowed per organization is also limited to maximum 50 users. The setbacks makes it unsuitable for bigger organizations.

Google Apps for Business also known as the Premier Edition offers better, powerful, office tools to ease business uses. It maximizes in business tools and is suitable for business of any sizes including big organizations The business edition requires a monthly payment before companies can use the applications. However, it enables many functions that are limited in the standard edition. Other than the full package of Google Apps, it also includes customer support services.

Next, Google Apps for Education provides email and collaboration tools to help students and lecturers. It focuses mainly on collaboration and communication applications such as email, integrated video chat, shared document, and easy customization to fit in the school's systems. It is provided for free and also is advertisement free (ad-free).

All these applications are run on the service provider’s servers, the ‘cloud’. Users can just run these applications in web browsers without downloading any files.Most of us have heard or used these services before. There are also other less popular cloud services provided by smaller organizations. However, the services might have as much features as cloud services provided by major cloud service providers. Are you a Google cloud service user or a Microsoft cloud service user or both?

Reference:

Internet Reference:

Google Apps: Google Apps,

Retrieved on September 2010.

URL: http://www.google.com/apps/

Google Apps for Business: Google Apps,

Retrieved on September 2010.

URL: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-sg/business/

Google Apps Standard Edition: Google Apps, Retrieved on September 2010.

URL:http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-sg/group/index.html