Google For Work
Free DownloadLast September, Google Enterprise became Google for Work. Google for Work includes several applications optimized for business collaboration. Google promotes its solutions as a means to a “digital workplace,” with a strong focus on collaboration. The suite is designed as a cloud service and offers strong capabilities for mobility. Google Apps for Work is a core product suite, which includes collaboration applications as well as real-time communications from Google Hangouts.
UC technologies generally refers to six broad categories: conferencing, IM/presence, messaging, clients/endpoints, telephony, and extensibility (APIs). Google provides all of these – well almost. Google does offer PSTN services, but lacks enterprise voice capabilities. It should be noted that UC solutions from both IBM and Microsoft initially exclusively relied on third-party telephony solutions.
Google for Work’s enterprise services offer powerful solutions for collaboration. Google’s services have been hugely successful with small, medium, and large businesses, as well as within the education and government sectors. Google reports that 5 million businesses use Google Apps, including 64 percent of the Fortune 500.
This report examines Google For Work services from a UC perspective and matches products to like products at Microsoft.
Originally published December 2014.
6 Pages.
By Dave Michels
Dave is an independent analyst and founder of TalkingPointz which is focused on enterprise communications. In addition to this (free and paid) content on TalkingPointz, he contributes to industry sites, can be found at major industry events, and provides advisory services to vendors and financial analysts.