Wright PC Consulting, LLC

Some of my clients are not for profit organizations. These clients often have unique and specialized needs and often operate on shoestring budgets and with very small staffs.

As a contracted IT consultant, these organizations often are looking for me to provide solid, easy to use and cheap solutions. Recently I have begun in earnest recommending Google Apps for email, calendaring, collaboration and communication. The Google Apps suite offers easy tools for free. For non profit organizations, Google even offers a free upgrade to the Education Edition for those organizations that qualify.

Here is a very short overview of the steps that I usually take to get my clients up and running in no time:

1. Register the organization’s domain at an ICANN certified registrar (if they don’t already have one)
2. Register the organization for a free Google Apps Education Edition account
3. Setup email accounts within Google Apps and distribute usernames and passwords to organization’s staff
4. Create/edit domain MX records for Google Apps
5. After DNS propagation, test the administrator email account
6. Notify staff the they may begin using their new accounts

I’ve been using Google Apps for nearly a year. In that time I have had no client reports of missing mail, lost documents or issues logging into their accounts. So, while Google Apps may not meet everyone’s needs, It may just be the solution for smaller organizations that need enterprise level solutions at little or no cost.

Nearly everyone has used one. They provide billions of search results, deliver millions of email messages and even stores your documents. However, if you are like most surfers, you have not even given a second thought to where they are. I am of course talking about Google data centers.

It is no secret that Google has rapidly become more than just a search tool. Over the last few years they have also quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, been working toward offering you their software and storing your data on their servers. But, joining the SaaS game requires lots and lots of space. Most have read about the data center wars between Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google. However, not much has been said about where Google current data centers called home–until now.

Using publicly available information user, Pingdom, at Wayfaring has mapped the location of many Google data centers world wide. By clicking on the map above you too can satisfy your geek curiosity and not only locate your nearest Google farm, but you can also view the buildings using Google maps satellite view.

While this knowledge will not help you the next time you google a Linux command or locate car repair shop or create and store a Google Apps document, it does score pretty high on the Geek ‘o meter.

In my post a few months ago I discussed the online backup solution that I recommend to my clients, Mozy. EMC, Mozy’s parent company has recently introduced their enterprise level solution, Mozy Enterprise for those organizations with enterprise level needs.

While I’ve not tried it nor do any of my clients use it, the features look promising. It appears that with the enterprise solution that you get all the features of MozyPro as well as assisted and auto activation for enterprise deployment.

For more information you can download the data sheet, view the comparison chart or read an analyst report from Pund-IT, Inc. Based on my great experiences with Mozy over the past year, I’d have no problem recommending this solution to anyone.