Posts Tagged Postini

Got Google? On-Ramp service for Google Apps offered at no cost!

Posted by Kevin Lalor in GoogleApps & Postini on October 24th, 2011

With the purchase of Google Apps in October and November, Bi101 will provide On-Ramp service at a $600 discount*.

Are you ready to go Google? Seems like everyone is going Google around us – the Business Times just reported that in Silicon Valley 97% of startups within the last two years are running on Google Apps. There are tons of cities booming with startups and other small and medium-sized businesses, and they all have one thing in common: they are benefiting from taking a 100% web approach. Google Apps allows you to focus on your business, not your IT.

This rapid adoption could be partly because Google Apps are allowing you to be productive anywhere, anytime. Flexibility is key as more companies need to do work on the go – while at the airport, in a coffee shop or at a hotel using a public wireless network. The great thing about Google Apps is that it protects your data by establishing an encrypted connection while you work. Without it, an unauthorized person could hack into your session and obtain access to your account.

Using an Internet standard known as HTTPS, Google will encrypt your data as it travels from your browser to their servers. This makes it much harder for an impostor to access your account. Google has supported encrypted connections from the day Google Apps launched over five years ago, and they made it the default setting for all users at the beginning of last year.

Bi101′s On-Ramp implementation Offer ($600 value)

Best practices, strategic advice and hands off implementation help. Up to 5 hours of consulting to be delivered over 5 weeks.

• Help with creating users

• Guidance in setting up dual delivery.

• Recommendation on migration strategy and method.

• Best practices on transition logistics.

Our consultants at Bi101 are committed to full service On-Ramp of your Google Apps purchase so you are set-up without disruption or distraction. We’re offering this service at no cost in October and November if you sign up for Google Apps with a minimum of 50 users by November 30th. This is just another way we are working hard to deliver our customers that best service and products available today.

Kevin Lalor
President & Founder

cloud computing, Google Apps, Postini, SaaS

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Cloud Computing Continues to Grow in the Enterprise

Posted by Kevin Lalor in Cloud Technology News on March 1st, 2010

Recently Gartner announced that worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue is forecast to reach $7.5 billion in 2009, a 17.7 percent increase from 2008 revenue of $6.4 billion.

The cloud computing market continues to evolve, with more vendors creating cloud computing offerings and more companies becoming comfortable moving to the cloud.

Bi101 deploys cloud apps to both the enterprise and small business. From our experience, two computing areas are driving both groups to the cloud: content, communications and collaboration (CCC) and customer relationship management (CRM). Garner confirms that these two areas are driving the transition to cloud computing within the enterprise:

Worldwide Software Revenue for SaaS Delivery Within the Enterprise Application Software Markets (Millions of Dollars)

	2009	2008
Content, Communications and Collaboration (CCC)	2,573	2,143
Office Suites	68	56
Digital Content Creation (DCC)	62	44
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)	2,281	1,872
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)	1,239	1,176
Supply Chain Management (SCM)	826	710
Other Application Software	472	387
Total Enterprise Software	7,521	6,388

Source: Gartner (November 2009)

What’s interesting about this cloud computing evolution is a single SaaS offering’s ability to provide the same impact to both the enterprise and small business. Rarely have we seen this in software markets of the past; the enterprise and SMBs have typically required vastly different offerings, in terms of complexity and scale. And it was rare that a single vendor could deliver both. Now, the same version of Google’s Postini can serve 15 users or 1,000 users equally well.

Cloud Computing Value Differences

The drivers of the shift to the cloud are different though. From what we’ve experienced, enterprises are switching to offerings like Google’s Postini for email security and encryption and Google Apps for collaboration to lower IT costs. Enterprises typically have the sophistication and resources to have in-house solutions already in place. Cloud apps simply deliver the same functionality at lower costs, allowing companies to move from expensive legacy solutions like Microsoft’s Sharepoint to SaaS offerings.

For smaller businesses, the main drivers of cloud applications are increased productivity, security and reliability. Small companies typically don’t have a sophisticated WAN or LAN already in place to provide remote access for collaboration and data sharing, so cloud computing expands their computing power at a very reasonable price.

Gartner predicts that SaaS revenue will continue to increase in the enterprise application markets through 2013. It will be interesting to compare these growth rates to the SMB market growth rates, and to see which segment provides a greater overall impact to the economy.

My bet now is that cloud computing will have a greater economic impact in the SMB market, allowing small companies to dramatically increase productivity to contribute more jobs to the economy.