CIOs Talk Google Apps Migration

Chief information officers heard first-hand accounts from their colleagues about moving to Google Apps at a recent roundtable, with New Zealand Postal Services, AAPT and Mortgage Choice all migrating to the cloud applications.

Slideshow: 10 Great Google Apps Add-Ons for the Enterprise

NZ Postal Services is among the organisations that has made the move to Google Apps. The organisation undertook the project to introduce innovation into the 160-year old business, said general manager for business enabling, Tracy Voice.

"We're always transforming," she explained. "From an IT perspective, we were focussing on how to get commodity costs down and how we address consumer demands. The key thing was around achieving collaboration, productivity and some hype about the way in which we communicate. I was right up against the next release of Microsoft Exchange and Google Apps felt right for the business."

NZ Post had about 12 months before the company had to make an upgrade decision on Microsoft Exchange. The addition of messaging which Google Apps provided was a drawcard. The integration is interesting because the organisation worked with three third party providers-- an outsourcing provider, an application builder and a specialist.

"There were a number of us around the table who needed to work with Google to prove that [the concept] worked before we went to the business," she said. The key was having the capability on the ground in New Zealand in terms of expertise, security and integration. In fact, Voice said, the work involved in building the proof of concept was fairly minimal.

The shift in technology also required a culture shift within the organisation. But it also tied in with the idea of technology enabling the business, rather than being a discrete division within the organisations.

"There's a level of trust from the business that you're able to make those decisions on their behalf," Voice said.

For Neill Rose-Innes, chief information officer at Mortgage Choice, the pending organisational upgrade to Lotus Notes 8.5 and the subsequent hardware upgrade provided an opportunity to look at different technologies.

"We have 1000-plus users and 90 per cent of those users are remote to our office," he said.

The organisation had evaluated Google Apps 12 months ago but deemed it too immature at the time.

"So we stopped and put in a strategy to move to web based tools. Six months later, we thought it was mature enough. We went through the pilot process and, in two weeks, we will be rolling out it to all users."

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