A demolition company saved itself from disaster when
staff switched toGoogle
Appsfollowing a fire that destroyed the
firm's IT facilities.
The Erith Group specialises
in demolition, asbestos removal, remediation, waste recycling and
haulage for the construction industry. IT manager Paul Driscoll ran
an in-house IT operation that served the firm's 200 staff.
In September 2006 Driscoll read an internet news article about
the US launch of Google Apps Premier Edition, a software suite that
includes e-mail, calendar, documents and instant messaging for
businesses, which uses the IT infrastructure that hosts Google's
search engine.
Driscoll decided to test it for the Erith Group when Google
launched it in the UK. During the trial, a fire left many of the
staff without e-mail or computers. Fortunately a few had already
signed up for the Google Apps trial and had already switched over
to Google Mail. They were able to start work the next day as they
could get their e-mail on any computer with an internet connection.
Crucially no one lost any of their data.
The incident convinced the doubters to switch, and the product
was fully implemented in September 2007. Since then staff have been
able to access their work remotely and to use the collaboration
features, which means everyone is always working on the latest
version of a document.
The switch has also saved money. Erith now pays only £27 per
account per year, and its e-mail storage capacity increased
dramatically for free.