Google recently announced the launch of Team Edition of their Google Apps, aimed at increasing the collaboration at work. This application allows the people within the same domain to collaborate & securely share the documents over the web without any dependency on the IT support team. The ‘Team Edition’ includes core communication & collaboration services like Start Page, Google Docs, Calendar & Gtalk. Unlike the other edition, this edition doesn’t not include Gmail which might have otherwise required the intervention of IT Team. Google is said to be looking at the possibilities of including Gmail with Team Edition.
‘Collaboration at work’ is what makes this application unique from the earlier editions of Google Apps like Standard & Premier. After logging in, users can search for other users using the Application & they can be invited to share their documents. This seems to be one of the first major social networking feature that has been incorporated in this new edition of Google Apps. It also gives an indication about the future road map of Google Apps. They may consider adding more social networking features in the later releases of this application.
The following 2 minutes video can be useful for understanding some of the basic features of ‘Google Apps Team Edition’.
The ‘Team edition’ can be very useful for startups & small sized organizations that may not be willing to spend more money on IT support. Also, there will be an option for organizations for upgrading the Team Edition to other editions like Premier which currently costs about US$50/person/year.
Now the question, whether it can become the killer application for the traditional desktop Microsoft Office Tools? I think except time no body might be in a position to give a proper answer for this question at this point of time.
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Google Applications are impressive. Though I am not a tech savvy, but things are changing very fast.