Lately I've been talking with a few companies that made the switch to Google Apps from Microsoft products within the last two years. Maintaining licenses for Office as well as Exchange systems was not only increasing the need for multiple inside techs, it wasn't a great solution any longer with a mobile sales force and work-from-home employees. Software updates were painful. Older machines couldn't handle the load. I'm helping them use Google+ for corporate communications. Enter Google+ 'Enterprise'.
This is the first article I've seen talk about how Google+ is a solid, viable solution and toolset for companies to have an internal social and digital publishing platform. We used to call them intranets <grin>. Working with Google+ INSIDE a company (or EDU… let's not forget they get Google Apps for free) is probably the MOST exciting use of the platform I can think of.
Now, thinking you can use Google+ inside a company the same way as you do on the outside is a huge mistake. The ecosystem is drastically different. Wow, I suppose all those years I spent on the inside of companies building structures just like this might actually come back in handy!
Process and work flow.
Project management.
Product management.
Document management.
Calendar and schedule management.
Training.
Think about that. A web browser and an Internet connection – inside the 'building' or outside – is all you need to fully communicate and organize within a company.
I fully expect a large number of EDUs to be fully using Google+ / Google Apps this fall when school starts again to manage, organize and support faculty and students across campuses. (I have been working with a few.)
Companies and corporations cannot be far behind. Trust me when I say when this catches on internally – minds will be blown.
EDIT: Related Google+ Business / Enterprise links:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/08/bringing-google-to-work.html
http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/landing/plus/index.html
Embedded Link
Google+ Gets Down To Business — InformationWeek
Google rolls out several new Google+ features, eyes launch of a distinct Google+ enterprise service by 2014.
Google+: Reshared 10 times
Google+: View post on Google+
Google apps, certainly, I've seen that. G+? If it's walled off within the GA I suppose, but I have not seen it do that…
Great move by Google! I can see that making sense in the enterprise!
It's walled off inside of GA. I've worked with companies that signed up for GA last fall just so they could do Hangouts internally, but now they are realizing how many functions they can actually host in G+E (Google+ Enterprise)
Nice. Once people (that includes corporations, my friends) 😉 realize that life will be better if they surrender themselves to the Google, things will be much more fluid. I am helping someone look for a new career right now and I'm currently teaching them as much as I know about Google Docs/Drive.
OK, that makes more sense. Interesting…
Especially since at some point GA became indistinguishable from Google for purposes of logging in (I used to get around multiple logins via GA but that went away two years ago) — I assumed a G+ profile would go out into the wild as well.
I think the idea of G+ for employees is brilliant. I remember about 10 years ago that some corporations were all about internal instant messaging. But still most poo-pooed it because they thought that their employees would waste time on it (instead they just wasted more time to talk about Friends at the water-cooler). For savvy and efficient companies I think have a G+ work network would really streamline communications and make sharing a THOUSAND times easier than most companies are experiencing right now. People are still faxing aren't they….ugh. #corporateefficiency
+Justin Throngard Yammer (a Twitter-like internal messaging platform) took off well enough although I never quite understood the need for short-form messages in a corporate environment. Google Wave would have worked almost in the same capacity as Yammer, but was much more complicated (before it's time and too much of a learning curve for everyday corporate communications).
The thing about Google+ is that most people are looking so short-term on the uses. Internet culture sometimes can't think past what a tool does right now or in the next release. What Google+ is now is only the tip of the iceberg, Google (I'm taking an educated guess here) has a pretty extensive roadmap going here with G+ that projects for years.
+Lynette Young Yammer has been a huge success with the employees at the company where I work. Users are very active and engaged and it's helped reduce email load. I've found it useful for connecting across silos of activity and get connected to business groups I otherwise would never had talked to.
The company evaluated Google Apps services for enterprise but for a host of regulatory and security reasons could not move forward at the time.
I'm happy to see this coming to Google Apps. As a long time Google Apps user ( Google Apps Authorized Reseller :http://apps.khurt.com/ ) I was upset that the initial Google+ offering did not have this and I was forced to build my Google+ identity under my personal Gmail account.
+Lynette Young & +Khürt Williams Totally agree with you guys. Yammer was awesome. I was forced to use Trillian in my day. The obvious reason is that the company I worked for was diehard MSN users. We all had @msn.com email accounts. I should say that this was Idaho in 2002. Pretty cutting edge for a non-tech company. But some of our other customers were using AOL.. Some were using Yahoo. Our problems wasn't just the internal communication, it was external as well.
I think that G+ as an enterprise platform is great for this reason. A lot of corporate email is managed by +Gmail, alot of corporate documents are managed by +Google docs, and now those corporations can seamlessly begin communicating live online with their clients through +Google+, while sharing docs, while saving contacts in Gmail, while having all those pieces together on all their devices.
It's a really bright time for corporations and enterprises that have communication inefficiencies. And I'm not a bandwagonner. I usually think certain tech avenues and buzz trends only apply to a select few of us on the profitability spectrum (I should patent that), but G+ is the jam.
Best part is….we have no idea what it is! Or what it is going to be in five years. But we have to not only rely on Google to market it and make it successful. We as users must also do the marketing and the QA to make it successful.
End ramble here
"A lot of corporate email is managed by +Gmail, alot of corporate documents are managed by +Google docs, and now those corporations can seamlessly begin communicating live online with their clients through +Google+, while sharing docs, while saving contacts in Gmail, while having all those pieces together on all their devices. "
This is precisely why I was excited by Google+ and hangouts. To me, Google+ is the future of online collaboration. Google has the hooks into all the pieces. However, their execution sometimes leaves me feeling used.
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