AAPT deploys Gmail for corporate email

By Ry Crozier on Jul 13, 2010 1:48 PM
Filed under Software

Phase two of Google Apps migration.

AAPT has migrated its 1200 users from Outlook to Google's Gmail.

The telco's chief operations officer David Yuile (pictured) told iTnews the switch was completed yesterday following a two-month trial involving 250 users.

"We migrated all the mail [to Gmail] over the weekend," Yuile said.

Users' mailbox capacities increased from 200 MB to 25 GB, resulting in many uploading years of email archives to Gmail overnight.

And they now have access to the Google Talk instant-messaging application and had already started "point-to-point video chats" and collaborating using the new tools, Yuile said.

Yuile said AAPT had bought more features from Google that enabled 10 years of archives for emails and threads: trails of conversations.

"As a corporate, we felt that was appropriate," he said.

Yuile said that AAPT would switch off its part of a Microsoft Exchange outsourced contract provided to the Telecom NZ group by EDS (now HP Enterprise Services).

"We're shutting down our mailboxes and moving them off [that service]."

The trial informed AAPT of the questions users would ask and how they reacted to the migration.

Although there were "one or two things people miss [in Outlook]... I think within a week they'll have forgotten" as they got used to Gmail and started using the new capabilities of the system, he said.

The move to Gmail is phase two of AAPT's migration to Google's cloud, or hosted, services.

It deployed Google Video and Google Sites late last year.

"I'm really pleased we did this," Yuile said of the Gmail migration.

"I'm excited about what people will do with this now."

7 comments in this discussion

"Ace makes a valid point in relation to recent blunders major corporations had made and credit to all the posters above for sensible on topic posts. My question is: Wouldn't these 1200 corporate ..."

By realitybites

Tags

cloud, hosted service, aapt, gmail, corporate, email, exchange, outlook, microsoft, video chat, yuile, user testing

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Comments: 7

hashkent Jul 13, 2010 4:00 PM	While yes this will save AAPT money, I wonder if this is really a good thing for the telco overall. Can you really trust Google with your CEO's mail? Sounds to me like their Exchange solution was under speced if users only got 200Mb mail boxes too... Sounds like a bad plan to me, but I understand the commercial reasons behind it.
PGS Jul 13, 2010 4:12 PM	The email is awkward to use, the main complaints I've heard though are "no preview pane" & it's not intuitive. My personal concern is a few lines from the T&C for GMail (which may not apply to the business version - not sure) about Google having the right to scan your email & send you ads (spam) based on your email's content. That alone stops me using GMail. Would I trust Google with easy access to so much potentially confidential email? NO CHANCE.
asj Jul 13, 2010 5:34 PM	AAPT should be applauded for pushing the envelope of corporate adoption of Gmail in this country (if for no other reason than we all get to see how it goes). However, the comment with regard to "..resulting in many uploading years of email archives to Gmail overnight" is perplexing. Gmail does not fulfill any of the compliance requirements of an email archive that AAPT would require -- and any other solution for email archive would surely be accessible to their users (without having to upload mail to Gmail - where it can then be easily deleted). Odd. Andrew Johnson, Manage Protect www.manageprotect.com
rycrozier Jul 13, 2010 5:43 PM	@asj - Users had a small-ish mailbox before. Now they have a large one they're basically taking all the emails they personally archived over the years and putting them back in one place so they can search them easily.
abaxter Jul 14, 2010 9:50 AM	The premier edition of Google Apps does not contain advertising. However, it's worth noting that the way we serve targeted ads in Gmail is via software that simply scans emails and then serves up adverts relevant to words that people have typed. It's very similar to anti-virus software, and there are no people involved! You can find out more information here. http://mail.google.com/mail/help/about_privacy.html#targeted_ads Annie Baxter, Google Australia
Ace Jul 15, 2010 10:22 AM	I haven't read Googles fine print, but given their recent snooping activities, you have to wonder if they can resist snooping on peoples email. What protection is there that would stop some employee snooping on email? Certainly we see that US defence could not secure video from a helicopter that ended up on Wikileaks. Google couldn't stop employees writing code that sucked up data from private WLANs. Maybe I'm a little cynical, but it seems to me that if you hand over you email to a third party, then you should expect commercial secrets or other info to end up in the public, either by accident or maliciously. It is surely something you have to factor in.
realitybites Jul 15, 2010 12:41 PM	Ace makes a valid point in relation to recent blunders major corporations had made and credit to all the posters above for sensible on topic posts. My question is: Wouldn't these 1200 corporate mailboxes also contain AAPT's customers private/personal data as well ? If so then I hope AAPT (for their sake) has crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's from a privacy perspective on behalf of their customers.