Google Apps

[Paul Jones]

I believe the Google Apps solution will resolve several issues we are currently experiencing. These are as follows:

Compatibility with Microsoft Office 2007 documents

Remote access to business applications

High cost of server maintenance (All Covered)

The links for the relevant information are below

www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html

Please give me your input so we do not move forward with an inefficient solution.

Kind Regards,

Paul Jones

[klpage]

I'm ok with Google apps in general. I'm curious to try our current powerpoint files in Google Docs presentation - I've gone the other way, but not from established powerpoint to google docs.

One application I haven't seen you mention, so I want to bring it up - mediashout. We currently use an older version of mediashout on the sanctuary computer. We need to keep it going and actually need to update it whenever there is any money for upgrading it.

What is the proposal for the current data stored on our server? I have lots of song lyric files, folders of background and special purpose graphics, and video clips on the desktop of the sanctuary computer. Is all that staying in place as is?

[dougdahlberg]

How are we going to address the learning curve/ training for the staff when we switch to these different products?

As part of the "selling" of this way of working we need to include an introduction program. Some sort of mini training session. Just to ease the staff thru the transition.

Just keep in mind changing the way the entire staff works is a big deal. Then again so is the amount of money we're saving. It needs to be handled in the best possible way. Humans resist change.

[chrisscheels]

i found on google apps site that it will sync email, calendars, and contacts with M$ Outlook! so this would lessen the transition to google apps for the users. and they would only have to learn the google docs. then later they can be migrated off outlook to save on future licensing costs.

I also found Google Gears where you can create offline copies of your documents locally in the case of an internet failure:
"Google Docs Offline will give you access to your documents when there is no internet connection.
This feature will download your docs onto this computer. Please make sure you are not using a public or shared computer.
You will need Gears for offline access, and the installer will restart your browser."

Successful Deployments for Small Businesses:
www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=67776

Contents

Notify your Users: Example email messages to notify your users of the coming transition to Google Apps

Sample FAQ: Top questions and answers to help your users (to put on your own Help Center site)

Welcome email: Example email message to send to users the day you make the transition to Google Apps

Training Materials: Links to guided training materials for administrators and for your users

Best Practice Tips: How individual users and groups of users can get the most out of Google Apps to improve productivity, communication, and collaboration

[Paul Jones]

All,

I will try to answer some of these questions to the best of my ability.

Kathy,

I will start another thread for the Media Shout question as it is a seperate project and will be budgeted for as funds come available and priority is given by Tom.

The current data will still be stored on the server and my vision is to eventually have the server be a data repository only. This will reduce maintenance concerns but will give us the data redundancy necessary for any disaster recovery initiatives we may need down the road.

Doug,

Excellent point. I am trying to "feel out" the potential resistance and so far everyone I have spoken to seems rather open to the idea of using Google. As a point of clarification I am certain you would agree that the move from Office 03 to 07 would be just as painful for them if not more so and as such I am have been able to overcome some objections. I am continuing the process by using Tom as my guinea pig in the up coming weeks and he has been kind enough to offer his services as the test case for this cut over.

The biggest issue we will have to overcome is the perception of the Power Church Online option as it is very different from ACS and some have voiced some concern regarding the cut over. To address this Tom and I have discussed moving forward with the Google solution and using ACS's SaaS option but there is an implementation fee and a higher monthly fee than what we pay now, to the tune of about $384/month. More to your point though I will need to spend a considerable amount of time to develop a training program for the Power Church Online solution.

Chris,

Thank you for that I think that is a helpful resource I will definitely be utilizing in the future.

Thanks again to everyone for their contributions.

Paul

[Paul Jones]

All,

A conversation Russ and I had follows:

Paul,

It looks like you have been doing your homework well.Here are a few thoughts.

1. On the MS licenses, I think that there are discounts available for churches or non-profits. I recall something about that from some work done previously. It may be that there are places that will donate the licenses or something if the earlier statment is not correct.

2. Would there be a benefit to keeping the server adn using it just as a DC and storage device? For that,it could run without support (for the most part).

3. Long term, it would be great to come up with a way to image the computers there. Maybe that would be a "next step" as time goes on. The goal in the education market is to make the workstations "data independent" so that wiping one out and tweaking it a little would save valuable service and down time.

Keep at it!

Russ



Russ,

I think you make some good points let me see if I can address them.

1. I am looking into the Microsoft Office solution now. However, Google Docs replaces the need to use MS Office products for only $50/user/year so it is difficult (even at a discount) for MS to beat that price point. I am not thinking to do away with Office 2003 only to give the users the capability to develop documents in a form compatible with Office 2007. Additionally, the real reason to make the switch is to move our email to the cloud. Google Docs is value added functionality to the Gmail for business app we are looking to move forward with. This is the only way to prevent the need for costly server maintenance it just happens to serve a broader need for us at this time.

2. I would like to keep the server but I need to understand better the security concerns we may still have if we do that. I would think with the email being hosted remotely we would not need to worry as much but I would not want us to be leaving ourselves open to attack. I would like to look into disabling the internet connectivity for the server while maintaining network connectivity to assuage some of my concerns regarding an server that is not regularly maintained.

3. I was thinking exactly that moving forward. The vision is to have the machines be nothing more that terminals that can access the web and backup necessary files so the business will truly be mobile, remote, scalable, and transferable if necessary.

As a heads up I will be posting this conversation on the forum so all can see our efforts to contribute.

Kind Regards,

[Paul Jones]

All,

Here is a conversation Chris and I had:

Paul,



I just figured out that you are our fearless leader on this endeavor J. Thank you for stepping up. I think I am out of the loop on all this. My email responses I sent directly to Tom thinking he was heading up the endeavor (I didn’t read thoroughly. I have missed any attempts to setup a meeting or a conference call or to organize the group. That may be due to the fact that emails were going to my wife’s email and not mine, but she forwarded most to me. I am not saying that SaaS is a bad decision at all but there are some areas that it doesn’t address. With implementation in one week, it sounds like a decision has already been made as to how McKendree’s IT will be handled. Please use the following email address for future reference ([e-mail]). As Principal Consultant for a national firm I specialized in SMB IT consulting with a focus on non-profits. I will check out the



Do you know what the IT budget is for 2010. When I served on the IT committee a few years back it was $14,000/yr. the unfortunate thing was that the infrastructure was so old it completely needed to be refreshed and took the majority of the budget and there was little left for maintenance and break fix and it was a problem. I like the SaaS model, but think we should discuss taking it to the next level even. There are HaaS services that are very appealing to SMB, where you don’t have to buy new wks and svrs every 3-4 years (an opex model vs a capex model). There are also a number of good companies out there that will provide outsourced helpdesk and user support for very reasonable prices. I can offer a conference bridge with web collab and desktop sharing if needed for a call or you can call me directly to chat some on my cell 770-653-6929.



I will check out the forum too.



Sincerely,

Chris Scheels


Chris,

I just gave you a ring and wanted to follow up with an email. First it is my pleasure to step up I should let you know that I am a contracted employee with the church (at a significantly reduced rate) and I will be the on ground, go to guy for any IT concerns in the future. I am only there twice a week, usually Tuesday and Friday afternoons. I am interested in your feedback as I am right on the cusp of pulling the trigger with this solution but if it needs to be postponed until we work out some more bugs I think we can do that without too much trouble.

The biggest concern for me is that we are currently paying All Covered $300/month to basically offer no service to us. Supposedly they maintain our server but before I got here they were sending out reports for months that stated they were unable to access the anti-virus control center and never made an effort to contact anyone here to resolve the issue. Not to mention a break/fix issue that arose in which they over charged us, we have since gotten the money back but it still shows the level of support they offer. When I met with the account representative he told me I did not know what I was talking about and that I would be making a mistake to get rid of their service. It was a less than cordial conversation.

The issue there is that before I get rid of them I want to make sure the email and other business critical applications are not hosted on the server. I have been researching staying with ACS, although their SaaS option is significantly more expensive than that of PowerChurch we have some user acceptance issues here that I am trying to work around. I still think the PowerChurch option can do everything that ACS can do but it is different and that is a frightening concept for some people to reconcile against the cost savings.

To answer your question I think the IT budget is $10000/year and the solution I am trying to implement will shave about $7000 a year off of that when you get rid of ACS and All Covered of course if we have to keep ACS the savings are only about $3000 per year.

I would like to get your input on the areas that the SaaS solution does not address as I am trying to pull all these disparate pieces together and make a sound decision before I negatively impact the church in any way. The HaaS option is one I have been thinking about but I am rather familiar with supporting end user terminals and if the church is already paying me for the service I should be able to handle most of those as they arise. However, I am interested in looking into the option, as if there is another organization who can do this for the church I would be remise if I did not at least weigh the options for Tom and come back with a sound economic plan.

As a heads up I will be posting this to the forum page so we can keep everyone in the loop on the contributions we have made to the effort and continue to drive healthy communication. I truly appreciate your input and look forward to speaking with you soon.

Kind Regards,

Since I posted this email I read some of the additional concerns Chris has surround the SaaS issue and I would like to attach an email that I received a few days ago from our IT contractor that has been tracking down some options for us.

Paul,

I priced out an upgrade to a 3meg circuit for McKendree. Right now the cost will be $895 a month. Cbeyond is suppose to be coming out with a data only upgrade that would take the cost down to $695 a month. That promotion has not been formally announced so I can't quote that price until it comes out.

I think the best option to look at if it is determined that the bandwidth needs to be increased is the option with the Clear product. I talked to James Wright with Executive IT (he is familiar with McKendree's network) and he said that the Cisco router that McKendree currently has can be upgraded to provide dual service capabilities. James estimated 3-4 hours @ $75 an hour to get the Cisco unit upgraded and working. McKendree would need to purchase Cisco smartnet for that unit and that runs around $18 a month or it can be done as a one time annual charge. The Clear service would be around $40 a month with equipment so that would be an increase to McKendree of around $55 to $60 a month. These prices are budgetary and would need to be finalized if that is the direction McKendree wants to go.

I'm thinking that their current bandwidth may work fine with the new service. They will be moving their email to the network and off loading all of the traffic that the email server was generating. It would be good to see if there are any current customers of this application that are running on a dynamic T1 service.

Let me know your thoughts,

Barry Rutherford
President
Rutherford Solutions LLC

[chrisscheels]

Sorry I missed your call. All Covered needs to hit the curb along with their $300/mo fees. We should get a copy of the contract to see exactly what they are doing for $300. I know they are 24x7 monitoring up to 3 devices (firewall, server and ?), they run through a “stupid” server checklist of items to check like a 20 point inspection, and also provide postini services (which is huge for users but google apps also includes this!).

I am interested in powerchurch as ACS seems to charge too much for small churches, especially for only the few “modules” the church uses. I think if we do a phased approach, and hold “education” or training seminars before each changeover we could handle the user acceptance better. I think all employees know the church’s financial challenges and should be more open. I have some furlough days coming up where I could schedule with some users at the church to really understand what they do and how they do it (esp with ACS), then we can map that to PowerChurch’s offering.

Lets compile a list of all of the areas we need to make sure are covered in the holistic IT plan to make sure we don’t miss anything that could fall through the cracks.

Special church apps: ACS, sound booth, music/choir app, ?
Standard data apps: Accounting (QuickBooks as a Service), Access?, others?, preschool app?, other database needs?, ?
Standard user apps: outlook (email), word, excel, PowerPoint, ?, publisher, adobe CS for newsletter/graphic design?
Server apps: enterprise AV/AS (Symantec, could migrate to AVG or Clam for free annual subscription), exchange, SharePoint, ?
Shared File storage
Personal file storage
Standardize WKS images (no local files to backup)
Backup
Email spam filtering
Server monitoring
Firewall monitoring
Proactive server maintenance and security patching
Proactive WKS maintenance and patching, defrags, delete temps
Firewall maintenance
Print services
Domain services (AD + Security)
Wireless
Help Desk, user support
Website, forum, blog hosting?
ISP
Telecom?
Upcoming hardware needs (WKS, SVR)
Printing costs (high inkjet cartridge costs vs. volume laser, toner, service contracts)
Licensing audit and needs (missing office 2003 licenses, office 2007 upgrade, windows 7,
Hardware auditing?
?
?
What am I missing?