Our organization has used Google Apps for about four years. We were creating ‘rogue’ Sites, Docs, and more while not really having any unified strategy or philosophy for how we were going to support what was quickly becoming an unsustainable environment.
Fortunately, the partner teams and our IT teams really wanted the same thing – strategic implementation paired with the policies, support models, and IT integrations that would manage risk and help us continue to use Google Apps to gain even more value.
So how did we collaborate to set up a win-win-win situation?
When you have an in-house solution, like Lotus or Sharepoint, it doesn’t just stop working. You will spend millions of dollars on upgrades, licenses, and support, but to be fair, it won’t just stop working.
There are many reasons not to use Google Sites for your intranet. Maybe you have an intranet already, maybe you want (need?) java applications for some complicated business application and custom builds. Maybe you want lots and lots social features built right into the page. But maybe not. Maybe you want a flexible, easy to use, easy to share, content management system that is free (for many, cheap for all) and ready to use out of the box.