Page 2 of 2But the smartest thing the administration team at 22squared did, Seybolt said, was to recruit some thirty employees to become advocates for Google Apps on the floor, providing the first line of support and guidance for employees who may have been using Lotus Notes for a decade or more. Seybolt credits "Creating Contagious Commitment," a management book given to him by 22squared's resident corporate coach, with the idea.
The result: When IT flipped the switch over Thanksgiving weekend and Google Apps officially went live, there was a comfortable buffer of users helping coworkers and colleagues get up to speed. Google Apps went from sounding like an abstract IT initiative to something that employees could get really enthusiastic about.
This core group was mainly recruited from the company's base of power users. But Seybolt says that many of the loudest Google Apps advocates in the company started as opponents to the migration. Rather than ignore the folks who were grumpy about having to learn a new e-mail system, Seybolt says they got much better results by pulling them aside and making it as clear as possible what exactly the new platform could do for them. These former obstacles instead became assets, engendering huge amounts of goodwill for the platform.
Nowadays, Seybolt says that he still keeps his IMAP server on for the one or two holdouts who are still using the Mac OSX-native Mail.app to get their messages, but the vast majority of the company is accessing Google Apps in the browser for their mail, contacts, calendars and more.
"Using Mail.app with Gmail is like going to the ocean and sitting in a kiddie pool," Seybolt says.
For Google Apps management, 22squared is taking advantage of the popular BetterCloud FlashPanel, an interface for simply and easily administrating accounts. Provisioning and deprovisioning users is a snap, even in bulk, Seybolt says, when FlashPanel enables hierarchical permissions and other group features. BetterCloud even helps Seybolt create and maintain a workflow for making sure that any deprovisioned account is properly cleaned up after, suggesting steps to ensure that nothing of value to the company is lost when a user leaves the company.
There's a recurring theme in these Google Apps migration stories: Microsoft seems to have lost its command when it comes to the midmarket, while Google Apps (and others) are comfortably carving out their niche. Despite the relatively low price tag, the newly refreshed Microsoft Office 365 has its work cut out for it when it comes to making a sales pitch to a market segment that's already learned that there's life outside Redmond.
Orignally written by Matt Weinberger at http://www.citeworld.com/cloud/21362/google-apps-enemies-advocates-ditched-lotus-notes?page=0
How this IT department turned Google Apps enemies into advocates - Page 2
