Good — no, great — news for Google Apps users: Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook enables Outlook users to synchronize their e-mail, contacts, and calendars with (you guessed it) Google Apps. That means it has the potential to replace pricey Exchange in your cash-strapped organization.
There’s more to tell, but why not watch this informative video first:
Not too shabby, eh? To recap, Google Apps Sync’s key features include:
- E-mail, calendar, and contacts synchronization. For e-mail, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which Google says is much faster than IMAP or other methods.
- Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook’s calendar or Google Calendar.
- A simple, two-click data migration tool that allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.
Keep in mind that Google Apps Sync is expressly for Google Apps Premier and Google Apps Education users. In other words, it’s an enterprise product.
Non-enterprise users can deploy Google Calendar Sync to keep Outlook and GCal in tune and gSyncit for contact syncing. As for e-mail, look no further than Gmail IMAP if you want seamless integration between Gmail and Outlook. [via Official Google Enterprise Blog]
