Here at Good Data we use the premier edition of Google Apps and we get email, calendar, IM, docs and spreadsheets for $50 / user / year. The quality and availability of this software as a service is very good and after being a subject of a large company’s crappy rigid IT infrastructure this is a very refreshing experience.
The problem starts when I use Google applications that are NOT provided as part of Google Apps – such as Blogger, Reader, iGoogle or private Gmail. Since Google tries to “personalize my Google experience” it will sign me off automatically from my Good Data account and sign me into my private account with everything that comes with it: private email, files and calendar. Going back to business calendar requires signing back into the business account. Checking blogs will take me back to the private account. And so on and so on…
At one point I got so tired from this “virtual hide and seek” that I decided to use two different browsers – Safari and Firefox – to keep my two work contexts completely isolated. At the same time I hope that Google will work on the account management – it’s the only part of Google Apps that I am not happy with.
