1. Google has quite effective spam filtering in place and it’s really cut down on the junk mail we receive each day.
2. The free version of Google Apps allows about 7 gigabytes of online storage per mailbox. That means you can leave a copy of all your email on Google’s servers. In the event of your computer crashing or getting stolen, you can then re-download your Outlook inbox.
3. Rather than relying on a single server to be online (as is probably the case for you now) your email is stored in server farms. One single machine can crash but others take up the slack, reducing the likelihood of email downtime.

However – if you choose to upgrade to the Business Edition, you also get:

1. The ability to synchronise all your email, contacts and calendar between Outlook and your smartphone, instantly in the background over the internet. Very handy if you own an iPhone or similar.
2. Ugraded mailbox sizes (25 gigabytes per mailbox)
3. 99.9% uptime guarantee

Read more about the differences here: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

What are the disadvantages?

Your email is being pushed through Google’s mail servers. If you have the free version then there’s nobody you can call if you can’t access your email – although Google tend to know when their servers go down. It doesn’t happen often, but no system is perfect. (If you choose the pay for the business edition you are provided with a Google phone number for emegency support.)

We believe the 3 advantages listed above that come with the free version alone make the transition worthwhile.

If you use a smartphone, or use webmail often, then the syncronisation tool makes the Business Edition a very valuable upgrade.

We can set this up today and tomorrow you’ll be receiving your email via Google Apps – but from your perspective you can still use Outlook as you always have. Contact us if you’d like to know more!

Spam has skyrocketed over the last month. The Sydney Morning Herald reports an increase of 12% – and other sources quote up to a 70% increase!

Whichever way you look at it – it’s a lot of extra spam around globally at the moment. Spam filters are having to deal with a huge volume of extra mail and consuming a high proportion of server resources in the process.

From th SMH:

Technology market analyst IDC estimated in April that of the nearly 97 billion emails expected to be sent around the world each day … 40 billion would be spam messages.

Nobody likes the extra spam – but if faced with a choice it’s better to let some through rather then potentially delete legitimate email.

According to the article in the SMH a virus is the main trigger for the increase, so once that’s under control hopefully our email volumes can return to normal.

In the meantime:

1. Keep your Anti-virus software up to date.
2. Don’t click links in emails from people you don’t know.
3. If the email is from someone you know, but still looks suspicious – confirm that it’s actually from who it says before opening anything.