Law Students

Why? Because of anywhere/anytime/any device(soon) access to all the necessary basic computing infrastructure that any small to medium size business might need! All the e-Bilities are in place: scalability, reliability & availability. In addition, the apps are highly functional today and are only going to get better as they mature.

The new Google Sites wiki functionality (now part of Google Apps) is amazingly easy to use (i.e. all wsywig). But, what has so far been under reported is that you get Google search functionality as a "built in" part of the deal. Sure, this feature is an obvious one to include, BUT the implications of having world class search functionality as part of your organization's Intranet are more powerful than I anticipated, and I "geek on this stuff."

For example, a law firm could track all matter documents (PDF or otherwise) in one centralized location and have all them "searchable" after a few clicks. Simply create a new site (in minutes) for each matter and you have the "foundational building blocks" for a world class document management system. All of this at a cost of $50/user per year. To say that this is an amazing value is an understatement!

Worried about security? Who isn't? But do you really think that your documents are more secure in that server room down the hall? Just ask 2/3 of the lawyers in New Orleans whether or not they think that is true. When is the last time you verified that your nightly backups were working up to snuff? What would happen if all of a sudden you needed to add three new offices nationwide?

It's the architecture that matters and the "cloud" is unlike anything that has come before it. It looks like it is a two vendor race and if anyone doubts that Google will be a serious competitor in this space (for businesses of ALL sizes) then they simply do NOT get it!