Music distributor Kudos Records tested Google Apps after problems with ISP-hosted email resulted in the loss of information in spring 2006.

Danny Ryan, managing director of Kudos Records, says the company now uses Google Apps – ­ which features several web-based applications, including Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs ­ – because it is robust and reliable.

“As a music distribution company, our business is customer oriented and we are customer facing on both sides, providing a distribution service to record labels and selling to retailers ­ – so reliable communication is essential,” he says.

“We need to be always available and people from all over the world tend to want answers immediately about things such as sales figures, so we always need access to email.

“After losing emails following a spate of web hosts going bust, which was a real pain, we decided to separate hosting from our email provision and Google suited our needs with a robust service that includes post office protocol (POP) access.”

POP access to emails allows Kudos employees to download messages from Gmail servers onto PCs. Emails can then be read through an application such as Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Mail, without the user having to connect to the internet.

However, Ryan favours the free and open-source client Mozilla Thunderbird.

“We could buy extra Google Apps storage if the need ever arises, but we can also download everything via POP access and archive it if we run out of storage,” he says.

“And I like using the Thunderbird email client because it is open source, which means people keep developing and refining it.”

Apart from the no-cost benefit, Ryan says Google Apps has also changed the way employees work.

“With emails, calendars, spreadsheets and documents all accessible outside the office, we are able to work on the move with a package that is quick, simple and easy to use,” he says.

“The Google Calendar is powerful and simple to use and I like the spreadsheet in Google Docs.”

Ryan is hoping that Google will eventually develop the contact section of Gmail.

“It is the quiet thing in the corner and could be developed and used for contact management. For example, you could share a contacts list with everyone on the domain or integrate it with Google Docs for a mail merge,” he says. “It would be a logical progression to make groupware more productive.”