Ditching Microsoft: Why one Seattle company chose Google instead

Seattle-based Allrecipes.com has transitioned its entire company from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.

Seattle-based online recipe company Allrecipes.com might be located in Microsoft?s backyard, but its director of IT does not feel the least bit guilty about switching his company from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.

David Gendel heads up IT for the 225-person company, which, like many modern companies, has employees working on a variety of platforms and devices, from Apple desktops to Android smartphones. And, with a large development team at Allrecipes, Gendel needs to consider that employees are working on different operating systems: Windows, OSX and Linux.

Gendel said that when he started meeting with department heads to discuss a potential shift from Microsoft Exchange to another platform, everyone said they wanted whatever system would work best across a variety of devices.

Allrecipes isn?t the first company whose IT department?s decisions were influenced by employees? desire to use their own devices at work. According to a 2011 IDC study, employees using personal PCs and smartphones to access business applications increased from 31 percent in 2010 to 41 percent in 2011.

Gendel said the decision to switch to Google Apps last year was relatively easy. It was after the decision was made that things started getting challenging.

?The hardest part was looking at the ways we used mail and mailboxes, and getting those migrated properly,? Gendel said.

For example, Allrecipes has a variety of shared mailboxes that multiple people monitor. Google, he said, offered several options to handle that, so employees had to try them out to see what worked best.

During transition from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps, which took several months, Gendel said his team focused on communication and training.

Emily Parkhurst covers the technology industry for the Puget Sound Business Journal/TechFlash.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bizj_seattle/~3/mPCfMcR6VMA/watch-out-microsoft-ditching-exchange.html

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