It may not surprise you to hear that Google is officially listed in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, considering the popularity of their search engine and the fact that their technology is integrated into products we personally use every day, such as TVs, phones, and computers. However, many businesses also use Google products. One trend we are seeing, here at Advance, is a switch to Gmail in our client’s businesses.

Click here to see our current hardware options for your business… we’ve moved way beyond copiers!

Gmail for business offers 25 GB of storage per user, spam filtering, BlackBerry and Outlook interoperability, and can sync with Android, iPhone and BlackBerry for $50 per user account, per year. With its robust capabilities and low cost, it seems to be a good solution for small businesses who want to cut IT related costs or even free up employee time to focus on revenue generating tasks. However, I didn’t intend for this blog to be a commercial for Gmail.

Before your company considers making the leap to Gmail, don’t forget about the digital copier in your office that you may rely on to directly email paper documents as PDF, TIFF or JPEG files. Gmail requires the use of SSL over SMTP, and your machine, depending on its brand and age, might not have that ability. Simply put, SSL provides a higher level of data security, when communicating with the SMTP (mail) server, when compared to a standard protocol like POP3. If your machine does not have SSL over SMTP as a standard feature, there may be some work around methods that you can use, including the use of third party software and setting up an email relay. However, many of the current models offered at Advance do integrate properly with Gmail.  In fact, some can even integrate directly into Google Docs, but that is a blog for another day.