I am a Google Apps user by my business, family and personal collaboration. I urge you to consider Google apps a part of your next communication review...

Russ

I manage a few different web sites and have now converted most of them to use Google Apps for their email. Users that have a favorite POP/IMAP client, this is virtually unnoticeable to them. The bonus: all the spam is filtered by Google and never downloaded or seen by their client software. I have my personal domain email hosted here and have yet to have any real gripes with the service. The mail web interface can be customized with your own company logo, or you can keep the GMail logo. And 7+GB of storage per email account is amazing.

For the docs sharing, this is a great feature, although have only used it a couple of times so can't write an extensive review about it.

Anyone that has a domain or is signing up for a new domain should definitely also use Google Apps to host their email if nothing else.

-Jeff

use Google apps to run 60 email addresses, we have had this set up at our Christian organisation in Israel for 2 years now with very little problems.

I have supported traditional Outlook/Exchange configurations, and think Outlook sucks from a usability point of view, and the often corrupting Archive PST files system is a nightmare to support, and has had the same problems with 3 different previous problems I have had.

Users can work anywhere with a web connection on a browser based system, or use it on Outlook or Thunderbird. The google apps as alternatives to Word and Excel are great, needs some getting used to and may not suit every requirement, but for most simple uses its terrific. Improvements are frequent and its getting better and better.

bottom line, is running your own server for Exchange is like living in the dark ages. Switch to Google Apps and you can save and awful lot of hassle, and IT admins can sleep at night, having one less system to maintain themselves.