Chenka Nkhata: What are Google Apps?

Here is a very brief explanation of Google Apps and what these apps can do for your small business.
Google Apps are some of the best examples of cloud computing and are modern day online software that can help reduce the cost of running a business (click here to find out what cloud computing is).
Far from being just a search engine these days, Google’s online software is being used in the business environment.

Google Apps software can roughly be divided into two categories:

1) Messaging and Communication tools and

2) Collaboration tools.

The messaging and communication tools include the following:

Gmail (business email branded with your business name)
GTalk (business Video Chat, Voice Chat, Instant Messaging)
Google Calendar (individual and shared team calendars)

The collaboration tools include the following:

Google Docs (Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations etc)
Google Video (Private YouTube)
Googles sites (Websites and intranet to share content within a company)
Google Wave (a tool that can be used to manage communication on projects)

The list above represents a small list of the online software that Google has put together that can be used in a business context. Other services for example include Google Places or Google Mobile.

The Google messaging tools are directly aimed at simplifying how a business communicates and reducing the cost of this communication.

Most businesses are constantly trying to figure out how to share documents or how to help their employees work in teams on specific projects. This is were the Google collaboration tools can assist a business.
For more information on Google Apps, visit this page on YouTube: YouTube - GoogleApps's Channel