Google Apps Premium is Live

There have been rumors going on for a while that Google is launching a premium service for its current Google Apps. Google now provides free trial to the premium service for all existing users until 30th April. Here are some highlights of the premium edition:

1. The price for the premium version is $50 per user account per year
2. 10 GB of of email storage with no advertisements alongside emails
   
3. Access to API for integration with your existing infrastructure
4. 24/7 assistance, including phone support

You can view the full comparison here. There are many companies which offer similar products, can Google stand out?

Yes ... Google Apps premium got these advantages ...

1. Gmail's innovative ideas to improve web based email has received many awards with an extensive 10GB of storage without ads definitely sounds attractive to big corporation.
2. Most email service plans only offers purely email but Google also offers IM. Employees in corporations to can get instant responds using chat rather than emails.
3. Google provides API for IT technicians to integrate their existing services and provide more convenient interface and usage e.g. single sign-on.
   
4. Google Calendar which integrates with Gmail, allows much easy event scheduling and sharing.
5. The innovative start page feature allows corporates to build customized homepage for their employees which can include email, calendar, system announcements, etc.
6. Users can access most of the Apps features on their mobile phones which allows them to work wherever they are.
   

But there are still more to work on ...

1. Google Docs & Spreadsheet needs to add in more features to be competitive with other existing web based offices which provides much more advanced functions.
2. Google Page Creator is indeed a great tool for small corporates who does not have the resources to hire IT technicians to generate their own webpage. But to large corporates, this tools seems too basic and lacks advance web development tools.