Last year I posted a blog to the Allstream portal about how tools like Cloud-based Microsoft Outlook services can help you implement personal productivity best practices, like ‘Getting Things Done‘.

This type of functionality is also possible with the Google toolset, indeed to be fair this is one way to see how Google outshines the competition in terms of their Cloud fit for this type of agile working.

Google Enterprise

The primary challenge with defining ‘Google Enterprise’, as in how the Google cloud suite can be used by large, and small, businesses to better improve activities like office work, is that there is so much of it.

From their best known Search engine through Google Compute for “IaaS” – Infrastructure as a Service, like Amazon, through their PaaS which is the Azure equivalent, and multiple SaaS products, Google is a never-ending treasure trove of Cloud assets.

Getting Things Done

Therefore like the Outlook Cloud Services example, the first most likely area to consider is the basics of email and office tools.

For this there is Google Apps for Business, which includes GMail and the Drive products, the equivalents of Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc., that are different by operating entirely online. There is a list of tools like Groups, Sites and Contacts for enhancing your own personal productivity and also achieving this through collaboration with others.

Indeed here they quite specifically describe how you can Get Things Done.

This is the ‘pure play’ Cloud mantra, i.e. it’s not about having an offline document that you then use email to share online, but rather you simply have an online document.

The speed and ease of Google this way also lends itself to setting up a personal system like GTD. This is simply about better “labeling” the types of work you do so it’s more organized, and GMail has a powerful way of also tagging your emails this way.

In short everything you are looking for in terms of agile and effective office working is a real sweet spot for the Google tools.

Coming next – Salesforce 2.0 and Google UC

In this ongoing Google Enterprise series we’ll also introduce the other key product areas, like ‘Google UC’ – Where these office apps intersect with online Unified Communications, and then also “Salesforce 2.0″ – How you can leverage this social media style of work to better manage sales operations…