Google unleashes biggest ever Apps rollout for 35,000 users

Business support services company Rentokil Initial has signed up for the biggest enterprise deployment of Google Apps to date.

The implementation of Google Apps Premier Edition will eventually cover 35,000 of the company's users across 50 countries.

The rollout is a major part of Rentokil Initial's ongoing five-year programme to upgrade its IT infrastructure.

The company's CIO, Bryan Kinsella, told silicon.com: "As part of that work we've been taking a look across our whole information systems and technology stack and groupware was quite an important area for us to focus on, principally because as a group our history is one of a number of individual business divisions evolving their IT locally which has left us with an interesting set of problems."

These problems include operating more than 40 mail systems, including Microsoft Exchange and open source products, and 180 email domains across the company's six operating divisions which Kinsella said makes communication "a little bit complicated to say the least".

Now, thanks to the Google Apps rollout, the company has a single online communications platform.

Rentokil is the biggest enterprise deployment of Google Apps to date
(Photo credit: Rentokil Initial)

Google Apps will give users a global address book, work calendar, instant messaging, automatic email translation and a greater use of video communications. Rentokil Initial hopes to use the chat and video functions for training, as well as to improve collaboration and productivity.

The company has been piloting Google Apps within one of its global business units since February this year and has now decided to roll the system out more widely across the company.

The deployment will see 35,000 of the company's employees have access to the apps suite by the end of 2010. Around 20,000 of these will be regular PC users while the other 15,000 will be staff who work away from the office and currently do without a company email address.

"We've now got the opportunity to provide mail connections for those members of our organisation who can access Google Mail from home or from a PDA or in some cases we're looking to implement kiosks," Kinsella said.

Rentokil Initial looked at a server-based global email system but soon realised using cloud-based technology would be significantly cheaper - costing between 50 and 70 per cent less.

However, according to Kinsella, the use of Google Apps isn't just about cost: "This whole project was not a project to save money. The whole priority was about putting capability within the organisation," he said.

Other big names to have signed up to use Google Apps include Telegraph Media Group, the Guardian News and Media group and construction company Taylor Woodrow. More than five million students are also now estimated to be using Google Apps.