Bergelectric provides electrical expertise on a wide range of building projects across the USA. Some of its clients are household names in that country, such as the Ritz Carlton hotel chain.
However, the company recently switched away from their original IT provider to Google Apps for Business, which I think must have been a big blow to them, especially since Bergelectric has grown into a major corporation since its foundation in 1946. The company now employs over 1,300 staff spread across 400 office locations.
In a recent interview Kyle Swafford, Director of IT Services for Bergelectric was asked why he switched. He told googleenterprise.blogspot.co.uk: “Our company had been a Novell Groupwise shop for many years, and IT staff had begun to feel increasing frustration with the platform due to its stagnancy…”
Kyle added: “…We [also] had to enforce email storage quotas of 100MB, though this amount of storage was often inadequate for users. Collaboration possibilities were practically nonexistent.
Mr. Swafford continued to explain that they made the decision to look around for something different, which he admits took a long time. He compared the relative merits of both Google Apps and Microsoft’s BPOS-S, which he certainly considered as an attractive option.
However, after really delving into the benefits offered by BPOS-S, the company found it didn’t offer all that Bergelectric wanted. For example, Mr. Swafford was put off by the idea that a third party email company would have to be used for email archiving.
So, in the end, Google Apps for Business came up trumps on all things including ease of use.
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