Pest control firm Rentokil is rolling out the biggest enterprise deployment of Google Apps to date to 35,000 staff across 50 countries. The rollout is a major part of Rentokil Initial's ongoing five-year programme to upgrade its IT infrastructure.
Rentokil Initial employs over 78,000 people in over 50 countries offering services ranging from pest control and cleaning through package delivery to interior landscaping and catering.
The company has been struggling under using more than 40 mail systems, including Microsoft Exchange and open source products, and having 180 email domains across the company's six operating divisions. The Google Apps rollout will provide a single online communications platform.
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.
Remote workers online
The company has been piloting Google Apps within one of its global business units since February this year. The roll out wil see 35,000 of the company's employees using 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 remotely and don't currently have a corporate email address.
"By deploying Google Apps, we can overcome a wide range of technical and communication issues, and enhance our ability to deliver operational excellence throughout the organisation,” said Bryan Kinsella, Chief Information Officer of Rentokil Initial. “Importantly, the frustrations of not having access to a single company-wide email address database will disappear and the translation difficulties faced by those colleagues wanting to collaborate with others around the world will be lessened," said Kinsella.
No official value was placed on the deal, but analysts reckon it could be worth around £3.5 milion to Google. The move to the Cloud will however be saving Rentokil up to 70% less than a replacement server-based unified email system.
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