This book is split into four parts that are mostly independent from one another and can thus be read in any order. The reader who is in a hurry and is already familiar with the subject can therefore quickly jump to the section that is of direct relevance to him or her. The more patient reader will benefit from reading the Part 1 sets the scene and covers the basics of Cloud Computing and its consequences for the IT Department. The following figure illustrates how the book is organized:

The Google Apps Context

Part 1 introduces the concepts of Cloud Computing and its various incarnations: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Security and privacy issues are also touched upon. Senior executives are more likely to be interested in this section.

Part 2 covers the various Google Apps services and applications as well as their most common use cases. It is mostly targeted at end users.

Part 3 deals with integrating Google Apps with the rest of the IT environment. It includes an introduction to the administration tools and third-party solutions. This part is more likely to be of interest to technical architects and system administrators.

Part 4 deals with implementing a migration to Google Apps. Project management issues are discussed, as is the experimental phase during which a pilot project is run. Finally, the implementation of the actual migration is covered. Various migration methods are discussed, depending on what the original mail platform is. This part is primarily for project managers and technical architects.