Going Google across the 50 States: Minnesota-based allnurses.com gets rid of its email servers

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: Over the past couple months, thousands of businesses have added their Gone Google story to our community map and even more have used the Go Google cloud calculator to test drive life in the cloud. To highlight some of these companies’ Gone Google stories, we decided to talk to Google Apps customers across the United States. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map.

Based in Minnesota, Brian Short is a Registered Nurse, as well as the Founder and CEO of allnurses.com, one of the largest online nursing communities with more than 430,000 members. Brian started the website as a hobby in 1995 when he was attending nursing school. He’d search online for relevant nursing information without success — it was easier to find websites on planting trees or feeding babies than reliable sources on clinical nursing.

So what started out as a website with a few links spawned into an online community and central hub of nursing information. The website now includes blogs, articles, and discussion forums across all specialities, with more than nine million global page views a month and 2,500 new posts submitted by members every day. To support this growth, Brian shares how he’s using Google Apps to remove location barriers and increase process efficiencies.

“I started out with my own internal email servers which were clunky and hard to manage. I was also dissatisfied with the accompanying email client. It would take forever to search, find, and organize all my email, and I was constantly deleting emails to avoid slowing down my machine. When I learned about Google Apps it was an easy decision to switch. I love the concept of cloud computing and being able to access all my applications through a browser.

Now, I've been using Google Apps for several years and it has helped the company tremendously. There are over 30 staff members scattered throughout the US and internationally. Google Apps allows us to communicate with ease by using instant messaging, email, shared calendars, and online documents.

I’ve also used Google forms to support marketing initiatives that increase awareness of allnurses.com. In one of the print ads, I included a URL that leads to a landing page with a form embedded in it. Educators can use the form to request pens for their nursing students. It’s a good way to engage with my audience and scale a manual process.

Not only is Google Apps a great financial decision for us, but it has helped increase our efficiency and productivity more than any other product we've used. I love how Google is always improving and upgrading its applications by listening and implementing user feedback.”

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Team