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Google Apps is a web-based hosted solution, which means you can access
Google Apps at anytime, anywhere you have an Internet connection. You
might hear this type of technology referred to as
"software-as-a-service" or "cloud computing". "Cloud computing" or
"software-as-a-service" is a computing model in which IT applications
are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access these
applications from the Internet ("in the cloud") without needing to
maintain the infrastructure that supports them. A simple way to
understand the model is how people currently allow companies to run and
manage their electricity rather than generating it within their
home/office themselves.

With Google Apps, your data and the applications themselves are served
from Google's highly secure, scalable, and reliable data centers.
Google actually builds its own data centers from scratch, so we're able
to have one of the lowest cost-per-server infrastructures in the world;
which means that those savings are passed on to our Google Apps
customers. Your business is able to offload the infrastructure costs
and the effort it takes to maintain an on-premises solution, and focus
those savings on more strategic IT initiatives.

And since Google Apps is web-based, your employees can be productive
from anywhere, whether they're at their own desk, using a different
computer, or on the go with a mobile device. It also means that you
don't have to worry about maintaining our own servers to run these
applications for your business which saves you time and money. You can
visit the Google Apps website
(http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/messaging_value.html) to
see just how much Google Apps can save your business over on-premise
email solutions.

There are three ways to test email on Google Apps:
• Option 1: Use a different domain or create a test sub-domain (eg: test.company.com for company.com)
•
Option 2: Route mail through Google and dual deliver to Google Apps and
your existing solution so both solutions are running simultaneously
• Option 3: Route mail through your existing infrastructure and then to Google. (Advanced)

Option 1: Using a different domain / sub-domain if you are not interested in testing email on your existing mailflow

It
is very simple to use the same domain as your production systems with
or without email. Just sign up for a few users with the test domain
and you will be up and testing in under a day. Note that if you want to
sign up your primary domain with Google Apps (e.g.: example.com),
you'll need to sign up for a new Google Apps account.

Option 2:
Route mail through Google and dual deliver to Google Apps and your
existing solution so both solutions are running simultaneously

You
can have a subset of your employees serve as a pilot group, which will
be able to use Google Apps while everyone else in your business can
carry on as normal.

First set up your Google Apps domain, add a
few users, and use mail routing to automatically pass through all mail
on to your organizations current email server.

Next, switch your
domain's MX records to point to Google. MX records may take 24-48 hours
to fully propagate across the Internet, so you'll want to set up your
Google Apps domain to pass any emails it gets onto your current mail
server. Any system that has not yet received the change will still send
mail to your existing email server while this change takes effect.

Once
the new MX records have fully distributed around the Internet, and all
your mail is flowing first to Google and then to your current mail
server, you're ready for the next step. You can turn off the
pass-through mail routing for email addresses that have been
specifically added to Google Apps, forcing them to only use Google
Apps. In this case, this would be the group of pilot users that you
have already set up. If you do not want to turn of mail to your own
server for any users, you can also continue to dual deliver all mail as
long as you need to.

Option 3: Route mail through your existing infrastructure and then to Google. (Advanced)
Many
mail systems support the ability to route mail to another system.
Google Apps will accept mail when mail uses MTA routing rules or
forwards mail to a domain alias after being received by your own mail
system. We have step-by-step instructions for some systems, however we
recommend taking advantage of our partner deployment services and
making sure you have the right information about your system before
proceeding.

See our deployment recommendations with process checklists and detailed tips

When you are ready to implement Google Apps for your business, Premier Edition comes with a free 30-day trial.