KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has moved 11,200 of its crew members to Gmail as part of a major Google Apps Premier Edition deployment, it emerged today.
The new solution will allow the KLM crew members to send and receive emails effectively from any location and using any internet-connected device, including personal laptops, shared computers, BlackBerrys, mobile phones or PDA devices.
The adoption of Gmail marks KLM’s move into cloud computing. With 25GB of storage per account, Gmail provides a powerful, intuitive and efficient messaging platform with integrated IM (Google Talk) and a series of additional features facilitating communication, such as Message Translation, allowing users to translate emails from and into 42 different languages with one click of the mouse.
Employees’ familiarity with Google’s consumer products meant that minimal or no training was needed to complete the deployment.
“The accessibility and flexibility that Google Apps offer makes it a particularly attractive solution for businesses with a large number of mobile users, allowing them to enhance their internal communication network,” said Adrian Joseph, managing director of Google Enterprise for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Google Apps Premier Edition includes: Google Calendar; a suite of collaboration products including Google Docs, allowing users to create and share documents, presentations and spreadsheets in real-time; Google Sites, an application that makes creating a website as easy as editing a document; and Google Video for Business, which makes company content and communication more personal, visual and engaging.
By John Kennedy
Photo: KLM Royal Dutch Airlines crew members are now using Gmail
