Google Data

Editor’s note: Continuing our “Going Google Everywhere” series, we’ve invited Matt Ballantine, CIO of Imagination Group, a global communications agency whose work with world famous brands spans all aspects of integrated, experiential and digital marketing. Imagination is an independent agency, with 12 offices around the world, and the full complement of specialists in-house, from brand consultants to architects, advertising specialists to interior designers, retail specialists and event producers to direct marketers and digital experts. Imagination’s clients include Aston Martin, Guinness, oneworld Alliance, Disney, Ford, Johnson & Johnson, Goldman Sachs, Shell and Samsung. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map.

Throughout my career I’ve been bemused by how, despite best intentions, most IT projects have failed to deliver any real depth of business change. Technology issues inevitably crop up through the lifetime of the project, and the first contingencies to be cut are in the plans for communication, training and business change.

We’ve probably all seen it – server issues, network issues, compatibility of operating systems, patching, software release bugs… the list goes on. And all the while, the business engagement work gets squeezed (if it was ever planned in depth in the first place).

The Cloud is offering an opportunity for IT departments to fundamentally change their approach to delivering services into organisations. In the two years that I’ve been leading IT transformation at global communications agency Imagination, I’ve been describing a vision where our IT team is here to help the business exploit the technology we procure, and where we leave most of the deep technical work to experts at our partners. Expertise in-house of how Imagination uses its technology to become more collaborative, more global and more creative is of real value. Understanding how to patch together operating systems on servers just isn’t.

As of April 2010, Imagination has Gone Google. My team moved 600 user accounts and 2TB of legacy email data spread across 14 locations in nine countries. We worked with partners to help manage the transition and my in-house team lead by project manager Sue Chick, were able to complete the technical migration work with a minimum of fuss and effort. In turn this meant that we could focus on helping the business start to exploit new possibilities.

Only last week, I received an excited email from our Creative Director in Sydney, Australia, who had just watched the final rehearsal of a product launch being run for a client in Hong Kong via video chat at his desk. We’re only just starting to see how our teams can take the tools that we have made available to them to change how we work for the better. The Imagination IT team is now aligned to help those processes happen.

Posted by Dave Armstrong, Google Apps Team

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