Zero Point Zero Production

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Google Apps protects an award-winning brand while providing flawless communications around the globe.

Background

Zero Point Zero Production (ZPZ) is an Emmy winning television production company based in New York City.  Producing shows such as Anthony Bordain: No Reservations on the Travel Channel, ZPZ has staff and freelancers working 7×24 around the globe.

The Challenges

With a string of successful productions, ZPZ was growing and their current email solution was failing to keep up.  Beyond a difficult administration tool and weak user interface, their hosted email service lacked calendaring and shared documents.  It also failed to integrate with other applications.

ZPZ also needed a solution that would help them protect their intellectual property and their brand.  They wanted all communications, even from freelancers, to be sent from and to the corporate domain and to have all emails archived.  Employees and freelancers were regularly using personal email accounts to ‘get around’ their current system.

With the speed of their business, they would also need to be able to deploy new user accounts in less than 12 hours and easily manage active/inactive status.

The Decision

ZPZ did their research and found that:

  • They could deploy a cloud computing email solution for much less than an in-house system
  • Cloud-based email supports global users more easily and at a lower cost
  • Active user accounts can scale up and down as freelancers start and finish projects
  • More than 75% of their employees and freelancers already used Gmail personally and were familiar with its use
  • Google Apps Premier Edition integrated with Postini to provide full email archiving services, even for inactive and deleted accounts

ZPZ turned to Horizon Info Services for help with the setup and migration.

The Results

Following a jointly developed project plan based on Horizon’s best-practices, Horizon created and migrated all existing user accounts, behind the scenes, over a single weekend.  ZPZ email users began work on a Monday morning with the new service, with no complaints about the migration or Gmail service.  Horizon assisted the 25% of users wishing to keep their application-based email client and ensured all mobile devices were fully connected.

Staff and freelancers quickly began using broader functionality, including Google Docs, instant messaging, and calendar scheduling/sharing.  With easy setup, new freelancers have accounts and instructions waiting for them nearly immediately after the contract is signed.  Use of personal email accounts dropped to zero.

Since deployment, the number of users has nearly doubled.  Google Apps has scaled linearly, without any financial bumps for hardware and software.  Up-time has been perfect and ZPZ has integrated Google Apps with other cloud-based solutions.

With Horizon’s deployment expertise and support services, Google Apps has given ZPZ more than a global email service, Google Apps lets ZPZ communicate and collaborate in ways that let them focus on delivering award winning productions instead of IT.