Google is rebranding “G-Suite” to “Google Workspace.” It’s about time. When Atlas became a G-Suite Reseller, we decided to call our offering a “Digital Workspace Solution.” It was G-Suite bundled with an optional backup solution. We’re glad Google listened to us.😃 What people really want is a workspace (that works together to accomplish tasks) not a suite (of different applications that do different things).

What does this mean for you? Well, for one, it will be easier to explain at sales presentations, cocktail parties, and networking events. It was always a non-starter to lead off a conversation with, “Do you use G-Suite?”

Main Differences with Google Workspace

Here are other key differences that will be part of the new offering:

1. Tiers will be renamed and an additional tier added: “Basic” becomes “Business Starter.” “Business” becomes “Business Standard.” What was “Enterprise” is now called “Business Plus”. A new “Enterprise” tier has been added as a more concierge service with enhanced security, retention, video conferencing, and regionalization for companies with global reach or special needs. Atlas will offer “Business Standard” as our default customer tier.
2. Google Meet and storage are enhanced. For Business Standard, Google Meet will now support 150 concurrent video participants (up from 50) and allow video recording of sessions/meetings. Recordings will be stored in Drive. Previously this was only available at the Enterprise tier. Business Standard users are now allocated 2TB per user of combined storage. Previously this was 1TB although larger businesses had unlimited storage. That unlimited storage is now gone although 2TB is still a lot of storage.
3. Google Vault is no longer offered for Business Standard users. Vault is only available to Business Plus users and higher. But not to worry, Atlas’ DWS with Backup can fill this gap and at a lower cost than moving to Business Plus.
4. Google Currents might be useful for some businesses. It replaces the old Google+ but is not intended as an intra-organization social-networking tool for team building and productivity. Each employee has their own Currents page and can participate in streams, post to each other’s pages, and things like that. It’s kind of like that site that Mark Zuckerberg built, only it’s not for world-wide consumption.
5. 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) is now standard. If you log in from a new computer, endpoint, or browser, you will need to authenticate yourself with your username and password and a second method such as a code sent to your cell phone (or an Authenticator code).
6. Better integration across apps: You may have noticed this already is you looked at Gmail on your phone and noticed a Google Meet icon at the bottom of the screen.
7. Better group management using “Rooms“. Rooms is a conceptual grouping of people sharing a common team, task, project, or responsibility. People can be added or removed from rooms at any time. The same group can also share more than 1 room (for example, the team is working on 2 projects). For larger organizations, they are so much easier to manage than “Groups” (although groups still exist and are supported).

Here’s a cool video to highlight some of the changes. Google does make great videos.