The Roche Group has more than 90,000 employees distributed among 140 countries, and it is transferring them all to Google Apps, reports Rachel King at ZDNet. The migration decision was driven largely by a desire to address the company's "platform interoperability issues."

Roche had two separate email and calendar systems, which served as an impediment to collaboration, according to Dr. Alan Hippe, who is both the CIO and chief financial officer at the organization. By switching to Gmail, Google Docs and other cloud-based productivity apps from Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Roche's executives hope to gain a strategic advantage by prompting closer collaboration among employees.

"The way our employees communicate and collaborate is diverse," Hippe wrote, adding that the company hopes to save time and money by moving to a cloud-based platform. Being "able to deploy Google Apps by simply enabling them via a control panel versus planning for and deploying complex infrastructure in our datacenters will help us focus on our core business--helping save patients' lives."

The Google platform is expected to lighten the IT team's load and facilitate telecommuting as well. Employees will be able to use any web-enabled device to get into email and documents, and they won't require a VPN or other remote access system.

In January, Spanish bank BBVA said it planned to move 110,000 employees to Google Apps, making the Roche Group the next largest Apps customer so far.

For more:
- see Rachel King's article at ZDNet

Related Articles:
Google's scheme to win over the enterprise
Third-party tools give visibility into Google Apps
Google explains its benefits for business