Google is releasing today its new Team Edition of Google Apps — which could compose life both harder and easier for IT departments.

The new release of the hosted applications suite will allow employees to set up Google Apps worksgroups whether they have e-mail addresses within their company’s domain. The collaborative groups can be set up without the involvement of IT personnel, although some controls are offered.

No Gmail

The free Team Edition includes Google Docs for documents, spreadsheets and presentations; Google Calendar for schedules and events publication; Google Talk for instant messaging; and a Start Page to preview Calendar and Docs and to add gadgets. But Team Edition does not include Gmail, which would require technical personnel for implementation.

While establishing collaborative workgroups in a third-party hosted environment might ease some of the burden faced by a company’s technical staff, Yankee Group analyst Laura Didio pointed out that it plus raises some red flags.

The good news, she

said, “is that employees can set it up” — which is additionally the poor news.

As one example, she noted that healthcare or financial companies might have compliance regulations that have to be observed, even in off-site collaborative groups. She pointed out that the knowledge shared or generated will often be stored in a hosted environment beyond the company’s firewall. Companies, she said, “will have to revise their procedures for shield and for compliance.”

Didio added that the Google suite “has been a real hit among SMBs,” or small and midsize businesses, so the impact of a Team Edition could be substantial. Google said about half a million organizations had signed up to use the suite before today’s announcement.

Setting Up IT Control

Organizations do need a level of shield and control, said Google software engineer Justin Sadowski on The Official Google Blog. Team Edition, he wrote Thursday, allows employees…

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