It used to be that most companies would have to run and manage  their own servers in order to allow employees to send email. This is, however, is very expensive and very time consuming, however, as usual, Google has come up with a solutiuon called Google Apps which lets companies pay Google and use Gmail for their company email along with other Google services. Google Apps costs $50/user/year and if you compare that to the costs of buying, setting up and maintaing a server it is much less expensive. It also allows employess to utilize Google Contacts, Calendar, Chat, Docs and many other services. Another benefit of this is Google backs up their servers so users do not have to worry about backing up their data. This utilizes the best web application suite on the internet and makes web communication and collaboration easy. I reccommend that anyone who is starting a business or anyone overhauling their current email system to give Google Apps serious consideration.