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With that in mind, the next step, O'Brien says, was to consider other possible cloud solutions. This included , which, O'Brien noted, had made "substantial strides" with their cloud-based portfolio of productivity tools. He does admit, though, before they considered the Google option he was not necessarily a "pro-Google person."

"The first time I to the concept of Google and getting rid of Microsoft, they looked at me like I had three eyes and thought I was completely nuts," O'Brien says. "[They weren't initially sold on] the idea that within a legacy manufacturing company--newspapers and all--we could get by without Microsoft productivity tools. They thought I was crazy, but were willing to hear me out because I was the new guy."

O'Brien first with users inside the IT department. The main objective: Determine how they could use the tool and how it would fit within the company. During this 60-day period, O'Brien says they migrated the IT team at various levels--some only had the browser component, others had just the Google toolset and others had access to the entire Google Apps suite.

"We had to basically eat our own dogfood. We had to make sure the tools worked within our business and we had to emulate how the business would use it--some users going native and others using everything," O'Brien says. "We had weekly meetings with IT staff about what was going well and not going well."