The coffee and bagels were great, but it was more than a free breakfast that convinced folks to battle the traffic into downtown DC for the Google Federal User Group meeting. A few hundred government employees and engineers from the aerospace industry gathered in Washington DC to experience firsthand how ESRI's GIS product offering and Google's Earth and Maps enterprise products can powerfully co-exist and inter-operate to deliver an exciting and intuitive user experience.

Michael Bradshaw, Google's Head of Federal and Jeff Peters, ESRI's Federal Director, kicked off the event and set the stage for a number of live demonstrations. First, members of ESRI's technical marketing team walked the audience through a short series of presentations that highlighted ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Server, and data from ESRI's Business Analyst with interactive results seamlessly presented within Google Earth and on Google Maps. The demos showed how someone unfamiliar to DC could find an apartment using Google Earth, ArcGIS server and external web content sources such as Craigslist. The demo also showed how one could edit vector data in ArcGIS by moving and adding nodes within a dataset and then via a network linked KML that referenced an instance of ArcGIS Server, changes in the data were promptly reflected on Google Earth globe. Additional demonstrations showed models combining ArcGIS and Google Earth data on issues such as international health and the socioeconomic risks intrinsic in natural disasters. Google engineers then demoed the new releases of Google Earth Fusion 3.0 and Google Earth Enterprise Client (EC) 4.0. We've previously shared some of our customers’ reactions to the launch of these new Google Earth Enterprise products and posted them on this blog and we also shared some of the specific details of these new products themselves on Google's official Lat Long Blog.

We look forward to continuing to work with ESRI and our customers to leverage the power of geospatial information. If you would like to learn more about our products and how we compliment an ESRI enterprise or want information on how to register for the next Federal User Group meeting or in, contact us here.

• Dell is pleased to take advantage of the new features of Google Earth Enterprise for both marketing and customer support. By visualizing global website traffic at www.dell.com in Google Earth, we are building a stronger sense of community with our internal and external partners through awareness and better visibility around traffic trends and patterns. In addition, our global Enterprise Command Center gains a global view of customer activity at a glance, ensuring optimum responsiveness for customers with Enterprise Silver, Gold and Platinum Plus support. Google Earth gives us the intuitive yet powerful interface to critical business information that we need to manage effectively in today's fast paced business environment.

• Norsk Hydro welcomes Google Earth Enterprise as an innovative tool for our global exploration efforts. With Google Earth's intuitive 3D geo-browsing experience, researchers can visualize data more effectively, allowing us to explore areas of interest more efficiently than ever. Deployed in our Research Centre in Bergen, Norway, the Google Earth Enterprise system is used to synthesize large quantities of global data including high resolution imagery and terrain models and dozens of vector layers that are relevant to Hydro's interests. It's an eye opening experience to see years of accumulated geological and geophysical data appear with just a few clicks.

• Google Earth Enterprise enhances our ability to identify, track and update critical infrastructure throughout Alabama. Our Virtual Alabama information sharing database is anchored by Google Earth Enterprise. The incorporation of Google Earth Enterprise into the Virtual Alabama model will dramatically improve the speed and accessibility of Virtual Alabama to our user population.

The first time people learn about the Google Search Appliance, they often remark, ‘I didn’t know Google makes hardware.’ Actually, to power the millions of searches and other products, Google builds and deploys LOTS of servers in datacenters all over the world.

With the Google Search Appliance, one of the most difficult engineering challenges was to take Google's excellent web search and make it work well in the Enterprise. Specifically, the Google Search Appliance integrates with a wide variety of security systems, content repositories and other enterprise applications. Doing this in a relatively small footprint to make it easier for customers to deploy is nothing short of amazing. The reason we chose the appliance route is that was the only way we could give our customers a true plug-and-play experience. Customers routinely tell us that they setup the Google Search Appliance or Google Mini in a matter of hours – which stands in stark contrast to more complex enterprise search systems.

Thousands and thousands of happy customers later, the market has spoken – enterprise search is an important business challenge and customers worldwide are increasing their investment in search.

Recently, we started working with Dell to manufacture the Google Search Appliance. This partnership enables us to focus more on the software side – which is our real value add. Additionally, Dell’s international reach is helping us make the Google Search Appliance available faster in markets around the globe.

So does this mean the popular (and playful) yellow appliance is going to be replaced by a more buttoned-down corporate server? As you can see in the ad below that Dell is running to showcase our partnership, the familiar yellow box was one of many customizations to the manufacturing process that insures that the Google Search Appliance will continue to be the brightest box in the data center!

Not surprisingly, we’re big fans of emphasizing the search box on websites and intranets, as search puts the entire contents of a site at the visitor’s fingertips. That is why we are pleased to highlight the City of Virginia Beach, a Google Search Appliance customer, who redesigned their website around search. So whether you are looking for info on parks or parking in Virginia Beach, its only a search away.

Tired of writing down an address on the back of an envelope or printing out a map before driving somewhere that you just checked out online? Google and BMW have teamed up to enable users to send business listings directly to their cars enabled with BMW’s Assist Service. Check out this video.

It is a marked leap both in relevancy and in advanced search capabilities. Working with LTech Consulting, a Google Enterprise Professional partner, consumers can now refine searches and drill down within dynamically generated categories -- such as the specific price of a camera on pcmag.com.

While search results are better, so was the process of achieving them. "Once you have the Google Search Appliance installed, it requires little – if any – human intervention," says Nino Tasca, director of Internet Technology for Ziff Davis. "That has saved us countless hours in comparison to our previous search product."

Thanks Ziff Davis, for yet another valuable review.

Today, as part of Geo Developer Day at Google, we launched Google Maps for Enterprise. Now companies and government agencies can use Google Maps to help their business go geo. Now you can provide all the Google Maps features that users love -- such as the ability to drag maps in the browser and view satellite imagery. That means whether you’re displaying customer data on a map, managing assets in the field, or delivering a location-finder to your customers or partners, Google Maps integrates with your data to provide a truly compelling user experience.