Google Data

Posted by Brent VerWeyst, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search

Your company has a wealth of collective knowledge and data, but how quickly can employees or customers find the right information? Google Search Appliance (GSA) gives businesses a simple way to search all their content, no matter where it lives or what format it’s in. Today we’re adding new capabilities to GSA with version 7.2, making it even easier to find documents, organize your data and let your team focus on what really matters: getting things done.

Entity management gets easier
GSA 7.0 introduced entity recognition, which helps businesses categorize unstructured content by extracting entities—attributes like date, author and product type—from documents. With GSA 7.2, you get a chance to test and tweak your entities before indexing begins. This helps ensure that the entities you choose and apply will work best for your organization’s needs.

Helping to make search more universal
Companies rely on GSA to make all their files discoverable from a single search box, no matter where they live. It does this with the help of components called connectors, which link GSA to various data sources and index their contents. In GSA 7.2, we’ve made the connector framework more scalable and flexible. Customers and partners can develop and improve custom connectors more easily, helping GSA become a truly universal information hub.

More search, less typing
Relevant results shouldn’t rely on exact queries—especially when you’re dealing with long product names or technical data. Say you’re searching for part number 3728. With GSA 7.2, instead of struggling to remember the exact part number, you can type in “part number 37” plus a wildcard character such as an * to execute the query. With wildcard search, you don’t have to memorize complicated terms to find what you need.

In addition to these features, GSA 7.2 also introduces a redesigned admin console, improved language support and advanced sorting. To upgrade your GSA software, login to the Google Support Portal and download the release beginning at 9:00 am PT today.

To find out more about Google Search Appliance, click here.

Blizoo Media and Broadband EAD is Bulgaria’s largest cable company, providing high-quality digital television, Internet and telephone service across Bulgaria and Macedonia. The company is growing quickly as broadband Internet usage surges in Bulgaria.

Blizoo was born from the merger of CableTel and Eurocom Cable in late 2009, and since then, we’ve been working hard to bring together 1,500 employees across 35 locations into one cohesive team. We’re known for deploying the most advanced network infrastructure, but, ironically, when it came to our internal communications systems, things weren’t so cutting-edge. Shortly after the merger, we realized each company was using a totally different communications system for email and calendaring – and both of these solutions were hopelessly outdated.

CableTel and Eurocom’s IT teams came together to find a unified communications solution that would move our newly combined company into a new era of collaboration. We wanted one platform for email, calendars, file sharing, video calls and messaging – accessible by all employees – no matter where they were located or what device they were using. During the evaluation process, we considered Google Apps, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange and open-source solutions like Zimbra. Google Apps was the only solution that covered all the bases – offering full collaboration, totally in the cloud.

The transition to Google Apps was very smooth. In partnership with our integration partner Solitex, we quickly moved all 1,500 employees to Google – and not one single email was lost in the transition.

All of our departments have found innovative ways to use Google Apps. The HR department uses Drive as their central employee management hub. They created special Docs and Templates that managers can fill in when employees are hired, promoted or leave the company. The sales department has adopted Google Apps to run training programs and create reports. Managers store all types of presentations in Drive, from training guides to skill-building programs to weekly bulletins. Since implementing Google Apps, sales managers spend 30-45% less time inputting data and calculating commissions.

The IT department also appreciates how easy it is to manage Google Apps. There is virtually no maintenance required and we don’t have to operate our own servers. We’ve reduced time spent managing the communications system by at least 30%. Google’s built-in security means we worry far less about about data leaks. Before, employees emailed attachments back and forth, which was not only cumbersome, but created multiple security risks. Now, they just log securely into Drive to collaborate in real-time.

From IT and HR, to sales, management, marketing and beyond, Google Apps has made life easier for all Blizoo employees.aborate in real-time.

Posted by Aman Rathi, Product Manager, Google Apps

Last year we launched the Google Admin app for Android that enabled administrators to easily add users, reset passwords, see audit logs and contact support.

Today we’re launching the Google Admin app for iOS so admins can take care of common tasks on the go directly from their iPhones or iPads.

This app is designed for admins and requires API access to be enabled. Install the Google Admin app for iOS or Android. To learn more, visit the Help Center.

Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, VP, Product Management

The best meetings are face-to-face—we can brainstorm openly, collaborate closely and make faster decisions. But these days, we often connect with each other from far-flung locations, coordinating time zones and dialing into conference calls from our phones. Meetings need to catch up with the way we work—they need to be face-to-face, easier to join, and available from anywhere and any device. Starting today, they can be: Any company can upgrade their meeting rooms with a new Chromebox, built on the Chrome principles of speed, simplicity and security.

Chromebox for meetings brings together Google+ Hangouts and Google Apps in an easy-to-manage Chromebox, making it simpler for any company to have high-definition video meetings. Here are a few highlights:

• Instant meeting room. Chromebox for meetings comes with a blazing-fast Intel Core i7-based Chromebox, a high-definition camera, a combined microphone and speaker unit and a remote control. Set up your entire room in minutes and easily manage all meeting rooms from a web-based management console. All you need is the display in your room, and you’re good to go.
• Simpler and faster meetings. Walk into the room, click the remote once and you’re instantly in the meeting. No more complex dial-in codes, passcodes or leader PINs. Share your laptop screen wirelessly, no need for any cords and adaptors. Integration with Google Apps makes it easy to invite others and add rooms to video meetings, directly from Google Calendar.
• Meetings with anyone, anywhere. Up to 15 participants can join the video meeting from other conference rooms, their laptops, tablets or smartphones. Need to meet with a customer who doesn’t use Chromebox for meetings? That’s easy too—all they need is a Gmail account. You can also connect to rooms that have traditional video conferencing systems using a new tool from Vidyo, and participants who prefer phones can join your meeting with a conference call number from UberConference.

Chromebox for meetings is available in the U.S. today starting at $999, which includes the ASUS Chromebox and everything you need to get going. That means for the same price that companies have typically paid for one meeting room, they’ll be able to outfit 10 rooms—or more. CDW and SYNNEX will help bring Chromebox for meetings to customers and resellers, and Chromeboxes from HP and Dell will be available for meetings in the coming months. Later this year, we plan to launch in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the U.K.

Companies like Eventbrite, Gilt, oDesk and Woolworths have been testing Chromebox for meetings, and have told us that they love the simple setup, the ease of use, and being able to see their colleagues in other offices. More importantly, the low price will enable them to extend these benefits to even more employees, rooms and offices. Find out how Chromebox for meetings can help you and your coworkers see eye-to-eye. Happy meetings, everyone!

Posted by Tia Lendo, Google for Education Team

Today is Digital Learning Day – a time to celebrate the incredible ways schools use digital tools to help students learn. As a former 4th grade teacher, I’m constantly blown away by the ways today’s teachers have embraced technology. What is happening in today’s classrooms (collaborative writing, virtual field trips) seemed light years away just 10 years ago.

In honor of Digital Learning Day, we’d like to highlight a few benefits that teachers using Google for Education often mention: more powerful sharing, greater student ownership, new insights into the learning process, and connections beyond the school walls.

More powerful sharing
Google Certified Teachers like education trainer Jack West tell us about the transformative power of sharing with Google Docs. Jack says, “The essence of what we do as 21st Century teachers has been distilled by the visionary educators at Point England, New Zealand. We want our students to (1) learn, (2) create and (3) share. Until digital tools like Google Docs came around, it was difficult to help students share their work beyond the other students in their class.”

Students at Passaic High School work together on a timeline of the French Revolution

Greater student ownership
At East Leyden High School in Chicago, teacher Katie Diebold has found her students are more motivated when using digital tools. In her “Exploring Tech” class, she taught a unit on transportation. In the past she had her students do research and then make posters. But this year she had them use dynamic apps like Stupeflix, a video editing tool in the Chrome Web Store, to deliver their projects. Katie explained, “With Chromebooks we can provide students with more choices in how they do their assignments and learn in flexible ways. Students have a range of different tools they are able to use when completing projects to demonstrate what they have learned.”

At Passaic City Public Schools in New Jersey, the district is also using Google Apps and Chromebooks as a centerpiece of their 1:1 model. Even in the early days of their 1:1 program last year the district was seeing impact. Joshua Koen, District Coordinator of Technology, said that “the most obvious benefit of using Chromebooks at Passaic is that students can take an active part in developing their own lesson plans. Rather than a teacher dictating facts to their class, the students can build their own learning experience, working together to solve problems.”

New insights into student learning
Digital tools give teachers views into the student learning process that were never available before. A few months ago I visited a high school English classroom in which the teacher was “dropping in” on the papers students were writing with Google Docs. We opened up one student’s document and we saw that she had pasted the feedback from her last assignment as well as the scoring rubric into the top of her current paper. The teacher was impressed and immediately added a comment into the document praising her approach.

Posted by Matthew O’Connor, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform blog)

When you’re building a healthcare-related application, not only do you need the right code and a reliable user experience, sometimes it feels like you need to be a lawyer too. Often, there are several additional steps to take to into consideration. In particular, some healthcare-related applications and services in the United States are required to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. HIPAA establishes standards around privacy, security, and breach notification to protect individually identifiable health information. When building in the cloud, it can be challenging to ensure that you’re complying with these regulations.

To serve developers who want to build these applications on Google’s infrastructure, we’re announcing support for Business Associates Agreements (BAAs) for our customers. A BAA is the contract between a Covered Entity (you, the developer) and their Business Associate (Google) covering the handling of HIPAA-protected information.

Today’s news joins our other compliance efforts across Cloud Platform and Google Enterprise:

• ISO 27001: ISO 27001 is one of the most widely recognized, internationally accepted independent security standards. After earning ISO 27001 for Google Apps in 2012, we renewed our certification again last year for Google Apps and received the certification for Google Cloud Platform.
• SOC2, SSAE 16 & ISAE 3402: Companies use the SOC2, SSAE 16 Type II audit, and its international counterpart ISAE 3402 Type II audit, to document and verify the data protections in place for their services. We’ve successfully completed these audits for Google Apps every year since 2008 (when the audits were known by their previous incarnation, SAS 70) and we did so again last year for Google Apps and Google Cloud Platform.
• HIPAA: Late last year, we started entering into BAAs to allow Google Apps customers to support HIPAA regulated data. This year we have begun entering into BAAs with our Google Cloud Platform customers.

We’re looking forward to supporting customers who are subject to HIPAA regulations on Google Cloud Platform. If you are a Covered Entity under HIPAA and would like more information, please contact our team.

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Dr. Dan Maas, Chief Information Officer for Littleton Public Schools, a school district just south of Denver, Colorado, with 15,000 K-12 students across 13 elementary schools, 4 middle schools, 3 high schools, several alternative programs, a preschool, and 2 charter schools. Check out their case study to learn more.

What motivated Littleton Public Schools to move to Google Apps?
Students today are growing up in a different educational world. Online tools have fundamentally changed how today’s kids learn, interact and work with each other. Moving to Google Apps was a natural step in creating a modern learning environment for our students, because the tools are intuitive and familiar to them. Before using Google Apps, the district was hosting email servers for teachers and staff, but had no collaboration tools and homework was done largely by emailing attachments or making paper submissions, a cumbersome process. Our top priority was to address these challenges.

LPS buildings average 50 years in age, but with Google, the learning is in the cloud.

How is the district using Google Apps now, nearly two years after deployment?
Today, every Littleton staff member, teacher and student in 4th grade and above has a Google Apps account — some schools have even started introducing their kindergartners to the Google tools. Adoption has been incredible across the board: during the 2011-2012 school year, Littleton students created more than 200,000 new Google Docs, and by the spring of 2013 they were averaging over 20,000 each month.

Are there any teachers or departments in particular that have embraced Google Apps in innovative ways?
I’m inspired by literally hundreds of classrooms in our district and how they’re using technology to help their students learn. Katie Christie’s 5th grade class at Runyon Elementary School, for example, is using Apps in a particularly impressive way as part of the “Inspired Writing” initiative. The curriculum revolves around a Google Site that houses learning objectives, resources and videos, assignments, student and teacher work. Mrs. Christie posts assignments daily on a Google Calendar, which is embedded into the class’s Google Site and can even be added to a student or parent’s personal Google account. Google Docs lets students do different kinds of creative homework, including using Google Drawings to creating flowcharts for a book report and relying on Presentations to collectively create and speak to a deck about astronomy. It’s validating for us to know that Google holds her work in equally high regard — Mrs. Christie was recognized as a Google Certified teacher last spring.

Even second graders are using Apps for writing projects like pen pals among multiple schools, where kids don’t write together several times a year, but several times every day.

Are you seeing any cost savings from using Google Apps?
We’re saving more than $42,000 each year with Apps, since we no longer have to maintain email servers, storage or licensing software. That’s not even including all the time we’re saving our IT team, since they no longer have to waste hours clearing out full email inboxes and resolving downtime issues.

What are you personally most proud of when you look back at how Littleton has changed since moving to Google Apps?
I love seeing how the technology empowers our students. Google Apps are great equalizers – regardless of their home situation, every student has the opportunity to learn with Apps. These tools, paired with the skills students gain in school, are universal and will serve them for the rest of their lives. It’s so inspiring to me and all our teachers to see the students light up and become masters of their own direction.

LPS students create 20,000 Google Docs every month as a normal part of their learning.

One cannot underestimate the power of collaboration. Any given feature set of a software or cloud application will evolve over time, so the specific skills are not as important. But the habits of mind that one develops by working with collaborative documents are truly different than what a 20th century education encouraged. Collaboration means inclusion; inclusion means more brain power applied to a problem; more brain power means better solutions; and better solutions produced by an inclusive process means better overall understanding. What more could any educator hope for?

Over the next few days, you’ll notice a new activity stream in Drive. When you open Drive, click the “Details and activity” button (ⓘ) on the top right corner and the activity stream will appear, showing you who has taken action on files and folders in My Drive. You’ll see a rundown of what your team has been doing, such as editing and commenting on notes, adding a new spreadsheet, renaming a presentation, etc. If you select a specific file or folder, the stream will change to show you specific information about that item.

Release track:
Scheduled release

Editions included: 
Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government

For more information:
https://support.google.com/drive/answer/3323935
http://googledrive.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-new-activity-stream-in-drive-shows.html

whatsnew.googleapps.com
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We have found that some Chrome extensions come bundled with malicious programs that try to hijack your browser settings. To help keep your browser settings under your control we added a “reset browser settings” button to Chrome’s settings page in October.

Despite this, settings hijacking remains our number one user complaint. To make sure the reset option reaches everyone who might need it, Chrome will be prompting Windows users whose settings appear to have been changed if they’d like to restore their browser settings back to factory default. If you’ve been affected by settings hijacking and would like to restore your settings, just click “Reset” on the prompt when it appears.

Note that this will disable any extensions, apps and themes you have installed. If you’d like to reactivate any of your extensions after the reset, you can find and re-enable them by looking in the Chrome menu under “More tools > Extensions.” Apps are automatically re-enabled the next time you use them.

Editions included: 
Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government

For more information:
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2014/01/clean-up-your-hijacked-settings.html
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2013/10/dont-mess-with-my-browser.html

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Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates

Posted by Bram Bout, Director of Education

Earlier this week we announced the release of the Google for Education Learning Center, an online portal that helps educators learn about Google tools for teaching and learning. The Center is a one-stop-shop for hundreds of best practice how-to videos, cases studies and guides. It also includes links to online communities and our newly revised exams. By passing 5 exams teachers can become qualified as Google Educators.

We wanted the bulk of the content in the Center to be made for teachers, by teachers. So we worked with some of our Google Certified Teachers to create it. Today we’ll hear from three of those educators to get more information about their tips and tricks for teaching and training.

Bram: What are your top tips for running successful professional development with educators?

Jennie: My tip for training is to leverage the same best practices you’d use with students. Focus on differentiating for your (teacher) learner, engage them in active learning and allow them to collaborate with one another to make the experience social.

Jay: I have two pieces of advice: start small and give it a go. Pick just one part of your course to enhance with technology or just one tool to use more effectively. Learn something new and give it a go. Get support from your peers, school or PLN. Failing is okay, that’s how we learn.

Kevin: Whether you are teaching or training, clear communication is essential. The best slides have the least amount of text. Make images on the slides focused, keeping words to a minimum, to emphasize the point made in the actual presentation. No one wants to “read” a presentation.

Jennie: It is important to practice what you preach. If you’re training people on Google Apps, use Google Apps. If you’re leading a session, create a Google Site to share information. Share a collaborative Google Doc so participants can take notes together and exchange ideas.

Bram: What are your most effective training activities?

Jennie: I have a professional development opener I like to call the “Gripe Jam.” While I play the song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” teachers write down their gripes and I compile these into a Google Doc. The teachers then vote on the most important ones. This is how we decide where we begin our exploration of digital learning. Crowd-sourced PD is a huge buy-in generator. Many teachers respond better to new ideas when we first listen to their current issues.

Jay: I advise people to keep a YouTube playlist for “Stuff I’ve Learned.” I learn a lot from YouTube videos. As I’m looking up videos and learning new things I add the videos to a playlist with other things that YouTube has taught me. This not only serves as a great repository I can come back to for review, it also helps me to model how and what I am learning. This could be embedded on your professional portfolio site to help demonstrate how you are a contemporary learner.

Bram: What is a top piece of advice about Google tools for teaching?

Kevin: The number one recommendation I have for teachers who assign projects using Docs and Drive is to turn the hand-in process upside-down. Rather than having students turn-in their work at the end of the assignment cycle, have them turn it in at the beginning. The first step in any class project is to have students create their document, presentation, or spreadsheet, and have them share it with you as the teacher immediately. This allows teachers to monitor and support students through the entire process.

Bram: Have any recent professional development experiences really stayed with you?

Jay: Recently I was working with a teacher named Rick, a master teacher with decades of experience who wanted to use technology to improve student writing. We started small with the prewriting process and brainstorming with Google Drawings and Docs. I pushed him a little more. He was amazed when we looked at the Comments feature, which allowed him to provide better feedback to his students and they blossomed. He was so energized and excited about teaching writing again. Even with his vast experience and being so close to retirement, Rick demonstrated my two recommendations: start small and give it a go. He was able to rekindle his own passion and effectively integrate technology. We can all do this.

Posted by Jaime Casap, Senior Education Evangelist, Google

In 2013 there was a tremendous amount of innovation in education — from new tools to increased access to more content. Throughout the year we had the opportunity to get to know more and more schools that decided to Go Google. To look back on the year, we compiled a few stories that people shared with us. You can find more stories in our refreshed website for schools.

One thing we’ve heard loud and clear from educators and students across the globe was that they want more choices. They want a wider selection of devices, content and resources so they can choose the right tools for their particular needs. So to kick off this new year, we’ve worked with our partners to give schools more options for devices, classroom content and training resources.

K-12 Books in Google Play for Education
Google Play for Education makes it easy for educators to find and distribute apps and videos that unlock student potential, and schools have told us that access to a wide selection of books is just as important. That’s why soon we’ll add thousands of K-12 books to Google Play for Education, from digital textbooks like “GO Math!” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and “Journeys Common Core” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) to classic literature like “Bridge to Terabithia” (Harper Collins), “Lord of the Flies” (Penguin), and “Things Fall Apart” (Random House). Once a book is assigned, students can read it from their Android tablets, Chromebooks, or any other device through the Play Books reader. Affordable access periods of 60 days, 180 days, and 360 days help schools ensure that materials stay fresh (and classes stay interested) — it’s easy to change curriculums from year to year, or even customize reading materials for individual students. We’re rolling out to a few schools today, and will make K-12 books fully available to all schools in the coming weeks.

Greater choice of devices
Technology is one tool to help teachers create innovative learning models. With devices that are affordable and manageable, the technology can get out of the way so that teachers can do what they do best — help students accomplish their goals. We’re hearing great success stories from schools using both tablets with Google Play for Education and Chromebooks. And analysts such as Futuresource report Chromebooks continue to grow, accounting for 1 in 4 devices shipped to U.S. K-12 schools according to preliminary data for the final quarter of 2013.

Today at FETC, our partners announced they’re making even more options available to schools:

• New Chromebooks: Toshiba announced that their new Chromebook will be available for education customers. This 13-inch device has a battery that lasts up to 9 hours and is built for productivity, and is available today starting at $299. Lenovo announced the new ThinkPad 11e Chromebook series, available as a 360-degree touchscreen Yoga or traditional laptop this spring starting at $349. Educators at FETC will see demos of all the latest Chromebooks in the Google booth, including the new Dell Chromebook and LG Chromebase (available in April).
• New tablets: Samsung announced their Galaxy Tab as part of tablets with Google Play for Education. It’s a 10.1-inch tablet designed exclusively for education, available in April 2014. At FETC, we’re also demoing the previously announced HP Slate 8 Pro tablet for the first time.

Helping educators share with one another
Teachers around the world are using Google tools in the classroom, and we aim to help educators learn from and share ideas with their peers. This week we launched the new Google for Education Learning Center, created in close partnership with educators who successfully use Google Apps and devices in schools. On this new site educators can learn about Google tools and how to use them for teaching and learning. It’s a one-stop-shop for new online courses, best practice videos, guides, and updated exams and certifications. Educators can demonstrate proficiency with Google tools by taking a Basics Exam or they can show advanced knowledge by taking exams to earn the Google Educator official qualification.

Learn more
If you’re attending FETC this week, visit us at booth 701. Educators will share ideas in our teaching theater throughout the conference. If you can’t make it to Orlando, you can learn more about how to Go Google by visiting our site: google.com/edu/gogoogle.

Posted by Danny Attias, Chief Information Officer for The Grass Roots Group

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Danny Attias, Chief Information Officer for The Grass Roots Group, a U.K.-based global performance improvement company. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Grass Roots helps brands increase sales, improve customer service, build loyalty and grow productivity. We have over 2,100 clients globally, including major brands including Asda, BMW, Canon, Ford, McDonalds and Vodafone. Our 1,000 employees work in 26 offices across 15 countries, and need to share best practices and knowledge with each other regularly. Communication is at the heart of Grass Roots’ success. It helps us gain a deep understanding of our clients’ needs and become their trusted advisors.

Our five on-premise legacy Microsoft Exchange email systems were a constant challenge to maintain and a real barrier to collaboration and communication in our organisation. We had trouble finding contact details and reaching out to others in the business. Also, our aging data storage hardware infrastructure experienced regular outages that disrupted internal and external communications. We realised we could make the case for an overhaul, so after a comprehensive review of the market we decided to move to Google Apps for Business with the help of our Google Apps deployment partner Appscare. They became an extension of our own team and helped us understand how to get the most from all the features.

We decided to make the move to Google Apps rather than any competitive offering because Google provided the complete and comprehensive range of communication tools that met all of our company’s needs. We have email available online from laptop and mobile with vast mailbox space, online access to shared documents and calendars in the cloud, instant messaging, online video conferencing and a BYOD offering with integrated solutions that working brilliantly on both iOS and Android. By moving to a mobile, cloud, consumer platform with all the enterprise controls Google provides, we eliminated the costs and disruption of on-site maintenance, and the hefty licence fees of our on-premise email systems.

For many of our employees, Google Apps is revolutionising their team and project work. Teams are more organised because everything – including timelines, budgets and progress reports are stored transparently with the latest updates available for all to see online. Also, our employees no longer need to log on with a VPN to get to the resources they need to do their jobs. They can just log on securely using two-factor authentication with their mobile device into their Google Apps account.

A great example of the transformation we’re seeing with Google Apps is at Cyclescheme, our subsidiary that specialises in supplying bikes for employees of enterprises. Real-time collaboration with Google Docs became the epicentre for information sharing when the company redesigned its website. The rich, real-time collaboration capabilities of Google Apps reduced the time taken to design, approve and take the site to production weeks ahead of schedule. At the core of this process was the Cyclescheme team project plan which shared a central Google Spreadsheet with everyone involved with the project, including external suppliers. Everyone added updates on plans and progress, making the whole process more transparent and streamlined.

We are inspired by how our new tools are producing changes to the way our people organise and collaborate, and we are impressed with how Google Apps is proving to be a catalyst for organisational change. Based on the journey so far, we’re confident that Google Apps will support Grass Roots as we become an even more united, efficient and collaborative business.

Posted by Posted by Prasad Vootla, Senior Director of Engineering Operations at Snapdeal.com

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Prasad Vootla, Senior Director of Engineering Operations at Snapdeal.com. Read the full case study here, then see what other organisations that have gone Google have to say.


Snapdeal.com is India’s leading online retail marketplace. From home furnishings and fashion, to electronics and sporting equipment, we make sure there is something to delight every one of our 20 million subscribers.

As an online business, having efficient email and collaboration tools is critical for the success of our business operations. Most transactions require cross-team involvement, but before moving to Google it was challenging to coordinate this; some team members were on different email domains as a result of our legacy system and our teams sought a simple, single channel for communication. We also used to send lots of large attachments which took up our email storage.

Our search for a new mail solution began when employees told us they were spending most of their time clearing emails because of storage limitations. With the help of Premier Google Enterprise Partner MediaAgility, we implemented Google Apps for Business. Gmail stood out as the most reliable and easy to use option because we not only get 30GBs of space to cater for high email volumes, but it also offered the stability, high performance and cost-effectiveness we were looking for.

The collaboration features built into Gmail have proved to be a real bonus too. Google Hangouts — which give us a way to instant message one another and have multi-person video conferences — have expanded the tools we have to interact and collaborate. We now have group discussions within teams and across departments when people are in different places.

Teams also now use group emails to coordinate across departments, and instead of emailing files back and forward, we simultaneously edit and collaborate in Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets. These tools have actually reduced number of meetings we need to have, and because Google Calendar gives us visibility into team members’ schedules, the process to setup meetings and avoid clashing schedules has become faster.

The benefits of moving to Google aren’t just being felt by employees. Our IT team now has improved our overall security and efficiency of the IT infrastructure. Our email system performance can now be easily monitored through the analytics features in Google Apps, and we have much greater flexibility and control to monitor all the accounts.

We are happy with our decision to go Google. Its positive impacts are felt throughout the organisation. The teams can now focus on their work, like responding quickly to customer requests and around-the-clock product shipping services. This means we now deliver a fun and convenient shopping experience, keeping our customers happy and coming back for more.