Google Data » Jeff Ragusa

Google Data » Jeff Ragusa https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Mon, 30 Mar 2015 16:00:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.7.5 More than 2,000 solution providers embrace Google’s cloud channel model https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-than-2000-solution-providers-embrace-google%e2%80%99s-cloud-channel-model/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=more-than-2000-solution-providers-embrace-google%25e2%2580%2599s-cloud-channel-model https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-than-2000-solution-providers-embrace-google%e2%80%99s-cloud-channel-model/#comments Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:00:00 +0000 launching Google Apps for business customers in 2007, we began to hear that IT solution providers were recommending Google Apps to their customers as a new option for messaging and collaboration tools. At the time, we didn’t have formal support for solution providers, and their only incentive was to act in the best interests of their customers.

During those early days of Google Apps, we spent valuable time gathering feedback from these leading-edge solution providers and learning how best to create an official reseller program for Google Apps that worked for solution providers’ business models. As a result, when we launched the Google Apps Authorized Reseller program in early 2009, we focused the program on providing resellers the best of both worlds - an innovative web-based messaging and collaboration suite for their customers and a reseller program that allowed them to retain and enhance their customer relationships.

An Apps ecosystem milestone

Over the past 8 months we’ve doubled the number of resellers in our Google Apps Authorized Reseller program, and now have over 2,000 authorized resellers worldwide. And our unique qualification process continues to ensure that new resellers understand both the business value and technical aspects of the offering.

During the past year we’ve highlighted a number of customer success stories where resellers such as Dito, LTech, Sheepdog, and Cloud Sherpas led complex customer deployments. These resellers, and many others, have put together growing businesses by focusing primarily on Google Apps and other cloud-based applications.

But that’s not all. We’ve also gained awareness and adoption within mainstream IT channel communities. This includes value added resellers, managed service providers, web developers, web hosting companies, Internet service providers, and system integrators, all of whom have established businesses with existing client bases and have expanded their business by offering Google Apps.

Going mainstream

Like the early adopters in 2007, these solution providers are foremost focused on doing the right thing for their customers. But they’re also taking advantage of the primary design point of our reseller program - allowing the reseller to manage the billing and support relationship and be the primary point of contact with the customer. We’ve recognized from the start of our program that providing resellers with control over billing and pricing, and allowing them into the primary flow of account provisioning, support, and messaging, is critical for them to effectively support their customers and make money.

We’ve seen strong adoption among managed service providers (MSPs) who tend to foster long-term, trusted customer relationships, understand recurring revenue models, focus on service offerings, and have fixed fee service contracts which are a great fit for reliable and predictable products like Google Apps.

Agosto is an example of an early MSP that has seamlessly rolled Google Apps into their full IT support helpdesk offering. They’ve been able to cross-sell their offerings in both directions, including converting customers of their Google Apps implementation service into full IT service clients. Even more powerfully, they’ve been able to enhance their long running client relationships by re-engaging them with relevant new opportunities to use collaboration capabilities in Google Sites, Video, and forms in Google Docs.

We’ve also seen adoption among web development, design, and hosting companies, for whom providing an email service is often a necessary part of helping small businesses with their online presence. Companies like Vision Multimedia Technologies are able to remain focused on their primary business of web development by using Google Apps to reliably handle the customers’ email, while also introducing the benefits of the rest of the Google Apps suite. And they’ve been able to offer consulting and web development services such as implementing portal and workflow solutions based on Google Sites to streamline content management for clients. All while providing the customer a simplified, single bill to pay.

Whether they’ve incorporated Google Apps into their existing business or they’ve built new businesses around it, a common denominator among our successful resellers is that they view bringing Google technology into their customer relationships as a way to strengthen and increase the strategic nature of these relationships.

While we are excited to have more than 2,000 resellers in our program, we anticipate further enhancing the program, the Google Apps suite, and the Google Apps Marketplace, to help our resellers grow their business with both new and existing customers.

If you’re an IT solution provider, learn more and get started with our reseller program today. Or if your company is using Google Apps and you have a preferred solution provider that you’d like to see get additional training on Google Apps, send them this post and we’d be happy to work with them.

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Team

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-than-2000-solution-providers-embrace-google%e2%80%99s-cloud-channel-model/feed/ 0 Google Apps Goes Experimental with Google Labs https://googledata.org/google-apps/google-apps-goes-experimental-with-google-labs/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=google-apps-goes-experimental-with-google-labs https://googledata.org/google-apps/google-apps-goes-experimental-with-google-labs/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:15:00 +0000 Posted by Gabe Cohen, Google Apps Product Manager

There is a widely held belief that technology progress in the enterprise is slow and methodical, that adoption cycles are long, and that experimentation is inappropriate. Here at Google we believe that experimentation is a good thing - even in the enterprise space. Some of our best ideas have emerged from experiments, products like Google Maps and snazzy new Gmail Labs features like Calendar and Docs gadgets, as well as Google Suggest and the collection of enterprise search labs.

Today we're extending that innovation and announcing Labs for Google Apps, a set of experimental features available free to businesses and schools using Google Apps. The first set, available now, are derived from tools Google uses internally and can be installed easily from the Google Solutions Marketplace by Google Apps domain administrators. Once installed (see walkthrough), users on your domain will be able to log in and access these features alongside existing applications like Gmail and Sites, and your domain administrators can configure them using the standard Google Apps control panel.

The new experimental features are:

Google Moderator: Take Q&A to a whole new level -- manage feedback from the smallest video conference to the largest all-hands company meeting. Learn more
Google Code Reviews: Collaborate with others to catch bugs in software changes before you check them in. Learn more
Google Short Links: Create easy-to-remember links for both your internal and external web pages Learn more

These new Google Labs tools are built on Google App Engine, the same scalable, efficient, and reliable infrastructure publicly available to developers. Read more about Labs features and App Engine. We're also planning on opening up the Labs for Google Apps platform to third party developers, so that new and existing vendors can build apps for the million-plus businesses using Google Apps today. Going forward, we'll also be adding more of our own Labs applications for your teams to experiment with and benefit from.

Check out the new features and let us know what you think!

]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/google-apps-goes-experimental-with-google-labs/feed/ 0 Multi-cloud application development made easier https://googledata.org/google-apps/multi-cloud-application-development-made-easier/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=multi-cloud-application-development-made-easier https://googledata.org/google-apps/multi-cloud-application-development-made-easier/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:00:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Partner Programs Manager

As the number of great SaaS-based business applications increases, its becoming easier for companies of all sizes to run their entire business in the cloud (or even across clouds). The canonical example of this is the recent release of Salesforce for Google Apps, a deep integration of salesforce.com's CRM solution and the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools. We're happy to see a growing number of enterprise and commercial developers working in the cloud and building applications that jointly leverage Google's open APIs and salesforce.com's Force.com Platform-as-a-Service. Solution providers and independent software vendors (ISVs) like CODA, Appirio, Astadia, and VerticalResponse have all also recently built innovative applications leveraging this multi-cloud application architecture.

Today, this type of multi-cloud development is getting easier as salesforce.com is making freely available the Force.com Toolkit for Google Data APIs. This toolkit helps developers of Force.com projects easily and securely access data from Google Apps in order to create new business applications or extend Salesforce for Google Apps. Specifically, developers can now read and write spreadsheet cells, calendar events, documents, and contacts as if they were native to the Force.com platform.

On Monday, salesforce.com's Tour de Force event series is circling back to Silicon Valley for a free conference where developers can learn more about the how and why to build enterprise web applications at the intersection of Force.com and Google's open APIs using this new toolkit. There will be exciting technical and business focused tracks with sessions led by both salesforce.com and Google as well as opportunities to get practical hands-on training from experts from both companies.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/multi-cloud-application-development-made-easier/feed/ 0 For the latest in on-demand, join us at Dreamforce https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/for-the-latest-in-on-demand-join-us-at-dreamforce/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=for-the-latest-in-on-demand-join-us-at-dreamforce https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/for-the-latest-in-on-demand-join-us-at-dreamforce/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2007 19:51:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Enterprise Partner Team

Our collaboration with the fine folks at Salesforce.com continues to roll next week as we will be participating in their Dreamforce '07 user and developer conference. In fact we'll be there in a few different forms which speaks to the growing synergy between our organizations.

Given the hosted model leveraged by many of Google's business offerings, it makes sense that many of Salesforce's 35,000+ business customers have interest in complementary offerings from Google. To that end, we partnered with the Salesforce team this past June to make available our Adwords advertising platform right from within Salesforce Group Edition. So businesses can seamlessly manage their online advertising campaigns using Adwords and then convert the leads that get generated into new customers using Salesforce.com's CRM solution. We're also seeing a lot of interest in Google Apps from this customer base. So, in the Salesforce.com Campground, our product managers will be eagerly available each day of the conference to further discuss how you can take advantage of the Google Adwords integration and/or Google Apps.

Meanwhile on the developer and IT front, we're also seeing a lot of overlap in our respective communities. Google is exposing a growing set of functionality and content through its APIs and developers are realizing that they can use those APIs to enrich their own business applications. So in the developer track on Tuesday of the conference, we'll be hosting a breakout session discussing Google Gadgets, Google Data APIs, and Google Gears and their specific applicability to the business use case. We'll also welcome Google Enterprise Professional partners Appirio and Theikos who will show some of the recent ways in which they've built product that makes use of both Google and Salesforce technologies. And our developer programs engineers will be available for discussion Tuesday in the Developers Lounge, including a special featured session in the ADN theater during the lunch break.

So come check out the conference and visit us in the Campground, in the Developers Lounge, and at the breakout session talk. Salesforce is even offering a special 50% off deal for developers and customers new to their platform. See you there!

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/for-the-latest-in-on-demand-join-us-at-dreamforce/feed/ 0 Mashup Salesforce and Google Apps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/mashup-salesforce-and-google-apps/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=mashup-salesforce-and-google-apps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/mashup-salesforce-and-google-apps/#comments Tue, 08 May 2007 22:26:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

Its spring and conference season is in full swing!

Salesforce is holding a free developer conference in Santa Clara, CA on 5/21 where they'll have a host of sessions covering various aspects of their Apex platform. As part of this Google will be presenting a session specifically on the synergies between the Salesforce development platform and that of Google Apps. Salesforce has long been a thought leader in on-demand application development and delivery. Their platform is comprehensive and flexible and should feel familiar to those of you working with Google's GData APIs.

We'll look at some specifics around mashing up Salesforce's Customer Relationship Management solutions with the Google Calendar and Google Spreadsheets APIs. It should be a great opportunity to learn about the Apex platform as well as make contact with their growing network of ISVs while at the same time learning how you can leverage your knowledge of Google's APIs to build compelling business mashups. Register today and we'll see you there!

Of course don't forget that Google's own Developer Day is also right around the corner on 5/31. With lots to offer for developers of varying interests and abilities, this is gearing up to be a very exciting event that you don't want to miss!]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/mashup-salesforce-and-google-apps/feed/ 0 Joint Webinar with Persistent Systems https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/joint-webinar-with-persistent-systems/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=joint-webinar-with-persistent-systems https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/joint-webinar-with-persistent-systems/#comments Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:30:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

We will be hosting a joint webinar with Persistent Systems this Thursday 11/2 at 11:00am PST where they will be demonstrating some of the ways in which they extend the reach of the Google Search Appliance through their Suite of Enterprise Content Connectors. As a Google Enterprise Professional partner, Persistent has spent the past year providing value to our customers by extending the Google Search Appliance deep into enterprise content repositories.

This webinar, jointly hosted by our Google Search Appliance Product Manager Nitin Mangtani, will provide demonstration of end-to-end search scenarios on hidden secure content residing within Lotus Notes and Documentum eRoom. Sign up for it at http://www.google.com/enterprise/gsa/live_demos.html.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/joint-webinar-with-persistent-systems/feed/ 0 Search from any XHTML-capable browsing device! https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/search-from-any-xhtml-capable-browsing-device/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=search-from-any-xhtml-capable-browsing-device https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/search-from-any-xhtml-capable-browsing-device/#comments Fri, 22 Sep 2006 15:00:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

We're always excited when a developer, customer, or partner takes such great interest in our products and in our community that they spend the time and effort to contribute their own improvements. I've recently had the pleasure of working with software engineer and web standards aficionado Joe D'Andrea who has made it his personal mission to take our Google Search Appliance into the wonderful world of web standards compliance. He's created a new XSLT stylesheet that displays our search results in a way that conforms to the XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 specifications. In doing so he's completely separated the markup from the styling in our default stylesheet.

What does this mean to you? Well for starters it means that you could install this single stylesheet into your Google Search Appliance and provide a search experience that automatically adapts to the device its being viewed on! On a computer screen Joe provides the familar look we all love. On printed paper the astute eye notices some added conveniences. What about a mobile phone? Ok, now we're talking. The drastic transformation into a Google Mobile-like interface seems like magic. But thats nothing. Go ahead and try your favorite text-based or speech-based browser! Ah, there's nothing quite like having your search results read to you like poetic verse...

Read more about the many other benefits in Joe's own blog post. He's published the stylesheet, along with lots of screenshots and notes, as a project on Google's open source hosting platform.

If you would like to contribute to our growing list of open source projects related to our Enterprise products, drop us a note and let us know what interesting things you're working on!

Thanks Joe!]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/search-from-any-xhtml-capable-browsing-device/feed/ 0 Xythos OneBox and Webinar https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/xythos-onebox-and-webinar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=xythos-onebox-and-webinar https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/xythos-onebox-and-webinar/#comments Mon, 18 Sep 2006 03:00:00 +0000 Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

Xythos Software provides document and file management products for educational institutions, government organizations, and commercial organizations who need secure and easy to use methods to manage and share their information. They just made access to that information even easier for their customers who own a Google Search Appliance by creating a OneBox for Enterprise module.

On October 18th, Xythos will be hosting a web seminar to discuss the module, how it was built, and what it can do for organizations. Our own David Bercovich will join them. You can find out more and sign up for the web seminar on their web site. The OneBox module is available now in our OneBox Gallery.

This accomplishment offers a great example of how any individual or organization can create and publish a useful OneBox module, without even having a Google Search Appliance of their own!]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/xythos-onebox-and-webinar/feed/ 0 Crystal clear value https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crystal-clear-value/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=crystal-clear-value https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crystal-clear-value/#comments Mon, 17 Jul 2006 15:00:00 +0000
BusinessObjects' desire to make information useful and their focus on the user made them a natural fit for a partnership with us. As a first step in that partnership, they've opened up their vault of information to Google Search Appliance users by creating an integration kit to allow inclusion of their content in Google search results.

They've created both a OneBox module and a content feeder for the Google Search Appliance that will allow Crystal Reports, Intelligence documents, and Dashboards from your BusinessObjects BI platform to be incorporated seemlessly into search results.

For good measure, they've also written a Google Desktop plug-in so you can find that Crystal Report you've saved but forgot to publish.

Obviously we're excited about this growing partnership and the value it'll bring to our users.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crystal-clear-value/feed/ 0