Google Data » Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Posted by Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google App Engine Blog and the Google Code Blog.)

Rapidly crunching terabytes of big data can lead to better business decisions, but this has traditionally required tremendous IT investments. Imagine a large online retailer that wants to provide better product recommendations by analyzing website usage and purchase patterns from millions of website visits. Or consider a car manufacturer that wants to maximize its advertising impact by learning how its last global campaign performed across billions of multimedia impressions. Fortune 500 companies struggle to unlock the potential of data, so it’s no surprise that it’s been even harder for smaller businesses.

We developed Google BigQuery Service for large-scale internal data analytics. At Google I/O last year, we opened a preview of the service to a limited number of enterprises and developers. Today we're releasing some big improvements, and putting one of Google's most powerful data analysis systems into the hands of more companies of all sizes.

We’ve added a graphical user interface for analysts and developers to rapidly explore massive data through a web application.
We’ve made big improvements for customers accessing the service programmatically through the API. The new REST API lets you run multiple jobs in the background and manage tables and permissions with more granularity.
Whether you use the BigQuery web application or API, you can now write even more powerful queries with JOIN statements. This lets you run queries across multiple data tables, linked by data that tables have in common.
It’s also now easy to manage, secure, and share access to your data tables in BigQuery, and export query results to the desktop or to Google Cloud Storage.

Michael J. Franklin, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, remarked that BigQuery (internally known as Dremel) leverages “thousands of machines to process data at a scale that is simply jaw-dropping given the current state of the art.” We’re looking forward to helping businesses innovate faster by harnessing their own large data sets. BigQuery is available free of charge for now, and we’ll let customers know at least 30 days before the free period ends. We’re bringing on a new batch of pilot customers, so let us know if your business wants to test-drive BigQuery Service.

More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 19:29:00 +0000

Posted by Hong Zhang, Software Engineer

These days it’s commonplace for employees to bring personal mobile devices to work, expecting to get all kinds of business done on-the-go, and this can be both a blessing and a challenge to IT managers. The importance of keeping mobile devices and data secure is as essential as ever.

Starting today, comprehensive mobile device management is available at no extra charge to Google Apps for Business, Government and Education users. Organizations large and small can manage Android, iOS and Windows Mobile devices right from the Google Apps control panel, with no special hardware or software to manage.

In addition to our existing mobile management capabilities, IT administrators can now see a holistic overview of all mobile devices that are syncing with Google Apps, and revoke access to individual devices as needed.

Organizations can also now define mobile policies such as password requirements and roaming sync preferences on a granular basis by user group.

Also available today, administrators have the ability to gain insights into mobile productivity within their organizations, complete with trends and analytics.

Finally, we’re also updating the Google Apps Device Policy app for Android. The new version provides users with more transparency about information available to administrators, and includes support for Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. These new mobile management features will roll out for customers using the Next Generation Release version of the control panel starting today, and will be coming to the Current Release version in a matter of weeks. We invite you to explore our help center for more details.

Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an internet connection

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Posted by Benoît de Boursetty, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

The great thing about web apps is that you can access all of your information on the go, and we’ve introduced ways to use Google Apps on a variety of devices like mobile phones and tablets. But it’s inevitable that you’ll occasionally find yourself in situations when you don’t have an internet connection, like planes, trains and carpools. When we announced Chromebooks at Google I/O 2011, we talked about bringing offline access to our web apps, and now we’re taking our first steps in that direction. Gmail offline will be available today, and offline for Google Calendar and Google Docs will be rolling out over the next week, starting today.

Gmail Offline is a Chrome Web Store app that’s intended for situations when you need to read, respond to, organize and archive email without an internet connection. This HTML5-powered app is based on the Gmail web app for tablets, which was built to function with or without web access. After you install the Gmail Offline app from the Chrome Web Store, you can continue using Gmail when you lose your connection by clicking the Gmail Offline icon on Chrome’s “new tab” page.

Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality. To get started using Google Calendar or Google Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access.

IT administrators can deploy Chrome Web Store apps to users en masse by setting up organizational policies for Chrome.

Today’s world doesn’t slow down when you’re offline and it’s a great feeling to be productive from anywhere, on any device, at any time. We’re pushing the boundaries of modern browsers to make this possible, and while we hope that many users will already find today’s offline functionality useful, this is only the beginning. Support for offline document editing and customizing the amount of email to be synchronized will be coming in the future. We also look forward to making offline access more widely available when other browsers support advanced functionality (like background pages).

A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 17:08:00 +0000

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

Over the last few weeks, we’ve covered some of the ways that Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites have really improved over time, and in this final installment, we’re shifting our focus to how the administrative capabilities in Google Apps have grown up, too. We’re always looking to streamline how administrators can foster better teamwork, easier mobile access and a more secure environment through easy-to-use management tools.

We hope you’ll discover a few admin capabilities here that you weren’t familiar with before, or just haven’t used in some time. If you’d like to hear more about these developments for administrators, please join our webinar on September 1st (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps is designed with the idea that working together should be easier, faster and more fun than working alone. Google Apps makes this simple for administrators by letting users handle many routine tasks without IT support, and by including collaborative capabilities that you’d need to purchase and manage separately with other solutions.

Google Sites lets employees set up private, secure workspaces ranging from team sites and project portals to intranets and status dashboards, all without burdening IT for setup help. End-users can initiate a site quickly, and don’t need any special programming skills to collaborate together on a great site.
User-managed groups also facilitate teamwork and take the burden off of IT. Teams can self-assemble and manage their own workgroups and mailing list aliases, so administrators don’t need to constantly keep these lists up to date.
Google Apps also makes it painless for organizations to have private template galleries for team-oriented sites, documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations. Administrators don’t need to hassle with setting up special template repositories, because they’re built right into Google Apps.
Likewise, administrators don’t need to manage servers and complex file share systems to let employees upload and distribute documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other kinds of files. Google Docs handles this without customers needing any special infrastructure on site.
PC-to-PC voice and video chat also comes standard with Google Apps. Instead of needing to purchase, install and manage special software and server infrastructure, these real-time communication channels are part of Gmail, and accessible from the browser.
Users can also make calls from Gmail to mobile and landline phones without businesses having to manage any specialized telephony technology.
Form and survey capabilities are also packaged with Google Apps as part of Google Docs, so it’s easy for users to collect structured responses from colleagues and external audiences, and you don’t have to license surveying software from another provider.
Another powerful collaboration technology included with Google Apps without any additional administrative complexity is translation functionality. Instant translation works in documents, spreadsheets and sites, and Gmail can even translate multilingual IM conversations in real-time between dozens of languages.
Want to provide multi-person collaboration in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint without upgrading to Office and SharePoint 2010? Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is a lightweight Office plugin that lets people work together simultaneously in these applications, without the hassles of collaborating over attachments.
Administrators also have the ability to fine-tune user collaboration capabilities across Google Apps. Admins can provide different applications for different groups of users, set permissions for who can email outsiders, and enforce sharing controls in documents and sites to limit information sharing beyond the organization.
More complex organizations with users at multiple domains can still work like a cohesive unit with multi-domain management. This feature lets people all across your organization share information seamlessly together without the traditional barriers that domain boundaries can create.
Finally, our 100% web applications allow administrators to see a snapshot of how their users are working together with these tools, through an intuitive collaboration dashboard integrated into the administrative control panel. You can see stats like the number of active documents, the average number of people documents are shared with and more.

Productive Anywhere

Gone are the days where supporting a new mobile platform or operating system requires a heroic effort. With Google Apps, users just access their work from any modern browser or major mobile operating system. We also provide administrators with tools to secure and manage mobile devices at no additional cost.

100% web-based applications mean that users can access their email, calendars, documents and other applications right from their browsers, on any operating system. This makes it much easier for administrators to support a heterogeneous OS environment without leaving any users behind.
Android natively supports Google Apps through a comprehensive suite of mobile apps built right into the mobile platform. For iOS devices and Windows Mobile, Google Sync enables synchronization of email, contacts and calendar. BlackBerry sync is also available through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
To help administrators manage and secure a diverse fleet of company- and user-owned mobile devices, our mobile device management tool allows administrators to enforce mobile password requirements, remotely lock devices, and even wipe devices over the air. Employees can also access self-service tools, like the ability to view the location of a lost phone.

Simple & Affordable

Deploying and managing Google Apps should be as easy as using Google Apps, so we’ve added tools to help businesses get started quickly, integrate with existing systems and customize the experience to their needs.

It all begins with a free 30-day trial that takes just a few minutes to start, and you don’t even need to put down your credit card. If you like what you see, Google Apps for Business is a simple $5 per user per month or $50 per year.
Once you begin your trial, the interactive setup wizard will guide you the process, from creating user accounts to managing mobile devices.
For organizations that already have IT systems in place, Google Apps plays nice with other systems through tools like Directory Sync, which can automatically provision Google Apps accounts, groups, shared contacts and more, all based on your existing user directory.
Some organizations deploy Google Apps to make a fresh start, while others want to bring along data from old systems to Google’s cloud. With migration tools for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, and many other platforms, you can go with either transition approach.
You also have choice when it comes to the pace of innovation that’s right for your business. With our new release process, you can join the Rapid Release track to get new features as quickly as possible -- often several times per week -- or choose the Scheduled Release track for a bit more time to digest changes before they roll out to users.
Flexibility also comes in the form of customizable administrative roles. Delegated administration lets you assign full or partial administration rights to other users or groups, making it a snap to give teams like help desk staff the right privileges to do their jobs effectively and safely.
The possibilities for adding custom functionality to Google Apps are also endless. You can select from dozens of additional Google applications, layer on integrated 3rd-party applications from the Google Apps Marketplace, write your own custom interactions between applications with Google Apps Script, or tap into a full spectrum of management and application APIs.
These same APIs power another essential tool: the ability to take your data and move to a different provider if we ever stop meeting your needs. Our Data Liberation effort includes a comprehensive set of tools to help you get your information out of Google’s cloud should the need arise.

Pure & Proven Cloud

Google Apps for Business not only has an uptime guarantee, but we also provide transparency by offering a publicly available status dashboard. In addition to our reliability efforts, we also provide administrators with options to help keep their data more safe and secure.

Our 99.9% uptime SLA guarantees reliable access to Google Apps, and our commitment doesn’t have any exceptions for planned maintenance. This is because our systems are designed to handle updates without interruptions for customers.
Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
Google Apps has completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, a SSAE-16 audit, and has achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
With default https connections, your users’ information is encrypted as it travels from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.
Account access can also be fortified with custom password strength requirements that administrators can tailor, and the ability to put Google Apps behind your own single sign-on infrastructure.

Customers tell us they love rapid, continuous innovation in our applications, but we’re just as focused on making the administrative experience faster, easier and more powerful over time. I hope you found a few new management capabilities here that will make Google Apps even more useful at your organization. Join us for a free webinar on September 1st if you’re interested in learning more about many of these improvements.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT

Register here

More power to Google Apps administrators

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 15:38:00 +0000

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google Apps

In our continuous drive to make it easier for Google Apps administrators to create, manage and secure their users and data, we’ve introduced a number of features over time in the Google Apps for Business administrative control panel, such as the delegated administration, multi-domain support and fine-grained user policy management, just to name a few. These features have been well-received by the administrator community and we’ve seen healthy adoption among Google Apps for Business customers where these capabilities are helpful.

Starting today, millions of organizations using our free Google Apps service can begin taking advantage of these capabilities and many more as well. Now all Google Apps administrators can use advanced control panel features to manage users and customize the security policies for their organizations, regardless of which version of Google Apps they’re using.

If your company uses our free Google Apps service and requires additional business-critical features such as 24x7 support, 25GB mailboxes, enhanced functionality like email routing, or advanced reporting or migration tools, you can try a 30-day upgrade to Google Apps for Business for free.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Docs and Google Sites

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 20:10:00 +0000

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

We’ve all been frustrated by technology that gets slower, less reliable and less useful over time. Google Apps is different – it actually gets better automatically week after week without patches or updates to manage. People can absorb this stream of innovation without being distracted from their workflow, so this month we’re taking a look back to highlight the most interesting ways that Google Apps has grown up over time. Last week, we started with Gmail and Google Calendar.

Today we’ll break down how Google Docs and Sites support better teamwork, mobile productivity, ease of use and trustworthiness – four areas where Google Apps excels. We’re holding a webinar next Thursday to explore these developments (details below), so join us if you’re interested in learning more. We hope you’ll find a few capabilities here that you didn’t know about before, or haven’t tried in some time.

Designed for Teams
Google Docs and Sites were built from the ground up to make teamwork seamless. Being able to simultaneously edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations without the hassles of attachments is just the start.

Great documents come from great discussions, so in addition to collaborative editing, Google Docs also enables conversations right alongside your content. Comments can be directed to specific co-editors, who can then respond in the document’s discussion panel or over email.
Sometimes you want to collaborate freely with others in a spreadsheet, but other situations call for a bit more control. Data validation lets you enforce cell input restrictions. You can also protect sheets – making them view-only – or hide sheets entirely within a collaborative workbook.
Forms in Google Docs also offer a structured way of collecting information in a spreadsheet from others. Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended, and your surveys can include branching logic to display different questions to a respondent depending on how they respond to earlier questions.
When a document, spreadsheet or presentation isn’t able to truly capture an idea, try a collaborative drawing. The same real-time co-editing found in those other formats is part of the drawing editor, too.
Across documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, revision history lets you see any edit made by any collaborator since the file was created, which comes in handy when you need to revert changes or view a previous version.
Google Sites can really bring a collection of information together neatly – including embedded documents, spreadsheets and presentations – into a collaborative team, project or public website. Anyone with edit access can contribute and share, no programming skills required.
In today’s world of distributed contributors, working across language barriers can be critical. With automatic document translation, site translation, and even a translation spreadsheet function all powered by Google Translate, being productive in multiple languages has never been easier.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, so we added built-in analytics within Google Docs and Google Sites, which provides content owners with aggregate stats and metrics about who’s accessing their files and sites.
Beyond collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, you can upload and share any type of file with Google Docs, including pictures, videos, and special file formats like CAD drawings. Simply upload to Google Docs and decide who should have access. You can even set permissions to a mailing list, which automatically adjusts access as individuals are added to and removed from the group.
Shared collections is a great way to efficiently manage sharing access across a group of files. Instead of sharing file-by-file, you can share a whole folder of information all at once.
And if you’re looking to bring more efficient collaboration to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint without upgrading to Office 2010, give Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office a try.

Productive Anywhere
Mobile access to email, contacts and calendar information is pretty common now, but access to documents, spreadsheets, presentations and team sites across all major smartphone platforms is unique to Google Apps.

Unlike software and files that live on one specific computer, you can access and work with information in Google Docs and Google Sites from any computer without hassles like software licenses and VPN connections.
Beyond simple mobile document viewing, you can edit documents and spreadsheets from Android and iOS devices. This can be a faster way to make a simple change than firing up your laptop.
The Google Docs mobile app for Android allows you to browse, search, open and share your Google Docs files from your phone or tablet. This app even lets you convert mobile phone pictures into editable documents.
Google Sites are also optimized for smaller screens through automatic mobile rendering. When you’re viewing a site on a small screen, we can automatically display a version of the site that’s easier to use on your phone or tablet.

Simple & Affordable
Google Docs and Sites bring together the best of two worlds: the power of the web and the richness of traditional software applications, all at a dramatically lower cost than buying, installing and managing client software.

Google documents and spreadsheets have quietly rolled out many basic word processing and spreadsheet capabilities that people use on a daily basis. If it’s been a while since your last encounter with Google Docs, try out headers and footers, pagination, customizable charts, range sorting, data filtering, conditional formatting, in-cell dropdown and validation, a solver tool and pivot tables, just to name a few.
Magic autofill completes spreadsheet lists based on a theme, not just a simple autofill pattern. For example, if you start with Brazil, France, and Tanzania, magic autofill will suggests names of other countries. Hold the Control key while autofilling (Option key on a Mac) to trigger magic autofill.
Spreadsheets can also help you automatically pull statistics, facts and figures from the internet with the GoogleLookup function. For example, =GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users") returns the latest statistic, along with a source citation.
In documents, you can tap the web for dictionary definitions. Definitions for new words are available in real-time, unlike static dictionaries in traditional software.
Google Docs also supports browser drag and drop actions that you may have learned in traditional desktop software. You can drag pictures from your desktop to embed images in documents, and drag files from your computer to upload files into Google Docs. Many types of files can be converted in high fidelity so you can continue editing as a team, and optical character recognition (OCR) turns images of text and PDFs into editable files as well.
Templates are also a fast way to get started on a new project. Google Docs offers thousands of document, spreadsheet and presentation templates, and Google Sites also includes many starter site templates to help team projects get going.
Getting familiar with our keyboard shortcuts can really speed up simple tasks. Next time, try out our keyboard shortcuts for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and sites.

Pure & Proven Cloud
As with Gmail, the collaboration tools in Google Apps for Business are backed by a service uptime guarantee and transparent system performance information. And compared to sharing information using old tools like thumb drives, Google Apps can help businesses keep their data a whole lot safer, too.

Our 99.9% uptime SLA guarantees reliable access to Google Apps, and our commitment doesn’t have any exceptions for planned maintenance. This is because our systems are designed to handle updates without interrupting service for customers.
Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
Google Docs and Sites have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
With default https connections, your information is encrypted as it travels from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As with Gmail and Google Calendar, Google Docs and Sites have been on a fast innovation path (85 improvements last year alone!) that you just can’t get from typical software upgrades every three to five years. So if you missed any of these new features over the years, give them a go – you’re bound to find a few that’ll help you work more efficiently. And if you’d like to hear more about many of these updates, join us for a free webinar next Thursday.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Docs and Google Sites
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

2-step verification: stay safe around the world in 40 languages

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 19:09:00 +0000

Posted by Nishit Shah, Product Manager, Google Security

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Online Security Blog)

Earlier this year, we introduced a security feature called 2-step verification that helps protect your Google Account from threats like password compromise and identity theft. By entering a one-time verification code from your phone after you type your password, you can make it much tougher for an unauthorized person to gain access to your account.

People have told us how much they like the feature, which is why we're thrilled to offer 2-step verification in 40 languages and in more than 150 countries. There’s never been a better time to set it up: Examples in the news of password theft and data breaches constantly remind us to stay on our toes and take advantage of tools to properly secure our valuable online information. Email, social networking and other online accounts still get compromised today, but 2-step verification cuts those risks significantly.

We recommend investing some time in keeping your information safe by watching our 2-step verification video to learn how to quickly increase your Google Account’s resistance to common problems like reused passwords and malware and phishing scams. Wherever you are in the world, sign up for 2-step verification and help keep yourself one step ahead of the bad guys.

To learn more about online safety tips and resources, visit our ongoing security blog series, and review a couple of simple tips and tricks for online security. Also, watch our video about five easy ways to help you stay safe and secure as you browse.

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:34:00 +0000

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

Google Apps has come a long way since its introduction a few years ago, with continuous improvements every week rather than disruptive shifts every few years. It’s like watching your kids grow up; you don’t notice the changes from day to day, but look back at a photo from last year and the differences can be striking.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look back to revisit key innovations from the last few years in four categories that define Google Apps: team collaboration, mobile productivity, ease of use, and trustworthiness. Today we’re starting with Gmail and Google Calendar, and many of the capabilities below have become customer favorites. If you’d like to hear more about these developments, we invite you to join our webinar on Wednesday (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps makes working in teams easier. Gmail and Google Calendar support teamwork in ways that traditional applications just can’t offer. Give these features a try if they’re new to you, or take a fresh look if it’s been a while:

Have an instant message conversation right from your inbox, and once you’re chatting, switch to a voice, video or group chat. It all works in the browser, not in another application.
When a contact isn’t online to chat, call their phone right from Gmail with your computer’s speakers and microphone.
Gmail helps you connect with the right people when you send traditional email messages, too, with full-fledged capabilities first tested as Labs features. By analyzing signals in your email, Gmail recommends recipients you might have forgotten, and displays a warning when you might have added the wrong person.
Once you’ve started an email conversation, Gmail’s people widget shows how you’ve interacted with recipients recently over email, in meetings and through shared documents.
Google Apps supports over 40 languages, and automatic translation can really help break down language barriers. Gmail’s message translation feature instantly converts foreign text to your native language. Translation bots provide real-time translation in chat, so you can even IM with people in other languages.
Finding a good meeting time with a group of busy people can be a chore, so we introduced the smart rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs. This tool automatically explores everyone’s schedule to find the best times when attendees can all get together.
Appointment slots also simplifies meeting scheduling by letting you establish open meeting times that other people in your organization can sign themselves up for, like “office hours”.
Once you’ve set up a meeting, we know there’s often meeting-related content to be shared with attendees. The event attachments Lab in Google Calendar lets you add Google Docs files to meetings, so everyone has the right information at their fingertips.
And sometimes you just need help managing email, contacts and calendar, and that’s where account delegation comes into play. Gmail and Google Calendar allow you to designate others who can manage your email, appointments and contacts on your behalf.

Productive Anywhere
Communication tools wouldn’t be much good if you were required to work from your desk, which is why we support full access to email, contacts and calendar on any modern browser and all major mobile device platforms.

On your computer, Gmail and Google Calendar run in the browser without any other specialized software, so you can be productive just as easily at work, at home or on the road from PCs, Macs, Linux computers and netbooks. Features like Priority Inbox even work when you're on the go.
With Android phones and tablets, just sign in with your Google Apps account, and your data automatically syncs to the Gmail, Calendar and Contacts apps on your device.
Google Sync enables email, calendar and contacts synchronization on iOS, Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices.
Push synchronization is also available for BlackBerry devices through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Simple & Affordable
We built Gmail and Google Calendar to stay out of your way and help you handle tasks quickly. At $50 per user per year or $5 per month with no commitment, Google Apps packs a powerful punch in an intuitive package that anyone can use.

With 25GB of email storage for every employee, the ability to handle attachments up to 25MB apiece and room for 25,000 contacts, Gmail is designed so you can stop worrying about account capacity and focus on more productive things.
With all that space for email, you need a fast and reliable way to find old messages, and the power of Google search is essential. Gmail’s search options quickly tame even the largest message archives.
Priority Inbox learns patterns in how you use email, and automatically filters incoming email to put the most important messages – email from your boss perhaps – right at the top. We found this feature alone saves people 6% of the time they spend on email.
Keeping spam out of your inbox is another big productivity booster, and Gmail's spam filters are continuously improved to weed out unsafe and unwanted messages.
Like the great cilantro debate, some people like their email as threaded “conversations”, while others prefer a traditional inbox displaying individual messages. You can have it either way in Gmail now, threaded or unthreaded.
Instead of downloading attachments and opening them with another application, Gmail lets you view over a dozen different attachment types right in your browser. It’s faster, safer and more affordable than opening attachments with other software.
Beyond attachments, Gmail lets you preview other types of content without leaving your inbox, like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps locations and Picasa slideshows. You can even build custom content gadgets for other types of data residing in your existing business systems.
Gmail also helps you avoid email snafus, like forgetting to add an attachment. You’ll see an attachment warning if it looks like you meant to send a file but didn’t add one.
When you write a message and immediately have sender’s regret, just use the undo send Lab to recall the message. This lets you edit and resend, or just discard the message.
If working with a mouse just isn’t fast enough, try Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. You can power through your inbox faster than ever by learning a few simple keystroke combinations.
Google Calendar helps frequent flyers manage their appointments with time zone auto-detect. This feature recognizes where in the world you are, and automatically adjusts your schedule to reflect local time.
Last but not least, an oldie but a goodie: quick add in Google Calendar. Instead of filling out a form to create a new event, just summarize your event in natural language (like “Revew budget with Clark next Tuesday at 2pm”), then click “Add”.

Pure & Proven Cloud
Not only do Gmail and Google Calendar help boost productivity, they’re more reliable than traditional systems. Many customers also feel that their data is safer than ever with Google Apps.

Over the course of 2010, Gmail was available 99.984% of the time, and so far in 2011 we're at 99.99%. That’s less than seven minutes of downtime per month, a 40-fold improvement over traditional systems.
Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
Gmail and Google Calendar have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
With default https connections, your messages are always encrypted as they travel from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As you can see, we’ve been busy making Gmail and Google Calendar better and better, so if you haven’t explored some of these recent improvements, maybe it’s time to take another look. We’ll be hosting a free webinar on Wednesday where we’ll cover many of these updates in a bit more detail, so please join us if you’d like to hear more.

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Update: webinar schedule updated to reflect correct start time from the registration page.

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 18:32:00 +0000

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google Apps has come a long way since its introduction a few years ago, with continuous improvements every week rather than disruptive shifts every few years. It’s like watching your kids grow up; you don’t notice the changes from day to day, but look back at a photo from last year and the differences can be striking.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look back to revisit key innovations from the last few years in four categories that define Google Apps: team collaboration, mobile productivity, ease of use, and trustworthiness. Today we’re starting with Gmail and Google Calendar, and many of the capabilities below have become customer favorites. If you’d like to hear more about these developments, we invite you to join our webinar on Wednesday (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps makes working in teams easier. Gmail and Google Calendar support teamwork in ways that traditional applications just can’t offer. Give these features a try if they’re new to you, or take a fresh look if it’s been a while:

Have an instant message conversation right from your inbox, and once you’re chatting, switch to a voice, video or group chat. It all works in the browser, not in another application.
When a contact isn’t online to chat, call their phone right from Gmail with your computer’s speakers and microphone.
Gmail helps you connect with the right people when you send traditional email messages, too, with full-fledged capabilities first tested as Labs features. By analyzing signals in your email, Gmail recommends recipients you might have forgotten, and displays a warning when you might have added the wrong person.
Once you’ve started an email conversation, Gmail’s people widget shows how you’ve interacted with recipients recently over email, in meetings and through shared documents.
Google Apps supports over 40 languages, and automatic translation can really help break down language barriers. Gmail’s message translation feature instantly converts foreign text to your native language. Translation bots provide real-time translation in chat, so you can even IM with people in other languages.
Finding a good meeting time with a group of busy people can be a chore, so we introduced the smart scheduler in Google Calendar Labs. This tool automatically explores everyone’s schedule to find the best times when attendees can all get together.
Appointment slots also simplifies meeting scheduling by letting you establish open meeting times that other people in your organization can sign themselves up for, like “office hours”.
Once you’ve set up a meeting, we know there’s often meeting-related content to be shared with attendees. The event attachments Lab in Google Calendar lets you add Google Docs files to meetings, so everyone has the right information at their fingertips.
And sometimes you just need help managing email, contacts and calendar, and that’s where account delegation comes into play. Gmail and Google Calendar allow you to designate others who can manage your email, appointments and contacts on your behalf.

Productive AnywhereCommunication tools wouldn’t be much good if you were required to work from your desk, which is why we support full access to email, contacts and calendar on any modern browser and all major mobile device platforms.

On your computer, Gmail and Google Calendar run in the browser without any other specialized software, so you can be productive just as easily at work, at home or on the road from PCs, Macs, Linux computers and netbooks. Features like Priority Inbox even work when you're on the go.
With Android phones and tablets, just sign in with your Google Apps account, and your data automatically syncs to the Gmail, Calendar and Contacts apps on your device.
Google Sync enables email, calendar and contacts synchronization on iOS, Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices.
Push synchronization is also available for BlackBerry devices through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Simple & AffordableWe built Gmail and Google Calendar to stay out of your way and help you handle tasks quickly. At $50 per user per year or $5 per month with no commitment, Google Apps packs a powerful punch in an intuitive package that anyone can use.

With 25GB of email storage for every employee, the ability to handle attachments up to 20MB apiece and room for 25,000 contacts, Gmail is designed so you can stop worrying about account capacity and focus on more productive things.
With all that space for email, you need a fast and reliable way to find old messages, and the power of Google search is essential. Gmail’s search options quickly tame even the largest message archives.
Priority Inbox learns patterns in how you use email, and automatically filters incoming email to put the most important messages – email from your boss perhaps – right at the top. We found this feature alone saves people 6% of the time they spend on email.
Keeping spam out of your inbox is another big productivity booster, and Gmail's spam filters are continuously improved to weed out unsafe and unwanted messages.
Like the great cilantro debate, some people like their email as threaded “conversations”, while others prefer a traditional inbox displaying individual messages. You can have it either way in Gmail now, threaded or unthreaded.
Instead of downloading attachments and opening them with another application, Gmail lets you view over a dozen different attachment types right in your browser. It’s faster, safer and more affordable than opening attachments with other software.
Beyond attachments, Gmail lets you preview other types of content without leaving your inbox, like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps locations and Picasa slideshows. You can even build custom content gadgets for other types of data residing in your existing business systems.
Gmail also helps you avoid email snafus, like forgetting to add an attachment. You’ll see an attachment warning if it looks like you meant to send a file but didn’t add one.
When you write a message and immediately have sender’s regret, just use the undo send Lab to recall the message. This lets you edit and resend, or just discard the message.
If working with a mouse just isn’t fast enough, try Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. You can power through your inbox faster than ever by learning a few simple keystroke combinations.
Google Calendar helps frequent flyers manage their appointments with time zone auto-detect. This feature recognizes where in the world you are, and automatically adjusts your schedule to reflect local time.
Last but not least, an oldie but a goodie: quick add in Google Calendar. Instead of filling out a form to create a new event, just summarize your event in natural language (like “Revew budget with Clark next Tuesday at 2pm”), then click “Add”.

Pure & Proven CloudNot only do Gmail and Google Calendar help boost productivity, they’re more reliable than traditional systems. Many customers also feel that their data is safer than ever with Google Apps.

Over the course of 2010, Gmail was available 99.984% of the time, and so far in 2011 we're at 99.99%. That’s less than seven minutes of downtime per month, a 40-fold improvement over traditional systems.
Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
Gmail and Google Calendar have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
With default https connections, your messages are always encrypted as they travel from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As you can see, we’ve been busy making Gmail and Google Calendar better and better, so if you haven’t explored some of these recent improvements, maybe it’s time to take another look. We’ll be hosting a free webinar on Wednesday where we’ll cover many of these updates in a bit more detail, so please join us if you’d like to hear more. A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google CalendarWednesday, July 20th, 201111:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDTRegister here

Gaining Altitude: A New Way to Think about Your Inbox

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Editor’s note: Continuing our Gaining Altitude series, we’ve invited guest blogger Marsha Egan, CEO of InboxDetox.com and an internationally recognized workplace productivity expert and speaker. Named one of Pennsylvania’s Top 50 Women in Business, her “12 Step Program for Curing Your Email E-ddiction” was featured in several publications and on ABC Nightly News and Fox News.

Overwhelmed by your inbox? There’s never been a better time to shift the way you think about your email -- this week is international "Clean Out Your Inbox Week."

It’s a fact: email isn’t going anywhere. And the number of email messages we receive will only grow. In 2010, there were 294 billion emails sent daily, up almost 50 billion from the previous year. With so many incoming messages, it has become a real challenge to avoid being distracted by the urge to view or work on new emails rather than working on truly important matters.

Despite all of the inbox management tools on the market today, and Google's Priority Inbox is definitely one of the best, many people still have the propensity to leave items in their inboxes as a way to remind them of upcoming tasks or just to keep them handy. This can be self-defeating behavior.

Maintaining a cluttered inbox is a productivity killer
Why? First, that cluttered inbox is a source of stress the minute you open your inbox. It essentially shows you everything you are not going to get done that day. Second, it is a source of distraction, because when people scroll up and down seeking tasks to select, they inevitably open the short easy ones, instead of focusing on the priority items.

Shift the way you view and use your inbox
Picture your email inbox as a Postal Service mailbox. The Postal Service delivers our mail to that mailbox, we pull the mail out of the mailbox, sort through it, throw half of it away, and put the rest in piles, most of which will be dealt with later. What we don't do, is put letters back into the mailbox, to be sorted through again tomorrow. Why not think of our email inboxes the same way?

Differentiate between working and sorting email
When people groan upon the suggestion of cleaning out their inboxes, my guess is that they are thinking they must work on or handle every item in it. When you go into your inbox with the mindset of sorting the messages -- not working them -- the task becomes much more tolerable and doable! It becomes a matter of dragging and dropping messages into folders to be handled later just as you do with your postal mail. In Gmail, you can create two labels: Action A, and Action B. A is for the important items, B for the less important. And once you’ve labeled a message, you can archive it and easily search for it later.

Setting reminders is the key
Every time you drag and drop a message into an action folder, or label it in Gmail, decide at that moment when you will view the item again to work on it. These reminders become a critical part of each day's daily planning, and relieve you from having to scroll up and down either your inbox or your action folder to decide what to work on next.

In Gmail, this is easy. Create a corresponding Task for each item you label, and assign it the date you plan to work it. These tips and more are included among the "12 Steps to Curing Your E-mail E-ddiction" contained in my book, "Inbox Detox and the Habit of E-mail Excellence" (available on our website or on Amazon,) and are further explained on our blog at http://InboxDetox.com/blog.

Why should you want a clean inbox?
Simple. An empty inbox is the result of managing email well. It doesn’t mean that you’ve worked every message, but it does mean that you have sorted every message into a folder or given it a label that allows you to retrieve it when the time comes. By sorting or labeling email to Action A or B and setting a task reminder for when you plan to return to it, you will go a long way towards managing your inbox, rather than having it manage you.

So, here’s to lookin’ at your (empty) inbox!

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Apps Team

Destination: Dial Tone — Getting Google Apps to 99.99%

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:00:00 +0000

People expect email to be as reliable as their phone's dial tone, and our goal is to deliver that kind of always-on availability with our applications. It's been a couple years since we blogged about the reliability of Gmail, so we thought we'd share some changes to our Google Apps service level agreement (SLA) and some new data.

Strengthening our SLA
We're pleased to make a couple changes that improve our SLA for our customers. Unlike most providers, we don't plan for our users to be down, even when we're upgrading our services or maintaining our systems. For that reason, we're removing the SLA clause that allows for scheduled downtime. Going forward, all downtime will be counted and applied towards the customer's SLA. We are the first major cloud provider to eliminate maintenance windows from their service level agreement.

We're also amending our SLA so that any intermittent downtime is counted. Previously, a period of less than ten minutes was not included. We believe any instance that causes our users to experience downtime should be avoided -- period.

Gmail: 99.984%
In 2010, Gmail was available 99.984 percent of the time, for both business and consumer users. 99.984 percent translates to seven minutes of downtime per month over the last year. That seven-minute average represents the accumulation of small delays of a few seconds, and most people experienced no issues at all. For those few who were disrupted for a longer period of time, we're very sorry, and Google Apps for Business customers received compensation where appropriate. We're particularly pleased with this level of reliability since it was accomplished without any planned downtime while launching 30 new features and adding tens of millions of active users.

Seven minutes of downtime compares very favorably with on-premises email, which is subject to much higher rates of interruption that hurt employee productivity. The latest research from the Radicati Group found that on-premises email averaged 3.8 hours of downtime per month. In comparison to Radicati's metrics for on-premises email, our calculations suggest that Gmail is 32 times more reliable than the average email system, and 46 times more available than Microsoft Exchange®.¹

Fortunately Microsoft Exchange® customers can still benefit from the reliability of Gmail with Google Message Continuity. Comparable data for Microsoft BPOS® is unavailable, though their service notifications show 113 incidents in 2010: 74 unplanned outages, and 33 days with planned downtime.

Email is much more complex than your home phone, so making it as reliable as the dial tone is no mean feat. Despite our best efforts, we will have outages in the future. But we're proud of our track record so far and we're working hard to make it even better. Every time you reach for your phone you expect it to work. And we believe that is a worthwhile benchmark.

1. The Radicati Group, 2010. "Corporate IT Survey – Messaging & Collaboration, 2010-2011"

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director

Update: clarification added to fifth paragraph.

Spam takes another hit: email authentication now available to millions of Google Apps customers

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 17:00:00 +0000

Google has been an early and consistent supporter of email authentication technologies, which help ensure senders are who they say they are, and in turn help to curb spam. Since we launched Gmail in 2004, we have supported email-signing standards such as DomainKeys and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to help validate outbound mail with digital signatures. On the inbound side, to help our users identify email from verified senders, in 2008 we worked with eBay and PayPal to authenticate their mail with DKIM and block all unsigned messages purportedly from those companies destined for Gmail users.

But the spam and phishing epidemics aren’t letting up – every day Gmail filters out billions of unwanted messages from our users’ inboxes – so we’ve been focused on creating helpful tools and working with the email industry to bring solutions that will help our customers. Email authentication is an important mechanism to verify senders’ identities, giving users a tool to recognize potential spam messages. In addition, many mail systems can display whether a received message is DKIM-verified, which helps spam filters verify and assess the overall reputation of the sender’s domain: messages from untrusted senders are treated more skeptically than those from good senders.

Today, we mark another notch in the spam-fighting belt: we’re making it possible for all Google Apps customers to sign their outgoing messages with DKIM, so their sent mail is less likely to get caught up in recipients’ spam filters. Google Apps is the first major email platform – including on-premises providers – to offer simple DKIM signing at no extra cost. Once again, the power of the cloud has made it possible for us to bring this feature to millions of customers quickly and affordably.

“We help the most-phished brands on the Internet manage their mail authentication programs, and the Google Apps solution is the simplest that we've encountered. Configuring DKIM for in-house systems requires plug-ins or additional gateway servers, making a company's mail environment more complex and difficult to manage. As a Google Apps customer, this feature took us only a few clicks in the control panel and an update of our DNS," said Kelly Wanser, CEO of eCert, an industry leader in providing critical protection against email fraud.

Starting today, all Google Apps administrators can enable DKIM signing in the “Advanced Tools” tab of the control panel. As more email providers around the world support DKIM signing, spam fighters will have an even more reliable signal to separate unwanted mail from good mail. We’re pleased to let millions more organizations use DKIM with this improvement.

Posted by Adam Dawes, Google Enterprise Product Manager

Google Apps innovation: join our quarter in review webinar

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 19:03:00 +0000

100% web technologies have many advantages for customers over legacy software and server technologies, but the ability to access improvements without doing any work is particularly important. By simply refreshing the browser, new features just show up without any complex software patching or hardware upgrades. This is how software should “just work”, and the power of the cloud makes it possible.

Because of this rapid acceleration of innovation, we wanted to make it easier for customers to keep up-to-date with what’s new in Google Apps. For nearly real-time information, administrators and users can follow along through RSS, email alerts or Twitter. This year, we also began hosting periodic “quarter in review” webinars to sum up what recently launched. If you’d like a refresher on previous quarters’ developments, you’re welcome to watch the replays on YouTube.

Next Wednesday I’ll be hosting the Q4 2010 recap where you’ll hear about powerful new features like mobile document editing, automatic email prioritization in Gmail, new mobile device security capabilities, granular application policy controls, the addition of more than 60 additional applications from Google and much, much more. I hope you’ll be able to join me next week.

Register to attend the live webinar on December 22, 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm GMT.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Expanding the Google Apps Reporting API for resellers

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Cross-posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog

The Google Apps Reporting API lets administrators programmatically get information about their Google Apps environment, and today we're expanding access to the API for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. Resellers can use the API to gain a better understanding of how their customers are using Google Apps, so they can better personalize the service they provide to their customers.

Specifically, resellers can retrieve the following usage reports with the API:

Accounts – Contains a list of the customer’s end-user accounts on a particular day.
Activity – Identifies the number of customer end-user accounts as well as the number of active and idle accounts over several different time periods.
Disk Space – Shows the amount of disk space used by a customer’s mailboxes.
Email Clients – Identifies how the customer’s end-users access their accounts on a day-by-day basis.
Summary – Contains the customer’s total number of accounts, total mailbox storage usage and total mailbox quota.

The Reporting API is one of several features we’ve been working on to let Google Apps resellers – over 2,000 and growing – understand and serve their customers better. If you’re an IT solution provider, we invite you to learn more and get started building a practice around bringing Google Apps to your customers. The Google Apps Authorized Reseller program is designed to help you enhance and strengthen your customer relationships.

Posted by Namrata Gupta, Google Apps Engineer

Optional attendees in Google Calendar

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 17:05:00 +0000

Time is one of our most precious resources. Despite their necessity, meetings tend to vary in importance for different attendees. John might be really interested in his team’s weekly meeting, whereas Jane, who is working on a unrelated project, may want to skip it.

Guests’ roles in meetings tend to vary as well. Some people have to be there to lead the meeting or help make decisions, whereas others are gathering information they may be able to digest just as well via the notes. Without knowing which attendees are crucial and which are optional, it can be difficult to know which meetings you really need to attend.

That’s where Google Calendar’s new “Optional attendees” feature comes in. With a couple clicks, you can openly communicate the importance of a meeting for each attendee. Click on the “Make some attendees optional link” above the guest list and then toggle the role of each attendee by clicking the icon next to his or her name. So far, this feature has helped us more effectively manage our own time on the Calendar team — we hope it does the same for you.

Posted by Karol Stosiek, Software Engineering Intern

Google Apps shared contacts, now with double the capacity

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 23:43:00 +0000

Starting today, Google Apps for Business, Education and Government customers have space for twice as many contacts as before in their organization’s shared contacts. IT administrators told us that they needed more capacity, so we upped the limit from 25,000 to 50,000 entries. Shared contacts are part of the organization’s global address list (GAL), and these contacts auto-complete across Google Apps to help employees work faster and more accurately. Once you start typing to address an email message, invite colleagues to a calendar event, or share a Google Docs file, you can just click a recipient’s name to complete the entry.

We’ve also made optimizations to the Shared Contacts API so administrators can upload contacts much more quickly. Enjoy!

Posted by Mike Helmick and Petr Konecny, Software Engineers

Migrating from Lotus Notes® just got easier

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Earlier this week, we released improved versions of Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes and Google Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes. The migration tool has more than 40 new features to make moving from your Lotus Notes environment to Google's cloud even easier. Here are our favorites:

Support for OAuth, so you don't need to store administrator and user passwords to migrate mail, calendar and contacts
User provisioning can be run as a separate module prior to user migration, so you can verify users have been provisioned as you like before migrating data
Enhanced logging capabilities so you can see what migration actions were taken
Support for assigning group owners from migrated Domino Directory groups
Improved support for migrated calendar events and push synchronization for BlackBerry® devices
Simpler migration tool interface

Head over to the download page to read more about the new migration functionality and get the update. Please also visit our user forums if you have any questions or comments!

Posted by Colin Neale, Technical Solutions Engineer

How much is faster collaboration worth to businesses?

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:17:00 +0000

Over the last few years, saving money on an email solution has been the most common driver for companies switching from legacy on-premises systems to Google Apps. But customers aren’t just using Google Apps for email. They’re also adopting innovative teamwork tools like web-based documents, spreadsheets, presentations and project sites, and we now know the value of improved productivity by “going Google” is actually even larger than the substantial cost savings.

To quantify the complete value of Google Apps including collaboration and productivity benefits, we enlisted the help of Forrester Consulting to measure the “Total Economic Impact” that a typical company can expect over three years, moving from legacy on-premises infrastructure to Google’s web-based solution. After dozens of in-depth customer and stakeholder interviews and hundreds of survey responses from IT administrators and end-users, we're excited to share the research results, and we invite you to download and share Forrester's report.

The key findings of Forrester’s analysis bring the benefits of Google Apps into sharp focus. The following results are what a typical large customer with 18,000 employees and several offices around the world can experience by making the switch.

Over 300% ROI
The return on investment of switching to Google Apps is 391%. (307% after adjusting for risk.) In plain English, for every dollar spent on Google Apps, the system pays back the initial investment and more than three more dollars in additional business value.
Dramatically improved productivity
The value of improved productivity from Google Apps is even greater than costs saved by making the switch. Features like fast email search, integrated IM, message threading, great spam filtering, collaborative sites and real-time, multi-person collaboration in documents, spreadsheets and presentations all contribute to the productivity improvements quantified by Forrester.
Break-even under 7 months
The break-even payback period of switching to Google Apps is very short – faster than seven months. After the investment quickly pays for itself, the productivity gains from Google Apps continue to grow year after year.
NPV over $10,000,000
The risk-adjusted Net Present Value (NPV) of switching to Google Apps is over $10,000,000 for the typical large business. Productivity gains contribute over $7,000,000 to this amount.

Of course, both Google and Forrester strongly advise readers to conduct their own impact analysis when evaluating Google Apps, but this research solidifies what the Google Apps team has been hearing loud and clear from customers about the business benefits they’ve experienced. If you’re already using Google Apps, we’d love to hear your story too, and maybe even feature your organization in the future.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Automating business processes in Google Sites with Google Apps Scripts

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 15:30:00 +0000

Google Sites lets you create public or internal web sites, and today we’re enabling scripts to support multi-step workflows in sites.

For example, your company can create a site for employees to browse and register for training sessions and career development programs. On the page describing each training session or class, you could add a “Register Now” button, which would automatically add registrants to the class roster, add the details of the session to each participant's Google Calendar, and email users to confirm enrollment. All of these automated actions can be driven by a script embedded in the site.

Starting today, you can create, edit, and launch Google Apps Scripts from any Google Site, which allows you to automate business processes that involve multiple applications. As in the example above, an Apps Script function can automate tasks such as sending emails, scheduling calendar events, creating and updating site pages using data from other systems, and more.

You can build a script by clicking “More actions” > “Manage site” > “Apps Scripts.” Once you’ve added a script to your site, you can add links or buttons to trigger the script from any page. For tips to get started with scripts, visit the Google Apps Script site.

Posted by Laurent Tu, Google Apps Software Engineer

Google at Gartner in Orlando and Tokyo

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 20:22:00 +0000

This week the Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Orlando, Florida. Thousands of IT leaders and CIOs from around the world have gathered to hear about the latest trends and innovations in IT, discuss issues facing their teams, and learn how to deliver more business value to their organizations.

On Monday, Michael Lock, VP of Enterprise Sales, spoke to a standing-room-only crowd about the history of enterprise technologies and Google’s vision for the cloud. Michael discussed how the growing popularity of tablet devices enables an entirely new class of applications and new ways of doing business. 100% web technologies bring faster innovation and higher productivity by ensuring that everyone is always on “version now” of both their applications and their data. Michael also highlighted Google’s commitment to enterprise technologies and our increasing investment here.

Today is the last day of the symposium in Orlando. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to learn more about our enterprise products, our vision for the cloud, or just to meet the team.

Orlando isn’t the last Gartner conference of the year though. In fact, next week we’ll also be at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo in Tokyo, Japan, where Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise, will keynote a session on critical trends in technology and Google’s innovative approach to enterprise on October 27th. Japan’s Google Enterprise team will be at the booth throughout the entire event, so come say hello.

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Apps team

Going Google made easier with better IMAP and PST data migration

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:39:00 +0000

Customers moving to Google Apps are migrating email, calendar and contacts data from several different legacy systems, and many are doing so from mixed sources including data stored on end user machines and company servers. With this in mind, we’re constantly trying to make it really easy, fast and painless for you to migrate data in each of these scenarios.

We launched Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange last March to help Microsoft Exchange administrators perform centrally-managed migrations from Exchange servers. In May we announced Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook, which allows end-users to move their data from PST files and Outlook profiles. Customers are also migrating from other systems such as Novell® GroupWise®, hosted Exchange and sometimes even from previous Gmail accounts. We are happy to announce that we are extending support for these migrations going forward with the introduction of new features to Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange:

IMAP support – Administrators can use the tool’s new IMAP capabilities to migrate email from systems like Novell Groupwise to Google Apps, or even migrate data between Google Apps accounts.

PST support – Administrators can migrate PST files on behalf of users in their domain once they have aggregated users' data files in one location.

Better support for hosted Exchange – Administrators can now migrate data from hosted Exchange by running the migration tool on local servers, without requiring the Exchange hosting partner to run any special software on their end.

Check out the on-demand webcast to learn more about these new features, best practices, and more.

Posted by Abhishek Bapna, Product Manager

Update on Wave for Google Apps

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:24:00 +0000

Soon we’ll be giving Google Apps customers access to many more Google services. In the meantime, we want to share an update on Google Wave, a web app for real time communication and collaboration, which has been available to customers in Labs since May. Since we first showed Wave as a developer preview at Google I/O last year, it set a high bar for what was possible in a web browser. But despite its compelling features for particular tasks, such as discussing and developing content in small groups, Wave has not grown as quickly as we would have liked. For that reason, we don’t plan to continue to develop Wave as a stand-alone product, though we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year. We have already open sourced several components related to Google Wave, so our customers and partners can continue the innovation. In addition, we will work on tools so that users easily "liberate" their content from Wave.

You can read more on future plans for Wave on the Google Blog. We are proud of the work the Wave team has done, which has pushed web technology forward, and we will extend the technology for use in other Google projects. Finally, we are hugely thankful to those who have been testing Google Wave with us over the past couple months.

Posted by Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director

Drag and drop attachments received in Gmail from Google Chrome to your desktop

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 20:20:00 +0000

If you use Google Chrome, now you can drag and drop attachments from Gmail messages to your desktop.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Partner Edition and Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
In Chrome, drag the icon for a Gmail attachment to your desktop.

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/drag-and-drop-attachments-to-save-them.html

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Table resizing in documents and more Google Docs features

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:16:00 +0000

Several new features have been added to Google Docs:
- Tables in documents can now be resized
- Custom entries can now be added to the spell check dictionary for documents
- The document ruler can now be set to 'on' or 'off' across sessions
- Entire drawings can be copied to the web clipboard

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team, Partner Edition and Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To resize tables in documents, click and drag the row or column dividing lines.

To add a custom entry to the spell check dictionary, right-click your new word and select 'Add to dictionary'.

To turn the document ruler 'on' or 'off' across sessions, click 'View' and change your 'Show ruler' preference.

To copy an entire drawing to the web clipboard, click the web clipboard icon and select 'Copy entire drawing to web clipboard'.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/08/table-resizing-and-other-niceties-in.html

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iGoogle now replacing the Start Page

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 23:40:00 +0000

The Start Page is being automatically be converted to iGoogle. The Start Page gadgets your users have configured will be migrated to iGoogle pages, after which users can modify their iGoogle gadgets, tabs and themes. Your Start Page web address will automatically redirect your users to iGoogle.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by the Start Page

How to access what's new:
To reach iGoogle, visit http://partnerpage.google.com/yourdomain.com. Be sure to replace "yourdomain.com" with your actual domain name.

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Google Apps for Government now available

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:00:00 +0000

To meet the security and policy requirements of federal, state and local government agencies in the U.S., we have introduced Google Apps for Government. In addition to the applications and administrative controls available in the business edition of Google Apps, the service for government agencies has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
US English

For more information:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/introducing-google-apps-for-government.html

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Introducing user policy management for Google Apps

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:00:00 +0000

In the past six months, we’ve released a series of new features giving administrators more controls to manage Google Apps within their organizations. Recent additions include multi-domain support, new data migration tools, SSL enforcement capabilities, more mobile device security controls, and the ability to tailor Google Apps with more than a hundred applications from the new Google Apps Marketplace. Today, we’re excited to announce one of the most highly requested features from administrators: user policy management.

Now administrators can segment their users into organizational units and control which applications are enabled or disabled for each group. For example, a manufacturing firm might want to give their office workers access to Google Talk, but not their production line employees. Mayooran Rajan, CTO of Revevol Consulting, noted, "We work with businesses with 100 to 20,000 employees moving from on-premise solutions to Google Apps. The new user policy management feature helps us tailor Google Apps and provide businesses with granular control for each department within their company."

Organizations can also use this functionality to test applications with pilot users before making them more widely available. Sheri Stahler, Associate Vice President for Computer Services at Temple University said, “Using the new user policy management feature in Google Apps, we’re able to test out new applications like Google Wave with a subset of users to decide how we should roll out new functionality more broadly.”

The ability to toggle services on or off for groups of users can also help customers transition to Google Apps from on-premise environments. For example, a business can enable just the collaboration tools like Google Docs and Google sites for users who haven’t yet moved off old on-premise messaging solutions.

Administrators can manage these settings on the ‘Organizations & users’ tab in the ‘Next generation’ control panel. Alternatively, organizations can mirror their existing LDAP organizational schema using Google Apps Directory Sync or programmatically assign users to organizational units using the Google Apps Provisioning API.

This feature is starting to roll out to Premier and Education edition users at no additional charge. To learn more about user policy management on Google Apps, please visit our Help Center documentation.

Posted by Adam Dawes, Google Apps Product Manager

App Tuesday: 10 new apps available for your users in the Apps Marketplace

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:15:00 +0000

Today we launched 10 new apps from 3rd party developers, available in the Google Apps Marketplace. Many of these apps are free or have free trials and include CRM, calendar & scheduling, project management, email marketing and online design tools. You can add these integrated applications to your Google Apps subscription with just a few clicks.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
- Go to http://www.google.com/appsmarketplace
- Choose an app from the CRM, calendar & scheduling, email marketing or project management categories, among others.
- Click the blue ‘Add it now’ button to add the app for your users.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-app-tuesday-10-new-apps-available.html

If you’ve #gonegoogle, and tried the #appsmarketplace, let others know what you recommend - via Twitter, Google Buzz or submit your suggestions for additional apps to us.

Google Apps adds more admin controls for mobile devices

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 15:59:00 +0000

Earlier this year we announced support for mobile device security policies in Google Apps to help administrators manage iPhone, Nokia, and Windows Mobile devices from the Google Apps control panel. These policies let employees access information from their phones while helping administrators keep corporate data more secure. Today, we are announcing new mobile device management options for Google Apps administrators.

Requiring devices to use data encryption

Auto-wiping device after specified number of failed password attempts

Disabling the phone’s camera

Ensuring old passwords are not reused

Requiring passwords to be changed after specified time interval

Disabling data synchronization when device is roaming to reduce wireless overage charges

Starting this week, these policies will be available to all Google Apps Premier and Education customers. They can be accessed from the 'Mobile' tab under 'Service Settings' in the Google Apps control panel.

It’s our mission to provide users with seamless access to their data while allowing enterprise administrators to centrally manage a diverse range of mobile devices. We’re working to enhance our device management options and to expand our list of supported devices – including Android later this year. If you have any questions, please check out our Help Center documentation.

Posted by Dale Woodford, Software Engineer

App Tuesday: 16 new apps available for your users in the Apps Marketplace

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 00:28:00 +0000

Today we launched 16 new apps from 3rd party developers, available in the Google Apps Marketplace. Many of these apps are free or have a free trials and include CRM, email marketing, project management, and online design tools among others. You can add these integrated applications to your Google Apps subscription with just a few clicks.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
- Go to http://www.google.com/appsmarketplace
- Choose an app from the project management, CRM, or email marketing categories, among others.
- Click the blue ‘Add it now’ button to add the app for your users.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/06/launched-in-apps-marketplace-16-new.html

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Introducing Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook®

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 26 May 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Businesses and schools are moving to Google Apps in droves, and they're able to switch more seamlessly with the help of tools to move old email, contacts and calendar data from legacy solutions to Google’s cloud. We have administrator-managed migration utilities for Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®, and today we're making it a lot easier for many end-users to move their old data themselves if their administrators aren’t planning server-side data migrations.

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook® is a new end-user tool that moves email, calendar and contact data from Outlook® profiles, PST files and Exchange accounts to Google Apps. With this new tool, migrations are:

Easy: a simple three step migration process is all it takes

Fast: migrate thousands of emails, calendar events and contacts per hour

Painless: users can continue to use Microsoft Outlook® until the migration is finished, and migrate in phases if that’s more convenient

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook® works with Microsoft Outlook® 2003 and 2007, on-premise and hosted Exchange, as well as legacy PST files saved on users’ machines, and it's available at no additional cost to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers.

If you're still running on-premises Exchange or hosted Exchange, we invite you to learn more about switching to Google Apps.

Posted by Abhishek Bapna, Google Apps Product Manager

Google Wave (Labs) available today to organizations using Google Apps

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Google is making familiar tools like email and office applications much more collaborative than traditional software, but with Google Wave, we started with a blank slate to try new approaches to teamwork without the constraints of existing applications. Today – one year after first introducing Wave – we’re extending Google Wave (Labs) to businesses, schools and organizations to let more people try this tool and to learn how we can improve the Google Apps suite.

Since we began previewing Google Wave last fall, we’ve consistently heard that Wave shines in small group settings where teams need to discuss and debate as they create content together, like developing an engineering project plan, creating a trip itinerary or building an event invitation list. For example, you can learn how teams at Deloitte use Google Wave to build consensus around technical design documents and other content.

Google Wave has a few characteristics making it uniquely-equipped for these kinds of discussion-heavy, collaborative tasks:

Discussion in context with your content – When you have a question or suggestion about something you see in a wave, you can have a conversation right in the wave with other participants. When you reach consensus, you can clean up your wave by finalizing the content and removing the completed discussion.

Logical information structure – You can respond anywhere within a wave, not just at the very end, so you end up with an organized record that follows the flow of the conversation.

Revision playback – Wave preserves a timeline of how a wave evolved, so when someone adds you to an existing wave, you can play back the history to see how it evolved to its current state. Playback lets you see content in its logical and chronological context.

Extensions – Extensions bring rich, dynamic functionality into waves. Google provides a number of useful extensions (like voting gadgets and maps) but there's an ever-growing library of extensions created by third-party developers. Organizations can even create extensions tailored to their own needs.

Next time you need to create consensus among a small team as you create content together, consider test driving Google Wave. Starting today, Google Apps administrators have the option to let their users try Google Wave. In the administrative control panel, click 'Add more services', then click 'Add it now' to enable Google Wave.

To learn more about how your organization might find Google Wave useful, we invite you to join our webcast on Wednesday, May 26th at 9:00 am PDT. The Wave team will be on hand to share real world use case from businesses and other organizations, and to answer your questions. Register for the webcast

Posted by Greg D'Alesandre, Google Wave Product Manager

Lotus Notes users can now “go Google” in phases

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 13 May 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Lotus Notes customers love Google Apps because they get many of Notes’ best features – like document libraries and scripting – in addition to a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 25GB of email storage, and substantial cost savings. Today, we’re making it even easier for Lotus Notes customers to try Google Apps with Google Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes.

This calendar connector allows businesses to switch to Google Apps department by department, by making calendaring work more seamlessly between Notes and Google Apps. Google Apps users in your organization can look up free/busy info for coworkers still on Lotus Notes, and vice versa.

In addition, we’ve made it easier to go Google with several improvements to Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes. Some of the updates include:

Support for multi-domain management across all APIs

Migration of Domino Directory data, including groups

Enhanced user provisioning that can automatically generate Google Apps passwords when accounts are created

New domain-wide and user-level options to manage spam folders and archive labels

If you have a legacy Lotus Notes footprint, we invite you to learn more about Google Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes.

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Upgrading beyond documents, spreadsheets and presentations

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:36:00 +0000

On Tuesday I shared some some thoughts on the choices businesses have as you consider upgrading Microsoft Office. This decision goes far beyond traditional productivity applications though; a new generation of workplace tools that reflect the collaborative nature of today’s work environment are becoming more essential to employees. Instant messaging accelerates information sharing between coworkers. Video chat lets people around the world meet face-to-face. Video and image sharing is becoming a critical form of communication. Companies develop passionate communities around blogs and other social media. Customers learn about businesses through online maps and search engine marketing.

Today’s workers need tools to facilitate all these activities, and traditional productivity software comes up short, even after “major” upgrades. Last week we announced that we’re working to make Blogger, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader, iGoogle and many more Google services available soon to Google Apps customers. What will customers need to do to access all this new functionality? Simply refresh the browser. No 64-bit servers to purchase, no complex software prerequisites (28 of them for SharePoint 2010 alone!), no backup systems to install, no VPN connectivity issues to worry about. It’s an upgrade that will truly change the workplace.

By no means do we think that Google could possibly develop all the functionality that any employee might need, but at the same time, there’s real value in services that all connect to a common backbone for core systems like contacts, presence and user authentication. Businesses need specialized accounting tools, CRM systems, marketing automation capabilities, project management tools and much more. Through the Apps Marketplace and our developer tools, customers can integrate 3rd party cloud services with Google Apps and enhancements they develop themselves. The possibilities are limitless.

This new approach – the integrated combination of Google Apps, a broad array of other Google services, and complementary functionality built by developers and partners – will give your employees the tools they need to be productive in the modern workplace. I invite you to learn more about Google Apps and to start a conversation with our team about providing your employees with the best tools for their jobs.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director

More Google applications coming for Google Apps customers

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 06 May 2010 19:00:00 +0000

9 of the top 20 requests from Google Apps customers are for their accounts to work with more services from Google, not just for the core suite of messaging and collaboration applications. Later this year we’ll dramatically accelerate customer access to innovation, and give users the convenience of using any Google service allowed by their administrator from a single account affiliated with their organization.

For example, coworkers will be able to publish their organization’s blog on Blogger, share project images with Picasa Web Albums, track industry news in Google Reader, advertise online with AdWords and much more, all without switching back and forth between multiple accounts. While these additional applications won’t initially be covered by the core suite’s support and service level agreement, this change will open up the spectrum of Google’s functionality to businesses, schools and organizations using Google Apps and we’ll evaluate future support options.

We intend to have all Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers moved to the new infrastructure that enables this change in the fall, and customers who would like more control over the timing of this change will be able to make the switch voluntarily during the summer.

This will be a significant overhaul to our underlying systems and we want to make this transition as seamless as possible for customers. We’ll be sharing information in advance so Google Apps admins can plan ahead which additional Google services users can access with their accounts and other aspects of this roll-out. Stay tuned here for further updates in the coming weeks and months, and visit our Help Center for more details.

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google Apps

Update: We're thrilled to see all the enthusiasm for this big upcoming change that many readers have expressed in the comments below, and we're beginning to bring on early testers now. If your organization would like to move to the next-generation infrastructure for Google Apps accounts – and be able to sign in to many more Google services with your Google Apps accounts – please fill out this form.

Google Apps and the cloud: Maximum economies of scale

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:55:00 +0000

Editor's note: This post is the last in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture. - Ed.

The first post in this series focused on faster access to innovation and last week’s entry described how Google Apps can drive higher reliability and security. This final installment explains advantages achieved from the scale at which the Google Apps infrastructure operates.

Maximum Economies of Scale
An Internet-scale cloud infrastructure achieves economies of scale that can produce tremendous cost savings. Rather than buying off-the-shelf completed servers, Google buys raw computer parts in massive quantities, and assembles custom servers with few unnecessary components. Not only do we save costs on hardware, we also minimize overhead by consolidating on a very small number of server configurations that can be managed in bulk globally at an extremely efficient ratio of staff to machines. On a per-user basis, these economies of scale allow Google Apps to operate at higher levels of efficiency than can be achieved by customers themselves.

Further cost savings are also made possible by applications that run in the browser. Not only can customers forgo licensing expensive client software, but browser-based applications also require much less administrative overhead than traditional software or “software plus services”. IT departments don’t need to deploy patches or upgrades for web-based applications, and since improvements roll out gradually and continuously instead of in large disruptive batches every several years, companies can also save on change management costs.

Cloud computing – hosted, web-based applications built on shared infrastructure – can achieve breakthroughs in the pace of innovation, reliability, security and economies of scale. As you consider alternatives to address your organization’s messaging and collaboration needs, it pays to understand how different technologies are actually delivered. Over two million businesses considered their own options and have truly moved to the cloud with Google Apps.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:39:00 +0000

Editor's note: This post is the second in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture. - Ed.

Last week’s post kicked off our series on the advantages of Google’s cloud, and described how our infrastructure gives customers faster access to innovation than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and “software plus services”. Here, part two focuses on how Google Apps is designed from the ground up to provide higher reliability and better security.

Improved Reliability and Security
Through synchronous replication, data and user actions in Google Apps are mirrored in nearly real-time across multiple data centers. If one data center becomes unavailable for any reason, the system is designed to instantly fall back to a secondary data center with no user-visible interruption in service. For Google Apps customers, our recovery point objective (RPO) design target is zero, and our recovery time objective (RTO) design target is instant failover. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Docs and Google Sites have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and our actual reliability has been significantly higher than this commitment. Attempting to replicate this level of reliability with on-premises or hosted technology is tremendously costly and complex. Even very large enterprises with state-of-the-art disaster recovery systems typically target a recovery time of one hour and accept the loss of one hour’s worth of data.

On the security front, Google’s large investments in physical and process-based security are passed on to customers. First, Google is able to hire many of the worlds leading security experts to protect our systems and conduct cutting-edge security research. Our data centers are hardened with many of the latest measures in security precautions, including biometric access controls and multi-tiered security perimeters. Furthermore, Google has implemented a multi-layered security process protocol designed to help keep customer data safe. Our processes have been independently verified in a successful third-party SAS 70 Type II audit to verify our confidentiality, integrity and availability of customer data. Finally, Google is able to efficiently manage security updates across our nearly homogeneous global cloud computing infrastructure, so customers aren’t exposed to known vulnerabilities until they install security patches themselves.

Browser-based applications also help keep sensitive data more secure. Unlike traditional software, when a user is finished using a web-based application, minimal data is left on the machine that could be compromised. Also, when employees can securely access their data from any browser, they’re less likely to store data locally on unsecured end-points like thumb drives. In a world where one out of ten laptops go missing in the first year¹ and 66% of workers report having lost a thumb drive², making data securely available from the browser and minimizing the amount of sensitive data stored on devices is an effective security strategy.

Next week I’ll conclude this series by sharing how Google’s economies of scale can help companies reduce costs and free up technology resources for higher value initiatives that can make businesses more competitive.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, April 22nd, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT

1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation & The Computer Security Institute’s annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2005.
2. “Thumb Drives? The New Portable and Convenient Way to Lose Data”, 2007.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Preview of new Google Documents editor available

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:29:00 +0000

A preview of the new Google Documents editor is now available on an opt-in basis.

- Key features: New ruler for margins and tab stops, floating image placement, new commenting structure in the document margin and instant messaging in the sidebar.
- Performance improvements: Documents now supports character-by-character real-time collaboration.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:
To allow users to opt-in to use the new editor, in the administrative control panel, administrators need to enable the checkbox 'Enable pre-release features' in 'Domain Settings'. Users can then select the 'New version of Google documents' option in the 'Documents settings' area of Google Docs

Note: Starting on May 3rd, 2010 we're temporarily phasing out support for offline access to Google Docs through Gears while we work on new and improved HTML5-based offline access. For more information on this, please visit the Help Center.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/04/laying-foundation-for-new-google-docs.html
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=179679

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Google Apps and the cloud: Faster access to innovation

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 21:42:00 +0000

Editor's Note: This post is the first in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture.

“Cloud computing” has become a trendy buzzword, and some traditional technology vendors are even using the term though their solutions are still rooted in legacy architectures. In this three-part series, I’ll share how Google’s multi-tenant, Internet-scale architecture and browser-based applications produce three key advantages: the fastest innovation, improved reliability and security, and maximum economies of scale. Today I’ll focus on how Google’s innovation exceeds what’s possible with on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and “software plus services”.

Faster access to innovation for higher productivity
The web is the epicenter of innovation, and Google’s multi-tenant infrastructure is designed so we can push improvements to our entire customer base on short iteration cycles. We can deliver new functionality on a weekly basis, or faster, because our systems are able to distribute updates so efficiently. In 2009 alone, we launched over 100 improvements, and customers didn’t need to manage any upgrades or patches. In contrast, businesses tend to update traditional server software every five to seven years due to long release cycles from vendors and the cost and complexity businesses face implementing upgrades, especially when more powerful servers are required, like 64-bit hardware.

Browser-based applications are another key ingredient in our recipe for rapid innovation. When we launch new features to our web applications, users automatically get these improvements just by refreshing their browsers. Our mobile browser applications also get new features without software updates. With traditional technology and “software plus services”, client software is an innovation bottleneck. Even after back-end systems can support new features, users don’t get new functionality in those environments until the software on their computers and mobile phones have been upgraded, which can be an expensive and labor-intensive project.

Feedback and anonymous usage statistics from hundreds of millions of users in the real world also help us bring stress-tested innovation to business customers at an unprecedented pace. From our consumer user base, we quickly learn which new features would be useful in the business context, refine those features, and make them available to Google Apps customers with minimal delay.

Continuous innovation powered by the cloud has another advantage over traditional technology cycles: employees adapt to a continuous stream of manageable improvements better than they tolerate large, disruptive batches of change. Gradual iterations in bite-sized chunks substantially reduce change-management challenges. Conversely, employees are subjected to a painful re-learning cycle each time companies upgrade traditional software.

Dramatically faster innovation helps employees be more productive, but that’s not all Google’s cloud has to offer. In part two of this series, next week I’ll focus on how Google Apps can offer better security and higher reliability than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications and “software plus services”.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, April 22nd, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek Out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google Buzz coming soon for businesses and schools

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:00:00 +0000

Today the Gmail team introduced Google Buzz, a new feature that lets individuals share links, photos, and other updates with their network of contacts – or with the whole world – right within Gmail. Google Buzz helps people kick off conversations around information that people find mutually interesting.

Within a few months, we also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within your organization. Stay tuned, and for more information about using Google Buzz with your personal Gmail account, head over to the Gmail blog or visit buzz.google.com.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director

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Site creation, sharing management and more with the Google Sites API

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:42:00 +0000

Since we launched the Google Sites Data API last fall, we've heard great feedback from businesses and schools using the API to update sites from 3rd party applications, migrate data from legacy workspace solutions into Google Sites and more.

Today, we're releasing several improvements to the API: the abilities to list a user's sites, create new sites, copy existing sites, and manage sharing permissions. You can read more about these updates to the Google Sites Data API on the Google Code Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Store and share files in the cloud with Google Docs

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:02:00 +0000

Let's say you're about to make a very important presentation to a prospective client on the other side of the country. Before you depart on your business trip, you download all of your presentation materials and InDesign® hand-outs onto your trusty thumbdrive. Just in case, you also email the files to yourself.

But while you're in the air, your colleagues back at the office are making last minute edits to the files and your copies are now out of date. Worse yet, when you arrive at your destination, you realize you left your thumbdrive at home.

Sound familiar? The good news is that things are about to become a whole lot easier.

Over the next couple of weeks, we are rolling out the ability for Google Apps users to easily upload and securely share any type of file internally and externally using Google Docs. You get 1 GB of storage per user, and you can upload files up to 250 MB in size.

Now accessing your work files doesn't require a connection to your internal office network. Nor do you need to email files to yourself, carry around a thumbdrive, or use a company network drive – you can access your files using Google Docs from any web-enabled computer.

Combined with shared folders in Google Docs, the upload feature is a great way to collaborate on files with coworkers and external parties. Instead of using cumbersome email attachments, you can upload files to a folder and share it with coworkers, who can then access and edit the files from a single place. You can even have your sales team securely share contracts with external clients for review.

And of course, by using Google Docs, you can quickly and easily search across all your files from one place, getting access to the right file when and where you need it.

Google Apps Premier Edition users can also use the Google Documents List Data API to upload files to Google Docs in batch, or purchase applications offered by third parties that enable you to migrate and sync your files to Google Docs:

Memeo Connect for Google Apps is a new desktop application that offers an easy way to access, migrate, and synchronize files to Google Docs across multiple computers. (PC and Mac)

Syncplicity allows Google Apps users to synchronize, manage, and backup files across desktops and servers, making it easy to use Google Docs seamlessly with existing applications and files. (PC)

Manymoon is an online project management platform that makes it simple to organize and share tasks and documents with coworkers and partners, including uploading files to Google Docs.

We're always looking for ways to make it easier for you to access and organize your information online and we hope you find the ability to store, share, and collaborate on files in Google Docs helpful. In the coming months, we will enable Google Apps Premier Edition customers to purchase additional storage for $3.50/GB/yr (or €3.00/gb/yr in the EU). If you'd like to be notified when additional storage can be purchased, please fill out this form and we will contact you as soon as it's available. As always, we’d love your feedback and if you have any questions, please check out our help forum.

Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Google Docs team

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Updated: description of Syncplicity, 01/14/2010.

Updated: pricing clarification, 01/27/2010. Google Apps Premier Edition users can purchase additional storage for $3.50/gb. At this price, they also get Premier Edition value-adds including a 99.9% uptime guarantee, 24/7 Phone support, and the use of the API and 3rd party applications to automatically upload and manage files on Google Docs.

For more information, see the help center article at http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=172732

Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review

Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:35:00 +0000

Google Apps is helping millions of companies save money, but more importantly, Google Apps helps businesses move beyond the slow, multi-year innovation cycle typical of legacy technologies. We’ve released over 100 significant improvements and updates over the last year, and businesses automatically have access to these updates without having to manage complex and costly upgrades.

Last week I hosted a webcast titled Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review to spotlight the most important improvements we’ve made recently. You can watch the replay below or see it on YouTube.

Innovation happening across the web is rapidly translating into better business email tools, more efficient collaboration choices for coworkers, and more secure, higher reliability technology for companies. We’re excited about what’s in store for Google Apps, and to keep up with future developments, you can subscribe to the Google Apps Updates RSS feed, or sign up for email alerts.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google Data » Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Using Gmail, Calendar and Docs without an internet connection

A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

More power to Google Apps administrators

A look back as we move ahead: Google Docs and Google Sites

2-step verification: stay safe around the world in 40 languages

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar

Gaining Altitude: A New Way to Think about Your Inbox

Destination: Dial Tone — Getting Google Apps to 99.99%

Spam takes another hit: email authentication now available to millions of Google Apps customers

Google Apps innovation: join our quarter in review webinar

Expanding the Google Apps Reporting API for resellers

Optional attendees in Google Calendar

Google Apps shared contacts, now with double the capacity

Migrating from Lotus Notes® just got easier

How much is faster collaboration worth to businesses?

Automating business processes in Google Sites with Google Apps Scripts

Google at Gartner in Orlando and Tokyo

Going Google made easier with better IMAP and PST data migration

Update on Wave for Google Apps

Drag and drop attachments received in Gmail from Google Chrome to your desktop

Table resizing in documents and more Google Docs features

iGoogle now replacing the Start Page

Google Apps for Government now available

Introducing user policy management for Google Apps

App Tuesday: 10 new apps available for your users in the Apps Marketplace

Google Apps adds more admin controls for mobile devices

App Tuesday: 16 new apps available for your users in the Apps Marketplace

Introducing Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook®

Google Wave (Labs) available today to organizations using Google Apps

Lotus Notes users can now “go Google” in phases

Upgrading beyond documents, spreadsheets and presentations

More Google applications coming for Google Apps customers

Google Apps and the cloud: Maximum economies of scale

Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security

Preview of new Google Documents editor available

Google Apps and the cloud: Faster access to innovation

Google Buzz coming soon for businesses and schools

Site creation, sharing management and more with the Google Sites API

Store and share files in the cloud with Google Docs

​Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review

Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review