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Google Data » Google Enterprise https://googledata.org Everything Google: News, Products, Services, Content, Culture Wed, 28 Dec 2016 21:09:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.13 Welcome to the Google for Education Blog https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-to-the-google-for-education-blog/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-to-the-google-for-education-blog/#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2014 15:29:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=e8b5f00abad1761d33cb25cc7bcfa10b

Posted by Megan Smith, Vice President, Google[x]

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog)

We love to focus on solving problems. Sometimes practically and other times with wild, imaginative—or even highly unexpected—ideas. These ideas are born through education, when curiosity meets access to information. That’s why we have a vested interest in, and commitment to, learning in all forms. It’s also why we’re starting the Google for Education Blog: a new destination to share our work that’s happening across education, from products to programs, from the practical to the unimaginable.

One of our goals is to help more students feel engaged and love learning, to encourage their curiosity, to let them work together, to try something new, to make stuff, and to always try again. Through Programs like Made with Code, Doodle 4 Google, and the Google Science Fair, we strive to help students discover the problems they are passionate about solving. Time and time again youth prove that you don’t always have to be a grown-up to bring forward extraordinary solutions. This blog will be a place to hear about those programs and talented young people.

Since behind every student are great teachers, we also focus on building products and tools designed for the classroom that help educators do what they do best, even better. Collaborative tools like Google Apps for Education with Classroom, easy-to-manage affordable devices like Chromebooks and tablets, and limitless educational content in Google Play for Education and YouTube help make learning possible—and fun—outside the four walls of the classroom.

The future is upon us, which is so apparent when working on learning. As former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley says, “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” We hope you’ll find this blog useful—along with our Google+ and Twitter channels—as we continue to share more updates and stories from across Google for Education, our dedicated partners, innovative teachers, and inspiring students.

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]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-to-the-google-for-education-blog/feed/ 0 Google’s cloud is secure. But you don’t have to take our word for it. https://googledata.org/google-apps/googles-cloud-is-secure-but-you-dont-have-to-take-our-word-for-it/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/googles-cloud-is-secure-but-you-dont-have-to-take-our-word-for-it/#comments Wed, 27 Aug 2014 16:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=502e2560a2d43f4ae1060686e7489a54 Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps

No matter how you slice it, mobile and cloud are essential for future business growth and productivity. This is driving increases in security spending as organizations wrestle with threats and regulatory compliance — according to Gartner, the computer security industry will reach $71 billion this year, which is a 7.9 percent increase over 2013.

To help organizations spend their money wisely, it’s essential that cloud companies are transparent about their security capabilities. Since we see transparency as a crucial way to earn and maintain our customers’ confidence, we ask independent auditors to examine the controls in our systems and operations on a regular basis. The audits are rigorous, and customers can use these reports to make sure Google meets their compliance and data protection needs.

We’re proud to announce we have received an updated ISO 27001 certificate and SOC 2 and SOC 3 Type II audit report, which are the most widely recognized, internationally accepted independent security compliance reports. These audits refresh our coverage for Google Apps for Business and Education, as well Google Cloud Platform, and we’ve expanded the scope to include Google+ and Hangouts. To make it easier for everyone to verify our security, we’re now publishing our updated ISO 27001 certificate and new SOC3 audit report for the first time, on our Google Enterprise security page.

Keeping your data safe is at the core of what we do. That’s why we hire the world’s foremost experts in security—the team is now comprised of over 450 full-time engineers—to keep customers’ data secure from imminent and evolving threats. These certifications, along with our existing offerings of FISMA for Google Apps for Government, support for FERPA and COPPA compliance in Google Apps for Education, model contract clauses for Google Apps customers who operate within Europe, and HIPAA business associate agreements for organizations with protected health information, help assure our customers and their regulators that we’re committed to keeping their data and that of their users secure, private and compliant. ]]> Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps

No matter how you slice it, mobile and cloud are essential for future business growth and productivity. This is driving increases in security spending as organizations wrestle with threats and regulatory compliance — according to Gartner, the computer security industry will reach $71 billion this year, which is a 7.9 percent increase over 2013.

To help organizations spend their money wisely, it’s essential that cloud companies are transparent about their security capabilities. Since we see transparency as a crucial way to earn and maintain our customers’ confidence, we ask independent auditors to examine the controls in our systems and operations on a regular basis. The audits are rigorous, and customers can use these reports to make sure Google meets their compliance and data protection needs.

We’re proud to announce we have received an updated ISO 27001 certificate and SOC 2 and SOC 3 Type II audit report, which are the most widely recognized, internationally accepted independent security compliance reports. These audits refresh our coverage for Google Apps for Business and Education, as well Google Cloud Platform, and we’ve expanded the scope to include Google+ and Hangouts. To make it easier for everyone to verify our security, we’re now publishing our updated ISO 27001 certificate and new SOC3 audit report for the first time, on our Google Enterprise security page.

Keeping your data safe is at the core of what we do. That’s why we hire the world’s foremost experts in security—the team is now comprised of over 450 full-time engineers—to keep customers’ data secure from imminent and evolving threats. These certifications, along with our existing offerings of FISMA for Google Apps for Government, support for FERPA and COPPA compliance in Google Apps for Education, model contract clauses for Google Apps customers who operate within Europe, and HIPAA business associate agreements for organizations with protected health information, help assure our customers and their regulators that we’re committed to keeping their data and that of their users secure, private and compliant. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/googles-cloud-is-secure-but-you-dont-have-to-take-our-word-for-it/feed/ 0 Maps are Going Google: Inform Stakeholders Quickly and Reliably https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/maps-are-going-google-inform-stakeholders-quickly-and-reliably/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/maps-are-going-google-inform-stakeholders-quickly-and-reliably/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2014 21:25:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=157f926e233c37b4a5094c768ccd59a2 Posted by Veronique Lafargue, Senior Marketing Manager, Google Maps for Business

Editor's note: Every organization is charged with keeping stakeholders informed. Map visualization tools help organizations share facts and brand stories with all of their stakeholders — in real time — better than ever before. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

People around the world are taking an interest in where their food originates and the quality of ingredients, especially in France, where the food and wine are sources of national pride. That’s why French yogurt company Les 2 Vaches (The Two Cows) is committed to producing the best quality yogurt possible, with organic dairy from farmers who use ethical, sustainable labor practices.

But it isn’t enough for the company to say it uses the highest quality ingredients — it wants the public to know the locations of the farms that provide its ingredients. “Les 2 Vaches believes in organic food. We’re here to help change things, to develop a business that creates value across the food chain,” says Aude Gamberini, Marketing and Communications Manager, Les 2 Vaches.

To address this, in early 2014, the company launched the Know What You Eat website that uses Google Maps to reveal the geographical origin of each ingredient, including organic milk from France, sugarcane from Brazil, vanilla from Germany and wild blueberries harvested in Poland. The map also shows where its products are stored and prepared, with information about the suppliers and partner businesses related to the brand. The maps can be accessed through supermarket displays, QR codes on advertising materials and through the company’s social networks.

Customers are eating it up: an initial media campaign brought thousands of visitors to the new site. With relevant details overlayed on a map of the entire ingredient supply chain, Les 2 Vaches achieved greater brand transparency and enhanced its reputation. Plus, the company doesn’t need to spend as much time on PR and can focus more on sourcing the best ingredients.

As the company’s website says, “we’re not telling you we’re perfect, but we’re telling you what we’re doing.” The French have a high standard for their food, so knowing the origin of ingredients provides greater insight into the quality of food. Plus, consumers feel better supporting a company whose practices they respect and stand behind.

View our website to learn more about how forward-thinking organizations are mapping the way to brand loyalty and more informed communities. For information about how maps can help your organization inform stakeholders quickly and reliably, sign up for our “Maps are going Google” series.]]> Posted by Veronique Lafargue, Senior Marketing Manager, Google Maps for Business

Editor's note: Every organization is charged with keeping stakeholders informed. Map visualization tools help organizations share facts and brand stories with all of their stakeholders — in real time — better than ever before. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

People around the world are taking an interest in where their food originates and the quality of ingredients, especially in France, where the food and wine are sources of national pride. That’s why French yogurt company Les 2 Vaches (The Two Cows) is committed to producing the best quality yogurt possible, with organic dairy from farmers who use ethical, sustainable labor practices.

But it isn’t enough for the company to say it uses the highest quality ingredients — it wants the public to know the locations of the farms that provide its ingredients. “Les 2 Vaches believes in organic food. We’re here to help change things, to develop a business that creates value across the food chain,” says Aude Gamberini, Marketing and Communications Manager, Les 2 Vaches.

To address this, in early 2014, the company launched the Know What You Eat website that uses Google Maps to reveal the geographical origin of each ingredient, including organic milk from France, sugarcane from Brazil, vanilla from Germany and wild blueberries harvested in Poland. The map also shows where its products are stored and prepared, with information about the suppliers and partner businesses related to the brand. The maps can be accessed through supermarket displays, QR codes on advertising materials and through the company’s social networks.

Customers are eating it up: an initial media campaign brought thousands of visitors to the new site. With relevant details overlayed on a map of the entire ingredient supply chain, Les 2 Vaches achieved greater brand transparency and enhanced its reputation. Plus, the company doesn’t need to spend as much time on PR and can focus more on sourcing the best ingredients.

As the company’s website says, “we’re not telling you we’re perfect, but we’re telling you what we’re doing.” The French have a high standard for their food, so knowing the origin of ingredients provides greater insight into the quality of food. Plus, consumers feel better supporting a company whose practices they respect and stand behind.

View our website to learn more about how forward-thinking organizations are mapping the way to brand loyalty and more informed communities. For information about how maps can help your organization inform stakeholders quickly and reliably, sign up for our “Maps are going Google” series.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/maps-are-going-google-inform-stakeholders-quickly-and-reliably/feed/ 0 Getting things done: Office editing on iOS https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/getting-things-done-office-editing-on-ios/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/getting-things-done-office-editing-on-ios/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2014 17:15:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=7d61b07983b8523dc01e622eb2941399 Posted by Li-Wei Lee, Software Engineer

Our phones and tablets help us get things done at work, but sometimes, you’re on the subway with no reception and need to update your spreadsheet before you get to the client’s office. Or you desperately need to make edits to your marketing strategy PowerPoint before you present, but you only brought your iPad to the meeting. We’ve all been there, but now there’s a way out.

With today’s launch of the new Slides app on iOS and updates to the Docs and Sheets apps, we’re delivering on our promise to make it possible for you to work with any file, on any device, any time. Now you can use the Google Docs, Sheets and Slides apps on your iPad or iPhone and all other devices (your Chromebook, laptop, Android phone or tablet), to complete the same tasks—online or offline. In addition, you can open, create and edit native Microsoft Office files with the Google Docs suite on iOS.

According to SoftWatch about 80 percent of Office licenses are only lightly used, with many employees only working with Office for a handful of minutes a day or not at all. If you still have the occasional need, Google has you covered. Use Docs, Sheets and Slides to open up a contract that’s been saved in Word without converting the file, and copy over the crucial figures to an Excel spreadsheet from the client to do some number-crunching on your iPad. Then quickly pop those calculations over to the PowerPoint deck before you walk into a sales meeting, all from whichever device is most convenient. And if you want to collaborate in real-time with your colleagues, you can simply convert these old Office files into Docs, Sheets or Slides and start working together immediately. You’ll even be able to make edits when you’re offline, whether you’re using the app on your phone or tablet, or Chrome on your laptop.

No one wants to worry about what format their documents are in or whether they have the right app on their phone or tablet. Whether you’re working on a file originally created in Microsoft Office, or one created in Docs, Sheets or Slides on an Android phone, tablet, iPhone, iPad, Chromebook or laptop, with or without an internet connection, you can do all this and more with Google Apps.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/getting-things-done-office-editing-on-ios/feed/ 0 Hotter than your morning coffee: Google Drive for Work https://googledata.org/google-apps/hotter-than-your-morning-coffee-google-drive-for-work/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/hotter-than-your-morning-coffee-google-drive-for-work/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2014 17:30:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c1a2c9c30eb3193ccee75292a6d08638 Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

People want tools that are both powerful and easy to use. For employees, that means they should be able to access their work wherever they are, on their favorite device or share their work securely with their colleagues, even if they’re in different offices, cities or countries. For IT managers, that means never worrying about storage quotas again, or being able to track access and sharing across users and files. We realize how important this is, so earlier this summer we introduced Google Drive for Work, a package that wraps all of this together for just $10 per user per month. Here’s a look at what’s been brewing with Drive for Work over the past two months.

Helping employees collaborate on the go

Before we introduced Drive for Work, businesses like retailer Chico’s and aerospace and defense company Rockwell Collins were using Drive to increase collaboration across distributed teams. Travis Perkins relies on Google Drive to store and share more than 1.3 million documents across thousands of physical locations, to help reduce employee travel and save time. OVS uses Google Drive to streamline its supply chain by sharing and syncing their files across desktops, tablets and smartphones so people have the information they need, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

Today more than 1,800 businesses sign up for Drive for Work each week. Customers like WeddingWire are taking advantage of the full capabilities of Drive for Work to help provide their employees with the collaboration and file sharing tools they need on any device, whether they’re in the office or on the road.

Extending the Drive ecosystem

Drive for Work includes everything you need to keep all your work safe, easy to share and available anywhere. A growing number of partners are building tools on top of the Drive platform to meet the particular needs of our customers. In addition to the new Audit view built into the admin console, Drive for Work also includes an Audit API that partners have used to build advanced insight and security extensions like Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Other partners have built tools to help move business content into Drive from any location, including old file servers, local hard drives or other cloud storage products.

Keeping your work safe and available

To help keep your work safe, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers. Our reliability engineers monitor Google’s systems 24x7 in order to quickly identify and address any issues that might arise. Last year, Google Drive achieved 99.985% availability, which averages to less than 90 minutes of disruption per year (our SLA guarantees 99.9%). If there’s ever an issue, you can read up-to-date status information on the Status Dashboard, and if you ever need to speak to someone, help is just a call away in over a dozen languages across 50 countries.

If you’d like to join the more than 190 million people actively using Drive, you can learn more about Drive for Work online or contact us for more information. If you’re already a Google Apps customer, you can upgrade with just a couple of clicks in the Admin console.

Collaborating should be easy. Let technology do the hard work and help you get back to what’s most important — your business.]]> Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

People want tools that are both powerful and easy to use. For employees, that means they should be able to access their work wherever they are, on their favorite device or share their work securely with their colleagues, even if they’re in different offices, cities or countries. For IT managers, that means never worrying about storage quotas again, or being able to track access and sharing across users and files. We realize how important this is, so earlier this summer we introduced Google Drive for Work, a package that wraps all of this together for just $10 per user per month. Here’s a look at what’s been brewing with Drive for Work over the past two months.

Helping employees collaborate on the go

Before we introduced Drive for Work, businesses like retailer Chico’s and aerospace and defense company Rockwell Collins were using Drive to increase collaboration across distributed teams. Travis Perkins relies on Google Drive to store and share more than 1.3 million documents across thousands of physical locations, to help reduce employee travel and save time. OVS uses Google Drive to streamline its supply chain by sharing and syncing their files across desktops, tablets and smartphones so people have the information they need, no matter where they are or what device they’re using.

Today more than 1,800 businesses sign up for Drive for Work each week. Customers like WeddingWire are taking advantage of the full capabilities of Drive for Work to help provide their employees with the collaboration and file sharing tools they need on any device, whether they’re in the office or on the road.

Extending the Drive ecosystem

Drive for Work includes everything you need to keep all your work safe, easy to share and available anywhere. A growing number of partners are building tools on top of the Drive platform to meet the particular needs of our customers. In addition to the new Audit view built into the admin console, Drive for Work also includes an Audit API that partners have used to build advanced insight and security extensions like Data Loss Prevention (DLP). Other partners have built tools to help move business content into Drive from any location, including old file servers, local hard drives or other cloud storage products.

Keeping your work safe and available

To help keep your work safe, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers. Our reliability engineers monitor Google’s systems 24x7 in order to quickly identify and address any issues that might arise. Last year, Google Drive achieved 99.985% availability, which averages to less than 90 minutes of disruption per year (our SLA guarantees 99.9%). If there’s ever an issue, you can read up-to-date status information on the Status Dashboard, and if you ever need to speak to someone, help is just a call away in over a dozen languages across 50 countries.

If you’d like to join the more than 190 million people actively using Drive, you can learn more about Drive for Work online or contact us for more information. If you’re already a Google Apps customer, you can upgrade with just a couple of clicks in the Admin console.

Collaborating should be easy. Let technology do the hard work and help you get back to what’s most important — your business.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/hotter-than-your-morning-coffee-google-drive-for-work/feed/ 0 Chromebooks give back time to Chapters Health System’s patients and caregivers https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chromebooks-give-back-time-to-chapters-health-systems-patients-and-caregivers/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chromebooks-give-back-time-to-chapters-health-systems-patients-and-caregivers/#comments Thu, 21 Aug 2014 16:01:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c3de004d9e9f559f0b38cdd1d869f8e5 Posted by Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services, Chapters Health System

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services for Chapters Health System, which provides post-acute, palliative, and hospice care to patients in west-central Florida. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Chapters Health System, the role of IT is to provide software, connectivity and hardware to caregivers so they can spend less time wrestling with technology, and more time caring for patients. Our goal is to make the IT portion transparent to providing superior patient care. Most of our nurses and caregivers are mobile – they visit patients in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities or in their homes.

To best support them, we virtualized our clinical and business software applications, and provide access to them via Citrix XenApp via Receiver. We also make sure our caregivers can stay connected through a Verizon 4G Mifi device. As for hardware, caregivers were using Windows notebooks but boot-up delays, long setup times for new machines, and the bulkiness of the devices were slowing down and frustrating our caregivers. In addition, the devices were hard to manage by the IT support staff.

To find a solution, we took a democratic approach and asked caregivers to evaluate four devices: the HP Chromebook 14 for Business, Apple iPad, a Windows thin client, and a traditional Windows notebook. Caregivers rated the HP Chromebook 14 higher than any other device in all areas, including form factor, battery life, ease of use, speed and performance of virtualized applications like Microsoft Outlook and clinical applications, as well as web applications. Ninety-two out of 139 caregivers who participated in our study voted the Chromebook as their favorite device for work.

Luckily for us in IT, Chromebooks for Business are also the easiest devices to deploy and manage, freeing up our own time for other projects. The biggest change we’ve heard about so far is improved speed. With a traditional Windows notebook, caregivers faced three to four minute boot times, plus multiple logins to Windows, their VPN, and then finally Citrix and the applications. With Chromebooks, boot time shrank dramatically and Chromebooks start up right at the Citrix login screen, so caregivers can access clinical data right away.

Speed benefits extend to setup time as well. Some of our supplemental and weekend caregivers borrow from a pool of shared devices, and it took 40 minutes to set up each Windows notebook. With Chromebooks for Business, we can hop into the management console and set up a new Chromebook in under five minutes. Even better, we use the management console to configure access for users so that if they need to borrow a machine we don’t have to get involved at all—they just pick up a Chromebook and log in. Since each caregiver can get his or her specific user experience on any Chromebook, it's easy for the devices to be shared.

For additional security and simplicity, we use Chromebook for Business’s Kiosk mode to offer one single application, the Citrix login screen, but we’ll be extending it other web applications soon. We also use the management console to mandate the proxy server for Internet access—a feature that’s built-in to each Chromebook for Business.

Chromebooks are giving back precious time to caregivers and their patients. In fact, we’re looking at purchasing many more Chromebooks in the near future so we can extend the benefits to even more Chapters Health employees.]]> Posted by Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services, Chapters Health System

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Chris Williams, Director of IT and Support Services for Chapters Health System, which provides post-acute, palliative, and hospice care to patients in west-central Florida. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Chapters Health System, the role of IT is to provide software, connectivity and hardware to caregivers so they can spend less time wrestling with technology, and more time caring for patients. Our goal is to make the IT portion transparent to providing superior patient care. Most of our nurses and caregivers are mobile – they visit patients in hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities or in their homes.

To best support them, we virtualized our clinical and business software applications, and provide access to them via Citrix XenApp via Receiver. We also make sure our caregivers can stay connected through a Verizon 4G Mifi device. As for hardware, caregivers were using Windows notebooks but boot-up delays, long setup times for new machines, and the bulkiness of the devices were slowing down and frustrating our caregivers. In addition, the devices were hard to manage by the IT support staff.

To find a solution, we took a democratic approach and asked caregivers to evaluate four devices: the HP Chromebook 14 for Business, Apple iPad, a Windows thin client, and a traditional Windows notebook. Caregivers rated the HP Chromebook 14 higher than any other device in all areas, including form factor, battery life, ease of use, speed and performance of virtualized applications like Microsoft Outlook and clinical applications, as well as web applications. Ninety-two out of 139 caregivers who participated in our study voted the Chromebook as their favorite device for work.

Luckily for us in IT, Chromebooks for Business are also the easiest devices to deploy and manage, freeing up our own time for other projects. The biggest change we’ve heard about so far is improved speed. With a traditional Windows notebook, caregivers faced three to four minute boot times, plus multiple logins to Windows, their VPN, and then finally Citrix and the applications. With Chromebooks, boot time shrank dramatically and Chromebooks start up right at the Citrix login screen, so caregivers can access clinical data right away.

Speed benefits extend to setup time as well. Some of our supplemental and weekend caregivers borrow from a pool of shared devices, and it took 40 minutes to set up each Windows notebook. With Chromebooks for Business, we can hop into the management console and set up a new Chromebook in under five minutes. Even better, we use the management console to configure access for users so that if they need to borrow a machine we don’t have to get involved at all—they just pick up a Chromebook and log in. Since each caregiver can get his or her specific user experience on any Chromebook, it's easy for the devices to be shared.

For additional security and simplicity, we use Chromebook for Business’s Kiosk mode to offer one single application, the Citrix login screen, but we’ll be extending it other web applications soon. We also use the management console to mandate the proxy server for Internet access—a feature that’s built-in to each Chromebook for Business.

Chromebooks are giving back precious time to caregivers and their patients. In fact, we’re looking at purchasing many more Chromebooks in the near future so we can extend the benefits to even more Chapters Health employees.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chromebooks-give-back-time-to-chapters-health-systems-patients-and-caregivers/feed/ 0 Dick Smith masters operational communications with Google Apps and Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/dick-smith-masters-operational-communications-with-google-apps-and-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/dick-smith-masters-operational-communications-with-google-apps-and-drive/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2014 20:25:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=9416c55422830d60c76617b69b894379 Posted Daniel Chiha, Communications Specialist (Operations) at Dick Smith

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Daniel Chiha, Communications Specialist (Operations) at Dick Smith, an electronics retailer in Australia and New Zealand.

The Retail Operations team at Dick Smith moved to Google Apps with help from Cloud Sherpas just over a year ago to improve the communication and coordination between our 3,000 or so staff in 376 stores across Australia and New Zealand. Since then, we’ve seen some pretty dramatic improvements and efficiencies in the way we get information out to our staff, thanks to Google Drive and Google Sites.

Our workforce is very mobile. Not only do we have a fleet of 23 Area Managers who spend their time between multiple stores, but our 3,000 in-store staff spend most of their time on the floor with customers. Our team depends on a steady stream of updates and materials throughout the week — from new product guides, promotional activities, upcoming launches through to employee safety processes — so it’s not only important that people see the updates meant for them, but that we’re able to track the critical messages for compliance.
Before moving to Google Apps, it took up to 24 hours to get these messages out to everyone through a series of phone hook ups, faxes, emails and a document delivery system that polled nightly. This was especially challenging when dealing with issues like product callbacks or promotions, where it’s essential for the team to move fast in order to avoid potential problems and ensure that new offers are immediately available to customers.

Now, with Google Drive and Google Sites, we’re able to provide thousands of employees with a bird's-eye view of important updates and key documents across the company. That way, if we need to get an urgent message out or a new employee needs access to a how-to guidebook, there’s just one place they need to look — and we can get everything listed or posted quickly and effectively. We create a master site with sections for each team, with links to Drive folders that house everything from planograms and promotion details to instructional guidebooks and tickets. Area Managers can then access both the site and the files from their tablets or phones on the go, and our sales staff can see updates from their own devices or the store computers.

We’ve also built a new system with Forms and Sheets to streamline operational communications. Instead of relying on complex email trails and lots of phone calls, employees now submit their sign-offs in a single Form. Responses are captured in a shared Sheet that the Operations team uses to track feedback and responses in real-time.

Google Apps helped us think outside the square and create a unified and integrated communications platform that can be accessed instantly on any device. But more importantly, it ensures that our store teams have immediate access to the latest information, which in turn provides our customers with a better experience in store.]]> Posted Daniel Chiha, Communications Specialist (Operations) at Dick Smith

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Daniel Chiha, Communications Specialist (Operations) at Dick Smith, an electronics retailer in Australia and New Zealand.

The Retail Operations team at Dick Smith moved to Google Apps with help from Cloud Sherpas just over a year ago to improve the communication and coordination between our 3,000 or so staff in 376 stores across Australia and New Zealand. Since then, we’ve seen some pretty dramatic improvements and efficiencies in the way we get information out to our staff, thanks to Google Drive and Google Sites.

Our workforce is very mobile. Not only do we have a fleet of 23 Area Managers who spend their time between multiple stores, but our 3,000 in-store staff spend most of their time on the floor with customers. Our team depends on a steady stream of updates and materials throughout the week — from new product guides, promotional activities, upcoming launches through to employee safety processes — so it’s not only important that people see the updates meant for them, but that we’re able to track the critical messages for compliance.
Before moving to Google Apps, it took up to 24 hours to get these messages out to everyone through a series of phone hook ups, faxes, emails and a document delivery system that polled nightly. This was especially challenging when dealing with issues like product callbacks or promotions, where it’s essential for the team to move fast in order to avoid potential problems and ensure that new offers are immediately available to customers.

Now, with Google Drive and Google Sites, we’re able to provide thousands of employees with a bird's-eye view of important updates and key documents across the company. That way, if we need to get an urgent message out or a new employee needs access to a how-to guidebook, there’s just one place they need to look — and we can get everything listed or posted quickly and effectively. We create a master site with sections for each team, with links to Drive folders that house everything from planograms and promotion details to instructional guidebooks and tickets. Area Managers can then access both the site and the files from their tablets or phones on the go, and our sales staff can see updates from their own devices or the store computers.

We’ve also built a new system with Forms and Sheets to streamline operational communications. Instead of relying on complex email trails and lots of phone calls, employees now submit their sign-offs in a single Form. Responses are captured in a shared Sheet that the Operations team uses to track feedback and responses in real-time.

Google Apps helped us think outside the square and create a unified and integrated communications platform that can be accessed instantly on any device. But more importantly, it ensures that our store teams have immediate access to the latest information, which in turn provides our customers with a better experience in store.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/dick-smith-masters-operational-communications-with-google-apps-and-drive/feed/ 0 KFC Philippines boosts productivity and collaboration with Google Drive and Apps https://googledata.org/google-apps/kfc-philippines-boosts-productivity-and-collaboration-with-google-drive-and-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/kfc-philippines-boosts-productivity-and-collaboration-with-google-drive-and-apps/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:51:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=29a4847b70cb2b1810462bbe1b7c53c1 Posted by Arvin Reyes, Chief Information Officer, KFC Philippines

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Arvin Reyes, Chief Information Officer for KFC Philippines, which operates 230 restaurants and six plants in that country. To learn more, read the full case study, or see what other organizations that use Google Drive have to say.

KFC has been on a steady growth path since being introduced to the Philippines in 1967. With restaurants, plants, and offices across the country, fast and easy communication and information sharing are vital to our success. This means tools like file storage, email, calendaring, and document creation need to be user-friendly for employees and relatively trouble-free for our IT team. But until recently, our mix of email and document management software caused more problems than it solved – with server over-capacity and slow response time, they just slowed down our business growth.

We decided that a single communications platform with everything from storage to email to document creation was the necessary solution, and Google Apps was our answer. Not only did Apps meet all our requirements for cost-effectiveness, reliability and ease-of-use, but in Drive we saw a way to help our increasingly mobile workforce, which needs access to documents while out of the office.

We’ve boosted our productivity on creative work by 15% by switching from snail mail to Google Drive. Before we made the move, we sent creative materials back and forth between our home office and our advertising agency through messengers and the postal service, racking up costs and taking time away from other tasks. Now, with Drive, we can share large files like high-resolution images and merchandise artwork through the cloud, so material gets to our agency (and back to us) faster and at a significantly lower cost. And with a single location to store everything we’re working on, we’ve dramatically improved our ability to collaborate on projects.

Gmail makes us better at communicating: Now that everyone has 30GB of mail storage available, they don’t need to waste time constantly cleaning out their inboxes to make room for new emails, or asking colleagues to re-send emails because they can’t find them. Our IT team loves Gmail because complaints about email services have decreased to zero since we began using it – in fact, IT’s support work for communication tools has gone down by 25% since we started using Google Apps. That gives our team more time to focus on activities that are more directly tied to the bottom line.

Google Apps makes everyday problems like scheduling meetings disappear. Our old decision making process used to require the scheduling of several meetings and calls, with various reports and documents emailed back and forth among different teams. Now we schedule meetings on Google Calendar, where we can see everyone’s availability. For these meetings, we use a single shared document in Google Docs that serves as a running update on progress. This new workflow fundamentally changed the way we work with one another. What used to take days to decide is now possible within hours.

Google Apps not only makes it easy for us to manage storage and bandwidth, it keeps our employees happy. After six months on the platform, 95% of people told us they’re satisfied with Google Apps, which means they can enjoy their work of serving and helping our customers.]]> Posted by Arvin Reyes, Chief Information Officer, KFC Philippines

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Arvin Reyes, Chief Information Officer for KFC Philippines, which operates 230 restaurants and six plants in that country. To learn more, read the full case study, or see what other organizations that use Google Drive have to say.

KFC has been on a steady growth path since being introduced to the Philippines in 1967. With restaurants, plants, and offices across the country, fast and easy communication and information sharing are vital to our success. This means tools like file storage, email, calendaring, and document creation need to be user-friendly for employees and relatively trouble-free for our IT team. But until recently, our mix of email and document management software caused more problems than it solved – with server over-capacity and slow response time, they just slowed down our business growth.

We decided that a single communications platform with everything from storage to email to document creation was the necessary solution, and Google Apps was our answer. Not only did Apps meet all our requirements for cost-effectiveness, reliability and ease-of-use, but in Drive we saw a way to help our increasingly mobile workforce, which needs access to documents while out of the office.

We’ve boosted our productivity on creative work by 15% by switching from snail mail to Google Drive. Before we made the move, we sent creative materials back and forth between our home office and our advertising agency through messengers and the postal service, racking up costs and taking time away from other tasks. Now, with Drive, we can share large files like high-resolution images and merchandise artwork through the cloud, so material gets to our agency (and back to us) faster and at a significantly lower cost. And with a single location to store everything we’re working on, we’ve dramatically improved our ability to collaborate on projects.

Gmail makes us better at communicating: Now that everyone has 30GB of mail storage available, they don’t need to waste time constantly cleaning out their inboxes to make room for new emails, or asking colleagues to re-send emails because they can’t find them. Our IT team loves Gmail because complaints about email services have decreased to zero since we began using it – in fact, IT’s support work for communication tools has gone down by 25% since we started using Google Apps. That gives our team more time to focus on activities that are more directly tied to the bottom line.

Google Apps makes everyday problems like scheduling meetings disappear. Our old decision making process used to require the scheduling of several meetings and calls, with various reports and documents emailed back and forth among different teams. Now we schedule meetings on Google Calendar, where we can see everyone’s availability. For these meetings, we use a single shared document in Google Docs that serves as a running update on progress. This new workflow fundamentally changed the way we work with one another. What used to take days to decide is now possible within hours.

Google Apps not only makes it easy for us to manage storage and bandwidth, it keeps our employees happy. After six months on the platform, 95% of people told us they’re satisfied with Google Apps, which means they can enjoy their work of serving and helping our customers.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/kfc-philippines-boosts-productivity-and-collaboration-with-google-drive-and-apps/feed/ 0 How to move your files to Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/how-to-move-your-files-to-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/how-to-move-your-files-to-google-drive/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2014 17:32:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=322b9149dc15b4855cabe806b590c19c Posted by Chuck Coulson, Drive Technology Partnerships, Google

Google Drive for Work is a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls and features, such as encryption at rest.

If you're getting ready to move your company to Drive, one of the first things on your mind is how to migrate all your existing files with as little hassle as possible. It's easy to migrate your files by uploading them directly to Drive or using the Drive Sync client. But, what if you have files stored elsewhere that you want to consolidate? Or what if you want to migrate multiple users at once? Many independent software vendors (ISVs) have built solutions to help organizations migrate their files from different File Sync and Share (FSS) solutions, local hard drives and other data sources. Here are some of the options available for you to use:

Cloud Migrator, by Cloud Technology Solutions, migrates user accounts and files to Google Drive and other Google Apps services. (website, blogpost)
Cloudsfer, by Tzunami, transfers files from Box, Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive to Google Drive. (website)
Migrator for Google Apps, by Backupify, migrates and consolidates personal Google Drive or other Google Apps for Business accounts into a single domain. (website, blogpost)
Mover migrates data from 23 cloud services providers, web services, and databases into Google Drive. (website, blogpost)
Nava Certus, by LinkGard, provides a migration and synchronization solution for on-premise and cloud-based storage platforms, including Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Amazon S3, as well as local file systems. (website, blogpost)
SkySync, by Portal Architects, integrates existing on-site storage systems as well as other cloud storage providers to Google Drive. (website, blogpost)

These are just a few companies that offer migration solutions. Please visit the Google Apps Marketplace for a complete listing of tools and offerings that add value to the Google Apps platform.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/how-to-move-your-files-to-google-drive/feed/ 0 Protecting Gmail in a global world https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/protecting-gmail-in-a-global-world-2/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/protecting-gmail-in-a-global-world-2/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2014 18:05:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=220195b7ddcddc386dc2d94f7173a41b Posted by Mark Risher, Spam & Abuse Team

Editor's note: Businesses rely on email to communicate, and on Google to ensure that their email communication is secure. Today, we’re adding to our spam filtering support in Gmail to handle duplicitous “Unicode Homoglyphs.” This release strengthens our ongoing commitment to keeping our customers safe and protected from scams, phishing attacks and spammers.

Last week we announced support for non-Latin characters in Gmail — think δοκιμή.com and 测试@example.net and みんな — as a first step towards more global email. We’re really excited about these new capabilities. We also want to ensure they aren't abused by spammers or scammers trying to send misleading or harmful messages.

Scammers can exploit the fact that ဝ, ૦, and ο look nearly identical to the letter o, and by mixing and matching them, they can hoodwink unsuspecting victims. Can you imagine the risk of clicking “ShဝppingSite” vs. “ShoppingSite” or “MyBank” vs. “MyBɑnk”?

To stay one step ahead of spammers, the Unicode community has identified suspicious combinations of letters that could be misleading, and Gmail will now begin rejecting email with such combinations. We're using an open standard—the Unicode Consortium's “Highly Restricted” designation—which we believe strikes a healthy balance between legitimate uses of these new domains and those likely to be abused.

We’re rolling out the changes today, and hope that others across the industry will follow suit. Together, we can help ensure that international domains continue to flourish, allowing both users and businesses to have a tête-à-tête in the language of their choosing.

]]> Posted by Mark Risher, Spam & Abuse Team

Editor's note: Businesses rely on email to communicate, and on Google to ensure that their email communication is secure. Today, we’re adding to our spam filtering support in Gmail to handle duplicitous “Unicode Homoglyphs.” This release strengthens our ongoing commitment to keeping our customers safe and protected from scams, phishing attacks and spammers.

Last week we announced support for non-Latin characters in Gmail — think δοκιμή.com and 测试@example.net and みんな — as a first step towards more global email. We’re really excited about these new capabilities. We also want to ensure they aren't abused by spammers or scammers trying to send misleading or harmful messages.

Scammers can exploit the fact that ဝ, ૦, and ο look nearly identical to the letter o, and by mixing and matching them, they can hoodwink unsuspecting victims. Can you imagine the risk of clicking “ShဝppingSite” vs. “ShoppingSite” or “MyBank” vs. “MyBɑnk”?

To stay one step ahead of spammers, the Unicode community has identified suspicious combinations of letters that could be misleading, and Gmail will now begin rejecting email with such combinations. We're using an open standard—the Unicode Consortium's “Highly Restricted” designation—which we believe strikes a healthy balance between legitimate uses of these new domains and those likely to be abused.

We’re rolling out the changes today, and hope that others across the industry will follow suit. Together, we can help ensure that international domains continue to flourish, allowing both users and businesses to have a tête-à-tête in the language of their choosing.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/protecting-gmail-in-a-global-world-2/feed/ 0 More teaching, Less tech-ing: Google Classroom Launches Today https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-teaching-less-tech-ing-google-classroom-launches-today/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-teaching-less-tech-ing-google-classroom-launches-today/#comments Tue, 12 Aug 2014 16:06:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=e1b12cd51215669604dc5835a48933d8 Posted by Zach Yeskel, Classroom Product Manager (and former High School Math Teacher)

When we introduced Classroom back in May, we asked educators to give it a try. The response was exciting — more than 100,000 educators from more than 45 countries signed up for a preview. Today, we’re starting to open Classroom to all Google Apps for Education users, helping teachers spend more time teaching and less time shuffling papers.

One of the first schools to use Classroom was Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. Sister Rosemarie DeLoro, who has been teaching for more than 60 years, had never used computers with her students before Classroom was introduced at her school. Classroom made it easy for her to assign digital worksheets to students in her Italian class and provide direct feedback to help them learn. In fact, after just a few weeks, Sister Rosemarie was showing the other teachers how to use it. “You can’t stay in teaching and keep going to the old ways,” she said.

Teachers and students have been instrumental in helping us build Classroom. For example, we heard during the preview that educators don’t want to wait until an assignment is turned in to collaborate with students. Now, with Classroom, teachers can view and comment on students’ work to help them along the way. We’ve also heard that educators want a simple place to post information and materials about their classes, so we added an “About” page for each course, as well.

When teachers create assignments, they can attach files from Google Drive — including Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Keynote, Google Slides, Excel, Google Sheets, and many others — then choose to automatically make a copy for each student.

Teachers can review assignments from Classroom and provide feedback and grades to students all in one place.

Classroom is available in 42 languages (including right-to-left ones, such as Hebrew, Arabic and Persian). It also works well on mobile devices and most popular screen readers. We’ll be rolling out to more users every day, so if you go to classroom.google.com with your Apps for Education account and don’t have access yet, please check back soon.

Hopefully Classroom will help you spend a little less time at the photocopier and a little more time doing what you love—teaching.]]> Posted by Zach Yeskel, Classroom Product Manager (and former High School Math Teacher)

When we introduced Classroom back in May, we asked educators to give it a try. The response was exciting — more than 100,000 educators from more than 45 countries signed up for a preview. Today, we’re starting to open Classroom to all Google Apps for Education users, helping teachers spend more time teaching and less time shuffling papers.

One of the first schools to use Classroom was Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. Sister Rosemarie DeLoro, who has been teaching for more than 60 years, had never used computers with her students before Classroom was introduced at her school. Classroom made it easy for her to assign digital worksheets to students in her Italian class and provide direct feedback to help them learn. In fact, after just a few weeks, Sister Rosemarie was showing the other teachers how to use it. “You can’t stay in teaching and keep going to the old ways,” she said.

Teachers and students have been instrumental in helping us build Classroom. For example, we heard during the preview that educators don’t want to wait until an assignment is turned in to collaborate with students. Now, with Classroom, teachers can view and comment on students’ work to help them along the way. We’ve also heard that educators want a simple place to post information and materials about their classes, so we added an “About” page for each course, as well.

Teachers can review assignments from Classroom and provide feedback and grades to students all in one place.

Classroom is available in 42 languages (including right-to-left ones, such as Hebrew, Arabic and Persian). It also works well on mobile devices and most popular screen readers. We’ll be rolling out to more users every day, so if you go to classroom.google.com with your Apps for Education account and don’t have access yet, please check back soon.

Hopefully Classroom will help you spend a little less time at the photocopier and a little more time doing what you love—teaching.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/more-teaching-less-tech-ing-google-classroom-launches-today/feed/ 0 Thrillist bridges lifestyle brands with Google Apps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/thrillist-bridges-lifestyle-brands-with-google-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/thrillist-bridges-lifestyle-brands-with-google-apps/#comments Mon, 11 Aug 2014 14:14:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=df9ec0ed0ce96bd7b41c4a9ebd1ce0d4 Posted by Ben Darr, Development Manager, Thrillist Media Group

Editor's note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangouts from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work emails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today, we hear from Ben Darr, Product Development Manager at Thrillist Media Group, a digital media company based in New York that is responsible for men’s lifestyle brand Thrillist.com and popular online retailer JackThreads.

In the last four years, Thrillist Media Group (TMG) has gone from a small newsletter in a one-room office to a multi-propertied media group with more than 300 employees. We now operate within the realms of content, commerce, private label clothing, events, sales and proprietary tech platforms. We’ve worked hard to tie these unique industries together — a feat that requires high levels of communication between our offices in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Columbus, Ohio. Thrillist’s collaboration between employees would not be possible without Google Apps.

Thrillist’s employees are completely plugged into the Google ecosystem and the tools we need are mere clicks away and always available. What really sets the Google platform apart is the seamless integration and intuitive user experience. If you’ve ever used Gchat in the last few years, you know how to use Hangouts. If you can write an email, it’s a tiny skip to using a Google Doc. Being able to quickly switch between Apps without having to log in or learn how to use a new tool caters to our fast-pace environment and centralizes nearly all of our day-to-day files and communication.

Whether someone has a quick question or needs to express a more complex idea via Hangout or email, Google Apps is there to give our team what we need to finalize the designs and copy with the client. After approvals, we upload all files to Drive, which makes it easy for multiple departments across the company to refer to them throughout the campaign. On the product side, our quality assurance team can then cross reference final design specs to custom-built sales and make note of any issues or differences in Google Sheets. When the campaign is live, I review how the entire process was executed and use our product page on the Thrillist Google Site to recount best practices and we took away from the campaign.

Take, for example, this real-life scenario from a recent campaign: A client halfway across the country sponsored a custom sale on Jackthreads driving content on Thrillist and Supercompressor, two of our e-commerce properties. To start the process, our sales and design team held a kick-off meeting with the client via Google Hangouts to understand their vision and goals for the campaign. Throughout the meeting, everyone recorded ideas, guidelines and project timelines on one Google Doc. When the meeting ended, I shared the Doc with all the different TMG departments involved — other product members, photographers at our warehouse in Brooklyn, tech leads overseeing the build, sales reps communicating with the client and that lucky colleague on vacation at the beach.

As a relatively small company, our projects are largely collaborative and everyone is juggling a large workload — and the specific example above is just a single piece in the complex TMG puzzle. Google Apps is critical to the work we do everyday; while other companies offer these services separately, none offer all of them together in one seamless, easy-to-use system.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/thrillist-bridges-lifestyle-brands-with-google-apps/feed/ 0 Karma offers hotspot data power to the people https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/karma-offers-hotspot-data-power-to-the-people/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/karma-offers-hotspot-data-power-to-the-people/#comments Fri, 08 Aug 2014 14:25:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=559f2dc00658406f7ba00f6a9e613334 Posted by Amanda Bensol, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Karma

Editor's note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangouts from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work e-mails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today’s guest blogger is Amanda Bensol, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Karma, a New York-based startup building a sleek, portable pay-what-you-use WiFi hotspot.

Karma empowers people to work wherever they want with an elegantly designed personal portable hotspot. Our team spent years paying exorbitant hotspot data costs while traveling around the world and knew there had to be a better and cheaper way to get online at the many airports, hotels, cafes and trains that didn’t have public Internet access. We set out to solve the problem ourselves with an affordable mobile WiFi hotspot that allows people to work wherever, whenever they want. Karma isn’t just a hotspot — it’s a movement that lets people take back the power to use their data and technology how they want.

In order to introduce new ways of working, we hold monthly Karma Outdoors gatherings and invite people to come join us in working outside this summer. Like most people, we enjoy being able to work on our own terms. That’s why Google Apps has been part of our journey from the start. It’s not a stretch to say that Google Hangouts practically built Karma. After the company was started, visa issues caused the founders to return to Amsterdam, leaving me essentially in charge of U.S. operations. Hangouts was a lifeline that allowed us to build and grow the company, even though we were separated by an ocean.

In addition to Hangouts, Google Docs is essential to our business and our preferred way to innovate because it offers a better creative workflow than any other product. Our founders in Amsterdam exchange a lot of ideas with the company’s designers in New York as we prepare for our next-generation release of sleeker Karma models. Google Docs makes it possible for us to easily keep track of our design ideas. Docs is the place we quickly paste media to preserve of our thoughts on the fly. We refine ideas together by exchanging comments within our documents. I write down specific product specs in Docs, knowing our concepts are logged and stored for our design team to access from anywhere.

We’re only at the beginning of our journey to liberate people in their quest for mobile connectivity, and we’ve got a lot more in store for our products and company. We’re confident in our ability to achieve our goals and truly make an impact using Google Apps, which allows for mobility and flexibility in communications and productivity — values that align with our mission, too. Between Karma and Google Apps, together we’ll get people out from the confinement of cubicles and into the sun.

]]> Posted by Amanda Bensol, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Karma

Editor's note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangouts from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work e-mails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today’s guest blogger is Amanda Bensol, Vice President of Marketing and Sales at Karma, a New York-based startup building a sleek, portable pay-what-you-use WiFi hotspot.

Karma empowers people to work wherever they want with an elegantly designed personal portable hotspot. Our team spent years paying exorbitant hotspot data costs while traveling around the world and knew there had to be a better and cheaper way to get online at the many airports, hotels, cafes and trains that didn’t have public Internet access. We set out to solve the problem ourselves with an affordable mobile WiFi hotspot that allows people to work wherever, whenever they want. Karma isn’t just a hotspot — it’s a movement that lets people take back the power to use their data and technology how they want.

In order to introduce new ways of working, we hold monthly Karma Outdoors gatherings and invite people to come join us in working outside this summer. Like most people, we enjoy being able to work on our own terms. That’s why Google Apps has been part of our journey from the start. It’s not a stretch to say that Google Hangouts practically built Karma. After the company was started, visa issues caused the founders to return to Amsterdam, leaving me essentially in charge of U.S. operations. Hangouts was a lifeline that allowed us to build and grow the company, even though we were separated by an ocean.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/karma-offers-hotspot-data-power-to-the-people/feed/ 0 The Climate Corporation shrinks distance between offices using Chromebox for meetings https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-climate-corporation-shrinks-distance-between-offices-using-chromebox-for-meetings/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-climate-corporation-shrinks-distance-between-offices-using-chromebox-for-meetings/#comments Thu, 07 Aug 2014 18:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=0e5af37ebdf329b5c43d389e64035e4e Posted by Anthony Osborne, Vice President of Marketing for The Climate Corporation

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Anthony Osborne, Vice President of Marketing for The Climate Corporation, which brings the power of data and technology to the agriculture industry with the ultimate mission of combating climate change. The Climate Corporation is one of many companies outfitting conference rooms with Chromebox for meetings. To learn more, join us for a live Hangout on Air to see how companies can modernize the meeting room and reimagine collaboration.

You might not associate farmers with technology from the Bay Area, but at The Climate Corporation, we’re dedicated to providing tools for farmers that help maximize their crop yields and use natural resources efficiently. We believe that innovation plays a vital role in their mission; we also apply this belief to improve the way our employees work.

Oftentimes, a culture of perpetual innovation means our days are filled back to back with meetings. With offices in San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Kansas City, coordinating meetings and catch-ups across time zones can pose a number of challenges. The San Francisco team typically gets to work at 9am but stays late; in St. Louis, we’re at work by 7am and out by 6pm. Until recently, most people worked late at the office and often missed out on quality time at home. We flew between our offices for meetings, which cost time and money. And when we weren’t traveling, we held meetings over the phone, which were typically less engaging and productive. We considered high-end video conferencing solutions, but the cost (over $70,000) limited how many conference rooms we could equip.

Then we discovered Chromebox for meetings. At a $999 starting price, we can afford to place Chromeboxes in conference rooms across all of our offices and bring our spread-out teams together throughout the day without the travel costs or conference call grievances. Now, it’s almost like our colleagues in San Francisco are in the same room with us in St. Louis. Our IT team loved the easy setup – all they had to do was plug in the display and complete the setup wizard. And our employees love the speed and simplicity of meetings.

Not only are Chromeboxes in our conference rooms, but some of us have them at home, too. In my case, I can spend some time with my kids, then jump onto a face-to-face meeting for a half-hour if I need to, all without being forced to stay in the office.

Today, 80% of our meetings are now held on Hangouts using Chromebox for meetings. Coupling our new way of collaboration with Google Apps—which we’ve already been using for work, in and out of the office—I’m amazed at how technology transforms our work day. Now that we’re collaborating more efficiently, we can do a much better job of creating products that help our customers monitor the impact of climate on their businesses.]]> Posted by Anthony Osborne, Vice President of Marketing for The Climate Corporation

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Anthony Osborne, Vice President of Marketing for The Climate Corporation, which brings the power of data and technology to the agriculture industry with the ultimate mission of combating climate change. The Climate Corporation is one of many companies outfitting conference rooms with Chromebox for meetings. To learn more, join us for a live Hangout on Air to see how companies can modernize the meeting room and reimagine collaboration.

You might not associate farmers with technology from the Bay Area, but at The Climate Corporation, we’re dedicated to providing tools for farmers that help maximize their crop yields and use natural resources efficiently. We believe that innovation plays a vital role in their mission; we also apply this belief to improve the way our employees work.

Oftentimes, a culture of perpetual innovation means our days are filled back to back with meetings. With offices in San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Kansas City, coordinating meetings and catch-ups across time zones can pose a number of challenges. The San Francisco team typically gets to work at 9am but stays late; in St. Louis, we’re at work by 7am and out by 6pm. Until recently, most people worked late at the office and often missed out on quality time at home. We flew between our offices for meetings, which cost time and money. And when we weren’t traveling, we held meetings over the phone, which were typically less engaging and productive. We considered high-end video conferencing solutions, but the cost (over $70,000) limited how many conference rooms we could equip.

Then we discovered Chromebox for meetings. At a $999 starting price, we can afford to place Chromeboxes in conference rooms across all of our offices and bring our spread-out teams together throughout the day without the travel costs or conference call grievances. Now, it’s almost like our colleagues in San Francisco are in the same room with us in St. Louis. Our IT team loved the easy setup – all they had to do was plug in the display and complete the setup wizard. And our employees love the speed and simplicity of meetings.

Not only are Chromeboxes in our conference rooms, but some of us have them at home, too. In my case, I can spend some time with my kids, then jump onto a face-to-face meeting for a half-hour if I need to, all without being forced to stay in the office.

Today, 80% of our meetings are now held on Hangouts using Chromebox for meetings. Coupling our new way of collaboration with Google Apps—which we’ve already been using for work, in and out of the office—I’m amazed at how technology transforms our work day. Now that we’re collaborating more efficiently, we can do a much better job of creating products that help our customers monitor the impact of climate on their businesses.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-climate-corporation-shrinks-distance-between-offices-using-chromebox-for-meetings/feed/ 0 Washington and Lee University speeds up campus alerts with Chromebox for signage https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/washington-and-lee-university-speeds-up-campus-alerts-with-chromeboxes-for-signage/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/washington-and-lee-university-speeds-up-campus-alerts-with-chromeboxes-for-signage/#comments Wed, 06 Aug 2014 20:10:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=1a28090351645e7354d08be425558af2 Posted by Alicia Shires, Classroom Technology Specialist, Washington and Lee University

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Alicia Shires, Classroom Technology Specialist at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

At Washington and Lee University, we pride ourselves on our clear communications to everyone on campus—and if we have to cancel or change classes or events, we want everyone to find out as soon as possible. Our 13 digital signage screens, positioned in key places across campus like the Commons building and several dorms, alert staff and students to the events at the University, along with updates on our sports teams and local weather. When we installed Google Chromeboxes to replace the crash-prone Windows machines running the screens, it became much easier to bring news to the campus while it’s fresh.

The personal computers we were using to run display screens had several problems, with unreliability at the top of the list. They were slow to update, and would often crash, leaving the screens completely offline. That meant a delay in delivering information to students and staff until we could reboot the machines remotely. The machines were also slow. When we uploaded information to be displayed, it could take 30 minutes before viewers saw it.

These delays could become a big deal if we wanted to deliver time-sensitive information to screens, like weather-related campus closings or emergency situations. Without fast notifications, students and professors could waste time traveling to classes or events that weren’t happening.We knew we needed better hardware to solve the problems of speed and instability.

Rise Vision, the developer of the free, open-source platform we use to create and manage our display content, suggested we replace the PCs with managed Chromeboxes. We discovered that because Chromeboxes run Chrome OS, they update automatically, so updates don’t interfere with the displays. We can operate Chromeboxes in Kiosk mode so we can run the digital signage software at full-screen, which makes our displays look better. Management is largely hands off. I don’t have to touch the boxes and the reboots are fast and automatic.

Each Chromebox is several hundred dollars less than one of the PCs we were using before, so that’s a big plus for us. They’re extremely reliable and super-fast—when I upload new content from my office, it appears almost immediately on the campus display screens. It’s hard to believe I’m not working directly on the Chromeboxes themselves. They’re also powerful enough to run rich media like HD 1080P videos without choppy playback.

Perhaps the best thing about using Chromeboxes for our screens is that we’ve finally been able to kick our emergency notification system into high gear. If we go through another difficult winter, we can quickly push out emergency notices about schools closings, weather delays, and event cancellations. Operating our screens with fast, reliable Chromeboxes is helping us keep everyone on campus not just well-informed, but safe and sound.]]> Posted by Alicia Shires, Classroom Technology Specialist, Washington and Lee University

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Alicia Shires, Classroom Technology Specialist at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia.

At Washington and Lee University, we pride ourselves on our clear communications to everyone on campus—and if we have to cancel or change classes or events, we want everyone to find out as soon as possible. Our 13 digital signage screens, positioned in key places across campus like the Commons building and several dorms, alert staff and students to the events at the University, along with updates on our sports teams and local weather. When we installed Google Chromeboxes to replace the crash-prone Windows machines running the screens, it became much easier to bring news to the campus while it’s fresh.

Each Chromebox is several hundred dollars less than one of the PCs we were using before, so that’s a big plus for us. They’re extremely reliable and super-fast—when I upload new content from my office, it appears almost immediately on the campus display screens. It’s hard to believe I’m not working directly on the Chromeboxes themselves. They’re also powerful enough to run rich media like HD 1080P videos without choppy playback.

Perhaps the best thing about using Chromeboxes for our screens is that we’ve finally been able to kick our emergency notification system into high gear. If we go through another difficult winter, we can quickly push out emergency notices about schools closings, weather delays, and event cancellations. Operating our screens with fast, reliable Chromeboxes is helping us keep everyone on campus not just well-informed, but safe and sound.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/washington-and-lee-university-speeds-up-campus-alerts-with-chromeboxes-for-signage/feed/ 0 Flexible IT can unlock Japan’s mobile potential https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/flexible-it-can-unlock-japans-mobile-potential/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/flexible-it-can-unlock-japans-mobile-potential/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2014 22:13:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=a518ec2612c053557a3d88a167eff205 Posted by Shinichi Abe, Enterprise Managing Director, Japan

Japanese companies are facing major challenges for long-term success. The rapid graying of society is shrinking the workforce, leaving only 62% of the population in the working age. Inflexible workplace practices prevent many women from returning to their careers after childbirth. The Japan Productivity Center ranks Japan lowest of the Group of Seven most advanced nations in productivity, despite some of the world’s longest work hours.

As pressure mounts on Japanese businesses to find new ways to be productive and to attract and retain top talent, we asked Deloitte to take a look at how mobile and digital tools might be able to help. According to their new report, Japan’s Mobile Potential, access to mobile devices for work and more flexible IT policies could help unlock almost 2 trillion yen for the Japanese economy and keep some of Japan’s most skilled people in the workforce. There are a number of additional findings from the report which may be useful for businesses including:

Japanese businesses are missing out on a massive mobile opportunity
Deloitte found that despite having one highest rates of smartphone use in the world — 75% of people between 18 and 49 own a personal smartphone — less than 9% use their smartphone for work. Of the same group, 20% of people own a tablet computer at home, but only 3% of these people have access to a tablet for their work tasks.

People want to work more flexibly with digital and mobile tools
71% of people said that they would be more productive if they had access to digital tools like smartphones, laptops and tablets for work, as it would enable them to work from home or while commuting.

Workplace IT has some catching up to do
Many people say that their home IT is better than what they’re given at work. They rate their home technology as more user friendly (51%), more up to date (45%) and said that their internet was faster (43%). Almost half of the respondents said that they are frustrated with their workplace IT, as their computers and internet speeds are too slow and their devices are outdated.

Employees with flexible workplace IT policies are more productive
Businesses that allow their employees to work from home or work remotely with digital tools said they are more productive. And none of the respondents with flexible workplace IT policies said they work overtime, while 31% of those without this approach said they regularly work overtime.

Mobile devices and flexible IT policies could unlock two trillion yen for the Japanese economy
Deloitte found that the Japanese economy could generate 2 trillion yen if businesses provided digital tools like smartphones, laptops and tablets to people who want to work, but don't have direct access to the tools they need to work from home or remotely. When you consider that they did not calculate the economic impact of giving people who are working access to digital tools and flexible workplace policies, this figure could be much higher.

You can learn more about Japan’s mobile potential from Deloitte’s report, and to find out how Google can help your company work flexibly with mobile tools visit the Google Enterprise website.

]]> Posted by Shinichi Abe, Enterprise Managing Director, Japan

Japanese companies are facing major challenges for long-term success. The rapid graying of society is shrinking the workforce, leaving only 62% of the population in the working age. Inflexible workplace practices prevent many women from returning to their careers after childbirth. The Japan Productivity Center ranks Japan lowest of the Group of Seven most advanced nations in productivity, despite some of the world’s longest work hours.

As pressure mounts on Japanese businesses to find new ways to be productive and to attract and retain top talent, we asked Deloitte to take a look at how mobile and digital tools might be able to help. According to their new report, Japan’s Mobile Potential, access to mobile devices for work and more flexible IT policies could help unlock almost 2 trillion yen for the Japanese economy and keep some of Japan’s most skilled people in the workforce. There are a number of additional findings from the report which may be useful for businesses including:

Japanese businesses are missing out on a massive mobile opportunity
Deloitte found that despite having one highest rates of smartphone use in the world — 75% of people between 18 and 49 own a personal smartphone — less than 9% use their smartphone for work. Of the same group, 20% of people own a tablet computer at home, but only 3% of these people have access to a tablet for their work tasks.

People want to work more flexibly with digital and mobile tools
71% of people said that they would be more productive if they had access to digital tools like smartphones, laptops and tablets for work, as it would enable them to work from home or while commuting.

Workplace IT has some catching up to do
Many people say that their home IT is better than what they’re given at work. They rate their home technology as more user friendly (51%), more up to date (45%) and said that their internet was faster (43%). Almost half of the respondents said that they are frustrated with their workplace IT, as their computers and internet speeds are too slow and their devices are outdated.

Employees with flexible workplace IT policies are more productive
Businesses that allow their employees to work from home or work remotely with digital tools said they are more productive. And none of the respondents with flexible workplace IT policies said they work overtime, while 31% of those without this approach said they regularly work overtime.

Mobile devices and flexible IT policies could unlock two trillion yen for the Japanese economy
Deloitte found that the Japanese economy could generate 2 trillion yen if businesses provided digital tools like smartphones, laptops and tablets to people who want to work, but don't have direct access to the tools they need to work from home or remotely. When you consider that they did not calculate the economic impact of giving people who are working access to digital tools and flexible workplace policies, this figure could be much higher.

You can learn more about Japan’s mobile potential from Deloitte’s report, and to find out how Google can help your company work flexibly with mobile tools visit the Google Enterprise website.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/flexible-it-can-unlock-japans-mobile-potential/feed/ 0 A first step toward more global email https://googledata.org/google-apps/a-first-step-toward-more-global-email-3/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/a-first-step-toward-more-global-email-3/#comments Tue, 05 Aug 2014 16:11:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=774159a7e971755c78d4a2d4ed428820 Posted by Pedro Chaparro Monferrer, Software Engineer, Gmail

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

Whether your email address is firstname.lastname@ or something more expressive like corgicrazy@, an email address says something about who you are. But from the start, email addresses have always required you to use non-accented Latin characters when signing up. Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z. So if your name (or that of your favorite pet) contains accented characters (like “José Ramón”) or is written in another script like Chinese or Devanagari, your email address options are limited.

But all that could change. In 2012, an organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created a new email standard that supports addresses with non-Latin and accented Latin characters (e.g. 武＠メール.グーグル). In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. The technology is there, but someone has to take the first step.

Today we're ready to be that someone. Starting now, Gmail (and shortly, Calendar) will recognize addresses that contain accented or non-Latin characters. This means Gmail users can send emails to, and receive emails from, people who have these characters in their email addresses. Of course, this is just a first step and there’s still a ways to go. In the future, we want to make it possible for you to use them to create Gmail accounts.

Last month, we announced the addition of 13 new languages in Gmail. Language should never be a barrier when it comes to connecting with others and with this step forward, truly global email is now even closer to becoming a reality.]]> Posted by Pedro Chaparro Monferrer, Software Engineer, Gmail

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog

Whether your email address is firstname.lastname@ or something more expressive like corgicrazy@, an email address says something about who you are. But from the start, email addresses have always required you to use non-accented Latin characters when signing up. Less than half of the world’s population has a mother tongue that uses the Latin alphabet. And even fewer people use only the letters A-Z. So if your name (or that of your favorite pet) contains accented characters (like “José Ramón”) or is written in another script like Chinese or Devanagari, your email address options are limited.

But all that could change. In 2012, an organization called the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) created a new email standard that supports addresses with non-Latin and accented Latin characters (e.g. 武＠メール.グーグル). In order for this standard to become a reality, every email provider and every website that asks you for your email address must adopt it. That’s obviously a tough hill to climb. The technology is there, but someone has to take the first step.

Today we're ready to be that someone. Starting now, Gmail (and shortly, Calendar) will recognize addresses that contain accented or non-Latin characters. This means Gmail users can send emails to, and receive emails from, people who have these characters in their email addresses. Of course, this is just a first step and there’s still a ways to go. In the future, we want to make it possible for you to use them to create Gmail accounts.

Last month, we announced the addition of 13 new languages in Gmail. Language should never be a barrier when it comes to connecting with others and with this step forward, truly global email is now even closer to becoming a reality.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/a-first-step-toward-more-global-email-3/feed/ 0 Travis Perkins plc builds a powerful project system with Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/travis-perkins-plc-builds-a-powerful-project-system-with-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/travis-perkins-plc-builds-a-powerful-project-system-with-google-drive/#comments Thu, 31 Jul 2014 15:56:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=22af674a0e6befb8f059fd5fa49f908b Posted by Jon Spruce, Google Programme Leader, Travis Perkins plc

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Jon Spruce, Google Programme Leader for Travis Perkins plc, the UK’s leading company in the builders’ merchant and home improvement market and largest supplier to the building and construction market. See what other organisations that use Google Drive have to say.

Travis Perkins plc supplies building materials for projects small and large across the United Kingdom, from home improvements to Terminal 5 at Heathrow airport. Creating quotes for a variety of different jobs and tasks, then making sure the materials get where they need to be, requires serious coordination. We chose Google Apps to enable collaboration across our 2,000 locations, 24,000 people and 17 different businesses. And since making the switch, Google Drive in particular has played a significant role in making our company operate smoothly and efficiently: we use Google Drive to store and share more than 1.3 million documents, which has reduced travel, email traffic and the time taken to get things done.

Before Google Drive, the process of creating quotes was disjointed and confusing. We’ve made a series of acquisitions over the last 30 years, and with each one, also acquired a new technology and system, which left us with a mismatched set of storage and document creation products. People created their own ‘kingdoms’ of data, and expected they’d be able to share information – with very limited success. With Google Drive, we can deliver quotes to customers at a steady pace, while making sure that employees across the Travis Perkins Group can provide and access the most up-to-date information at any time.

Drive has also taken the sluggishness out of the quote pipeline. In one of our businesses, BSS Industrial, we start by creating a document about the project at the customer’s local branch, then create a shared folder, and add in blueprints, estimates, and photos – anything the rest of the team needs to build and fulfill the quote.

As employees locate and price supplies or visit the building site to take precise measurements, everyone can update the same files. We no longer worry about which email or spreadsheet is correct, since we all work together on the same project quotes. Drive gives us an accurate, up-to-date picture of our progress at any given moment.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/travis-perkins-plc-builds-a-powerful-project-system-with-google-drive/feed/ 0 Even more reasons to meet face-to-face https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/even-more-reasons-to-meet-face-to-face/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/even-more-reasons-to-meet-face-to-face/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2014 16:07:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=d8590335a97afd948be875a63819c790 Posted by Clay Bavor, Vice President Product Management, Google Apps

No matter how things change, a face-to-face conversation is still the fastest and simplest way to communicate. Using Hangouts lets teams collaborate over video meetings across smartphones, tablets and computers. And dedicated Chromebox for meetings devices extend these video meetings to any room. Today, we’re announcing the latest features, updates and partnerships that make video meetings even easier and better for Google Apps for Business customers.

Enhanced reliability and support for Hangouts
Hangouts is now covered under the same Terms of Service that support our other Google Apps for Business products, like Gmail and Drive. That means we’ve got your back with 24x7 phone support and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime, as well as ISO27001 and SOC 2 certification. Additional enterprise integration with Google Apps Vault is coming by the end of the year.

Simpler to get everyone on video meetings
Starting today, Hangouts video meetings support any Google Apps customer account, including those without a Google+ profile. Any Google Apps customer can start or join a high-definition video meeting that connects 15 participants—from a computer or Chromebox for meetings device and coming soon to mobile phone and tablet.

And to make video meetings with Hangouts and Chromebox for meetings even more accessible, we’re partnering with additional providers to let you meet with teams using other systems. Blue Jeans will allow people on traditional H.323 or SIP-based videoconferencing systems to join video meetings. InterCall will let people join video meetings on their phones through an InterCall audio-conference bridge. And with new phone dialing support, you’ll be able to dial out from your Chromebox for meetings device to telephones.

Bringing Chromebox for meetings to more places
In the coming months, we’ll be making Chromebox for meetings work better in rooms of all shapes and sizes. In larger conference rooms, you can connect two displays to one Chromebox for meetings device to see your audience and project a presentation at the same time. And if you’ve ever wanted a dedicated setup for video meetings for your home, new personal calendar integration means you will be able to easily set up Chromebox for meetings outside the office.

Lastly, IT administrators can better manage meetings right from the Google Apps Admin Console with options like remotely starting, muting and ending a meeting.

Spontaneous one-on-one brainstorms, monthly company-wide meetings, or connecting two offices via a continuous video stream are just some ways customers like Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Kaplan and Eventbrite have used Hangouts and Chromebox for meetings. And soon, even more teams across the world will be able to get simple and affordable video meetings. In the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding Chromebox for meetings to the UK and Japan in addition to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And in September, you’ll be able to purchase Chromebox for meetings made by Dell.

To learn more about these updates, join our product team for a live Hangout on Air on August 19. And to help your team see eye-to-eye, check out how you can get Hangouts and purchase Chromebox for meetings devices. ]]> Posted by Clay Bavor, Vice President Product Management, Google Apps

No matter how things change, a face-to-face conversation is still the fastest and simplest way to communicate. Using Hangouts lets teams collaborate over video meetings across smartphones, tablets and computers. And dedicated Chromebox for meetings devices extend these video meetings to any room. Today, we’re announcing the latest features, updates and partnerships that make video meetings even easier and better for Google Apps for Business customers.

Enhanced reliability and support for Hangouts
Hangouts is now covered under the same Terms of Service that support our other Google Apps for Business products, like Gmail and Drive. That means we’ve got your back with 24x7 phone support and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime, as well as ISO27001 and SOC 2 certification. Additional enterprise integration with Google Apps Vault is coming by the end of the year.

Simpler to get everyone on video meetings
Starting today, Hangouts video meetings support any Google Apps customer account, including those without a Google+ profile. Any Google Apps customer can start or join a high-definition video meeting that connects 15 participants—from a computer or Chromebox for meetings device and coming soon to mobile phone and tablet.

And to make video meetings with Hangouts and Chromebox for meetings even more accessible, we’re partnering with additional providers to let you meet with teams using other systems. Blue Jeans will allow people on traditional H.323 or SIP-based videoconferencing systems to join video meetings. InterCall will let people join video meetings on their phones through an InterCall audio-conference bridge. And with new phone dialing support, you’ll be able to dial out from your Chromebox for meetings device to telephones.

Bringing Chromebox for meetings to more places
In the coming months, we’ll be making Chromebox for meetings work better in rooms of all shapes and sizes. In larger conference rooms, you can connect two displays to one Chromebox for meetings device to see your audience and project a presentation at the same time. And if you’ve ever wanted a dedicated setup for video meetings for your home, new personal calendar integration means you will be able to easily set up Chromebox for meetings outside the office.

Lastly, IT administrators can better manage meetings right from the Google Apps Admin Console with options like remotely starting, muting and ending a meeting.

Spontaneous one-on-one brainstorms, monthly company-wide meetings, or connecting two offices via a continuous video stream are just some ways customers like Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Kaplan and Eventbrite have used Hangouts and Chromebox for meetings. And soon, even more teams across the world will be able to get simple and affordable video meetings. In the coming weeks, we’ll be expanding Chromebox for meetings to the UK and Japan in addition to the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. And in September, you’ll be able to purchase Chromebox for meetings made by Dell.

To learn more about these updates, join our product team for a live Hangout on Air on August 19. And to help your team see eye-to-eye, check out how you can get Hangouts and purchase Chromebox for meetings devices. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/even-more-reasons-to-meet-face-to-face/feed/ 0 Going from Xero to 100 with help from Google Apps and Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/going-from-xero-to-100-with-help-from-google-apps-and-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/going-from-xero-to-100-with-help-from-google-apps-and-drive/#comments Tue, 29 Jul 2014 14:12:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ef4abb4a93e7ad4e33d22e9004d5a6a4 Posted by Chris Ridd, Managing Director, Xero

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Chris Ridd, Managing Director for Xero in Australia. Xero is a cloud-based accounting software company with 300,000 customers worldwide and over 800 employees across offices in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand.

At Xero, our core business is making beautiful, intuitive cloud based accounting software that helps small business owners spend more time doing what they do best, and less time worrying about keeping their books in order. Xero started life as a small four person operation in New Zealand. Eight years later, we’ve grown to 300,000 customers worldwide and 800 employees across 17 offices in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand.

This rapid growth was great, but it came with challenges, like finding the right people and new premises. One of the biggest challenges was coordination. With hundreds of employees dotted around different parts of the world, it soon became apparent that we needed to improve how we documented information, shared content and communicated.

I have to admit, it was ironic that although our core product is cloud-based, we weren't actually using this same technology to its full extent within our own business. Instead, teams used a combination of cloud software and legacy desktop software that required continual expensive upgrades. With a highly mobile team based all over the globe, we needed a communications platform that would scale with us, make it easy to collaborate from anywhere, and help us maintain our fluid and mobile way of doing business.

To that end, in December last year we decided to change to Google Apps, and I’m pleased to say this has led to huge boosts in productivity and openness. Tasks that used to be time consuming – like emailing a document around for edits – now take just hours. Teams can also now jump into a document from Google Drive and collaborate on product release notes, spreadsheets, blog posts, and dozens of other documents with people around the world in real time.

Whether we conduct meetings in break-out areas or our in-house cafe, open laptops are ever-present, with Xero employees writing minutes in real-time so that everyone has their action items as soon as they walk out the door. Having 99% of our documents saved in Drive gives us a central place where people can find and store everything — and that means no more lost files, confusion over multiple versions, or duplication of work.

Moving to the cloud has made international coordination so much easier. Hangouts bring far flung teammates face to face, and during these video meetings people will often work together on the same document right from within he Hangouts window. Being able to work from anywhere — the office, home, the airport or the back of a taxi — has made everyone feel much freer because they can work wherever they want, on any device without worrying about losing documents.

Although it’s difficult to quantify how much money we’ll save with Google Apps, I’ve seen a lot less hardware around the office. In fact, we no longer need to spend money and time updating and maintaining servers. Productivity gains have been impressive, too.

By embracing the cloud-technology our customers use every day, we’ve been able to vastly improve the way Xero employees across our offices communicate, collaborate and share ideas. ‘Anywhere, anytime on any device’ is a key benefit we promote to customers, and it’s great to see we can now embrace that every day within Xero. ]]> Posted by Chris Ridd, Managing Director, Xero

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Chris Ridd, Managing Director for Xero in Australia. Xero is a cloud-based accounting software company with 300,000 customers worldwide and over 800 employees across offices in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand.

At Xero, our core business is making beautiful, intuitive cloud based accounting software that helps small business owners spend more time doing what they do best, and less time worrying about keeping their books in order. Xero started life as a small four person operation in New Zealand. Eight years later, we’ve grown to 300,000 customers worldwide and 800 employees across 17 offices in the U.S., UK, Australia and New Zealand.

This rapid growth was great, but it came with challenges, like finding the right people and new premises. One of the biggest challenges was coordination. With hundreds of employees dotted around different parts of the world, it soon became apparent that we needed to improve how we documented information, shared content and communicated.

I have to admit, it was ironic that although our core product is cloud-based, we weren't actually using this same technology to its full extent within our own business. Instead, teams used a combination of cloud software and legacy desktop software that required continual expensive upgrades. With a highly mobile team based all over the globe, we needed a communications platform that would scale with us, make it easy to collaborate from anywhere, and help us maintain our fluid and mobile way of doing business.

To that end, in December last year we decided to change to Google Apps, and I’m pleased to say this has led to huge boosts in productivity and openness. Tasks that used to be time consuming – like emailing a document around for edits – now take just hours. Teams can also now jump into a document from Google Drive and collaborate on product release notes, spreadsheets, blog posts, and dozens of other documents with people around the world in real time.

Whether we conduct meetings in break-out areas or our in-house cafe, open laptops are ever-present, with Xero employees writing minutes in real-time so that everyone has their action items as soon as they walk out the door. Having 99% of our documents saved in Drive gives us a central place where people can find and store everything — and that means no more lost files, confusion over multiple versions, or duplication of work.

Moving to the cloud has made international coordination so much easier. Hangouts bring far flung teammates face to face, and during these video meetings people will often work together on the same document right from within he Hangouts window. Being able to work from anywhere — the office, home, the airport or the back of a taxi — has made everyone feel much freer because they can work wherever they want, on any device without worrying about losing documents.

Although it’s difficult to quantify how much money we’ll save with Google Apps, I’ve seen a lot less hardware around the office. In fact, we no longer need to spend money and time updating and maintaining servers. Productivity gains have been impressive, too.

By embracing the cloud-technology our customers use every day, we’ve been able to vastly improve the way Xero employees across our offices communicate, collaborate and share ideas. ‘Anywhere, anytime on any device’ is a key benefit we promote to customers, and it’s great to see we can now embrace that every day within Xero. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/going-from-xero-to-100-with-help-from-google-apps-and-drive/feed/ 0 Better Business Bureau serving Eastern MA, ME, RI & VT improves productivity with Chromebooks and Chromeboxes https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/better-business-bureau-serving-eastern-ma-me-ri-vt-improves-productivity-with-chromebooks-and-chromeboxes/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/better-business-bureau-serving-eastern-ma-me-ri-vt-improves-productivity-with-chromebooks-and-chromeboxes/#comments Mon, 28 Jul 2014 15:11:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=34e01d1dc455fb0574ba58ee486662fb Posted by Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration, Better Business Bureau

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration for the Better Business Bureau serving Eastern Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, a non-profit organization that services businesses and consumers in the community.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has a real mix of in office and telecommuting staff. As a busy non-profit, technology is forefront of our organization and, like a lot of Better Business Bureau offices around the country, we don’t have an IT department, which adds to the challenge of keeping information both secure and accessible. If someone needs tech help, I put on my IT hat (as does Kevin J. Sanders, our CEO), and configure new computers or update software. Juggling the IT responsibilities can be difficult during busier times of the year.

That is until we decided to bring 35 Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business at the BBB. Almost overnight, we reduced the time we spent handling IT tasks like software updates and patches, and worrying about security concerns. We’ve already seen firsthand how Google can help our business — we were early adopters among BBB offices of Google Apps for Business (about 30% of BBBs nationwide now use Google Apps), and we love collaborating on documents and managing our emails, which Google Apps has made so simple.

Chromebooks and Chromeboxes give us even more freedom and help us lock down the security of information. The devices run on the Chrome operating system and software is updated automatically on each device. Security is built into the Chromebook in multiple layers, such as sandboxing and data encryption, so we can rest easy knowing that malware can’t get very far. Using the Chrome management console we can preload the apps that we want employees to use and restrict downloads to only those applications employees need for working with consumers and Accredited Businesses. Not only are we greatly reducing IT issues, we have saved roughly $900 per seat by purchasing Chromeboxes versus computers with added software. With a staff of approximately 50 people, that savings really adds up.

Using Google Apps for Business eliminated the need for email and document servers, instantly saving BBB the cost of maintaining those devices. It became easier to share documents and track user changes, instead of emailing those documents back and forth as attachments. Plus, the ability to have Google Apps anywhere you are, allows our remote workers to always have information at their fingertips. Moving off our Windows-based desktops and laptops onto Chromebooks and Chromeboxes made perfect sense after seeing so much success from switching to Google Apps for Business.

We’re in the process of expanding beyond our original order of 35 devices and switching out all of our desktops and laptops to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes – a huge benefit for our busy organization. In fact, we’ve become such experts at adopting Google technology that other BBB offices in North America are coming to us for advice on Google Apps and buying up Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business]]> Posted by Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration, Better Business Bureau

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Lisa Ventura, Vice President of Accounting and Administration for the Better Business Bureau serving Eastern Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, and Vermont, a non-profit organization that services businesses and consumers in the community.

The Better Business Bureau (BBB) has a real mix of in office and telecommuting staff. As a busy non-profit, technology is forefront of our organization and, like a lot of Better Business Bureau offices around the country, we don’t have an IT department, which adds to the challenge of keeping information both secure and accessible. If someone needs tech help, I put on my IT hat (as does Kevin J. Sanders, our CEO), and configure new computers or update software. Juggling the IT responsibilities can be difficult during busier times of the year.

That is until we decided to bring 35 Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business at the BBB. Almost overnight, we reduced the time we spent handling IT tasks like software updates and patches, and worrying about security concerns. We’ve already seen firsthand how Google can help our business — we were early adopters among BBB offices of Google Apps for Business (about 30% of BBBs nationwide now use Google Apps), and we love collaborating on documents and managing our emails, which Google Apps has made so simple.

Chromebooks and Chromeboxes give us even more freedom and help us lock down the security of information. The devices run on the Chrome operating system and software is updated automatically on each device. Security is built into the Chromebook in multiple layers, such as sandboxing and data encryption, so we can rest easy knowing that malware can’t get very far. Using the Chrome management console we can preload the apps that we want employees to use and restrict downloads to only those applications employees need for working with consumers and Accredited Businesses. Not only are we greatly reducing IT issues, we have saved roughly $900 per seat by purchasing Chromeboxes versus computers with added software. With a staff of approximately 50 people, that savings really adds up.

Using Google Apps for Business eliminated the need for email and document servers, instantly saving BBB the cost of maintaining those devices. It became easier to share documents and track user changes, instead of emailing those documents back and forth as attachments. Plus, the ability to have Google Apps anywhere you are, allows our remote workers to always have information at their fingertips. Moving off our Windows-based desktops and laptops onto Chromebooks and Chromeboxes made perfect sense after seeing so much success from switching to Google Apps for Business.

We’re in the process of expanding beyond our original order of 35 devices and switching out all of our desktops and laptops to Chromebooks and Chromeboxes – a huge benefit for our busy organization. In fact, we’ve become such experts at adopting Google technology that other BBB offices in North America are coming to us for advice on Google Apps and buying up Chromebooks and Chromeboxes for Business]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/better-business-bureau-serving-eastern-ma-me-ri-vt-improves-productivity-with-chromebooks-and-chromeboxes/feed/ 0 Docs, Sheets and Slides work with any file, anywhere (with Suggest Edits too) https://googledata.org/google-docs/docs-sheets-and-slides-work-with-any-file-anywhere-with-suggest-edits-too/ https://googledata.org/google-docs/docs-sheets-and-slides-work-with-any-file-anywhere-with-suggest-edits-too/#comments Fri, 25 Jul 2014 16:30:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ecaa52e29e4e2ae924f19ddcbe977814 Posted by Alan Warren, Engineering VP, Google Docs editors

A few weeks ago at Google I/O, Docs, Sheets and Slides got a major upgrade — making it even easier for you to get work done at the office and on-the-go with Google Apps. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of how you can edit Office files, make Suggested Edits and a new ability to convert tracked changes to Suggested Edits:

Edit and share Office files — without Office
Technology is changing the way people work, but all that change can cause friction when employees are using different software. That’s why we made it possible to edit Office files directly in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in their native format using Office Compatibility Mode. No need to buy additional software or think about how to open your file. The Docs, Sheets and Slides mobile apps come with Office editing built right in, and with the Chrome extension, you can edit and share files directly from Google Drive or Gmail.

Suggest Edits in Docs
Docs makes working together easy by letting people edit files in real-time, rather than emailing multiple versions of the same document back and forth. But sometimes you want to control specific changes someone else makes in a document. Suggest Edits in Docs lets you do just that: your team can make suggestions that you can accept or reject with a single click. This feature is available for anyone with commenting access in Google Docs on the web, and is coming soon to our mobile apps.

Convert your tracked changes to Suggest Edits
While you no longer have to convert Microsoft Word files to Docs (thanks to the recent Quickoffice integrations), if you do, starting today any tracked changes in a .docx file will be automatically carried over to Docs as Suggested Edits. Once you’ve imported your changes, you can begin immediately collaborating with your colleagues in real-time.

These features are available today. So next time you’re collaborating in Docs try suggesting edits to speed up the review process.

]]> Posted by Alan Warren, Engineering VP, Google Docs editors

A few weeks ago at Google I/O, Docs, Sheets and Slides got a major upgrade — making it even easier for you to get work done at the office and on-the-go with Google Apps. In case you missed it, here’s a recap of how you can edit Office files, make Suggested Edits and a new ability to convert tracked changes to Suggested Edits:

Edit and share Office files — without Office
Technology is changing the way people work, but all that change can cause friction when employees are using different software. That’s why we made it possible to edit Office files directly in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in their native format using Office Compatibility Mode. No need to buy additional software or think about how to open your file. The Docs, Sheets and Slides mobile apps come with Office editing built right in, and with the Chrome extension, you can edit and share files directly from Google Drive or Gmail.

These features are available today. So next time you’re collaborating in Docs try suggesting edits to speed up the review process.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-docs/docs-sheets-and-slides-work-with-any-file-anywhere-with-suggest-edits-too/feed/ 0 Gmail and Google Drive — working better together while you’re on-the-go https://googledata.org/google-apps/gmail-and-google-drive-working-better-together-while-youre-on-the-go-2/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/gmail-and-google-drive-working-better-together-while-youre-on-the-go-2/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2014 23:03:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=d727465bd1e522e069b11d82e42fcfa0 Posted by Simon Forsyth, Software Engineer, Gmail

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

Important stuff doesn't always happen when you’re conveniently sitting at your desk. Maybe you're out to dinner when your boss tells you that she needs the latest project proposal ASAP, or your daughter calls you on your commute home to ask you to proofread her college essay (that’s of course due that night!). While we can't make your life more predictable, today's update to the Gmail iOS app, along with earlier updates to the Gmail Android app, makes it easier to get stuff done on-the-go.

Just like with Gmail on the web, you can now insert files from Google Drive directly into an email on your phone or tablet.

The apps will even tell you if your file isn’t shared with the person you’re sending it to so you can change the sharing settings before you send it. And to help you store all your files in a single place, if someone sends you an email attachment, you can save it directly to Drive with one tap.

On iOS, you can now also change your profile picture right from your Settings. So the next time you take that perfect selfie, you can make it your profile picture right away, all while out with friends. Lastly, if you have multiple Gmail accounts, you can choose which signed-in accounts you want visible in the app.

You can give these features a try by downloading the updated Gmail iOS app from the App Store, and if you’re using an Android phone or tablet, you can get the latest version of the Gmail Android app from the Google Play Store. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/gmail-and-google-drive-working-better-together-while-youre-on-the-go-2/feed/ 0 Briggs & Stratton streamlines manufacturing and business processes with Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-apps/briggs-stratton-streamlines-manufacturing-and-business-processes-with-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/briggs-stratton-streamlines-manufacturing-and-business-processes-with-google-drive/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2014 19:30:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=7a9dda2e4d732efe67a3fc38708d2771 Posted by Brent Hoag, IT Director, Briggs & Stratton

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Brent Hoag, IT Director at Briggs & Stratton, the world’s largest producer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment.

Briggs & Stratton has been in the business of making gas-powered engines for more than 100 years, and if you use a lawn mower or tractor, chances are it’s running one of our engines. Today, we also sell portable generators, pressure washers and snow blowers, and we’re transitioning into a maker of consumer equipment.

A few years ago, our CEO, Todd Teske, set out a strategy to break the company into the consumer market — an expansion from our long history in the original equipment manufacturing industry. To bring his strategy to life, he needed the company to adapt to the demands of consumer markets and invest in innovation. He hired me to help make that change happen with help from the best technology available. When I discovered that 15% of our network traffic was consumed by unsecured content storing and sharing and realized that poor communication was leading to inefficiencies, I pushed for a move to Google Apps. I knew that switching to Google’s platform would not only fix our communications problems, but help our 3,000 employees be both more innovative and more effective.

That’s happening now, in a big way. In a manufacturing plant in Milwaukee, for example, one of our industrial engineers saw a way for Google Drive to replace an outdated, paper-based system to get critical information to production line workers. For decades, step-by-step instructions for assembling engine parts and quality-control checklists were all typed up and printed out for workers on five production lines. This wasn’t just a waste of paper — it often led to damaging errors when processes changed and employees were going about their jobs with inaccurate instructions and manuals. The proliferation of out-of-date information was just inefficient and potentially hazardous. To solve this problem, the engineering team created a page with Google Sites with Drive folders for each piece of manufacturing equipment, with photos, instructions for assembly, how-to videos for each of the steps and line schedules — all in a variety of file types, like JPGs, PDFs and Word docs. Workers can read instructions and learn exactly how to do the assembly using shared workstations on the plant floor.

Drive doesn’t just help us on the shop floor — it’s equally essential for our sales team, who spend a lot of time on the road, meeting with dealers and partners. Reps used to have to spend an hour or two sifting through different Excel spreadsheets and Access databases to find the most up-to-date pricing and promotions data before heading out to customer meetings and jotting down notes or downloading information onto their laptops. We’re now storing the current pricing database and promotions spreadsheet in Drive, and since our Sales teams use Drive sync on their computers, the latest information is automatically synced from Drive to their laptops. They never have to wonder if they have the right prices when they’re talking to a customer. They can also use the Drive mobile app to access the same information on their mobile devices. This means more hours spent with customers and a happier sales team — two big wins for Briggs.

Google is helping us streamline our manufacturing and business processes at a time when we have unprecedented product and corporate growth. And Todd’s strategy around breaking into the consumer market is making its mark: we’ve introduced 40 new models of lawn, garden and outdoor power equipment, won a handful of “Best of” awards and continue to see a growing percentage of our revenue come from these innovations. Google allows us to change our image inside and outside the company in a democratic and creative way, from the assembly line to the CEO’s office. ]]> Posted by Brent Hoag, IT Director, Briggs & Stratton

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Brent Hoag, IT Director at Briggs & Stratton, the world’s largest producer of air-cooled gasoline engines for outdoor power equipment.

Briggs & Stratton has been in the business of making gas-powered engines for more than 100 years, and if you use a lawn mower or tractor, chances are it’s running one of our engines. Today, we also sell portable generators, pressure washers and snow blowers, and we’re transitioning into a maker of consumer equipment.

A few years ago, our CEO, Todd Teske, set out a strategy to break the company into the consumer market — an expansion from our long history in the original equipment manufacturing industry. To bring his strategy to life, he needed the company to adapt to the demands of consumer markets and invest in innovation. He hired me to help make that change happen with help from the best technology available. When I discovered that 15% of our network traffic was consumed by unsecured content storing and sharing and realized that poor communication was leading to inefficiencies, I pushed for a move to Google Apps. I knew that switching to Google’s platform would not only fix our communications problems, but help our 3,000 employees be both more innovative and more effective.

That’s happening now, in a big way. In a manufacturing plant in Milwaukee, for example, one of our industrial engineers saw a way for Google Drive to replace an outdated, paper-based system to get critical information to production line workers. For decades, step-by-step instructions for assembling engine parts and quality-control checklists were all typed up and printed out for workers on five production lines. This wasn’t just a waste of paper — it often led to damaging errors when processes changed and employees were going about their jobs with inaccurate instructions and manuals. The proliferation of out-of-date information was just inefficient and potentially hazardous. To solve this problem, the engineering team created a page with Google Sites with Drive folders for each piece of manufacturing equipment, with photos, instructions for assembly, how-to videos for each of the steps and line schedules — all in a variety of file types, like JPGs, PDFs and Word docs. Workers can read instructions and learn exactly how to do the assembly using shared workstations on the plant floor.

Drive doesn’t just help us on the shop floor — it’s equally essential for our sales team, who spend a lot of time on the road, meeting with dealers and partners. Reps used to have to spend an hour or two sifting through different Excel spreadsheets and Access databases to find the most up-to-date pricing and promotions data before heading out to customer meetings and jotting down notes or downloading information onto their laptops. We’re now storing the current pricing database and promotions spreadsheet in Drive, and since our Sales teams use Drive sync on their computers, the latest information is automatically synced from Drive to their laptops. They never have to wonder if they have the right prices when they’re talking to a customer. They can also use the Drive mobile app to access the same information on their mobile devices. This means more hours spent with customers and a happier sales team — two big wins for Briggs.

Google is helping us streamline our manufacturing and business processes at a time when we have unprecedented product and corporate growth. And Todd’s strategy around breaking into the consumer market is making its mark: we’ve introduced 40 new models of lawn, garden and outdoor power equipment, won a handful of “Best of” awards and continue to see a growing percentage of our revenue come from these innovations. Google allows us to change our image inside and outside the company in a democratic and creative way, from the assembly line to the CEO’s office. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/briggs-stratton-streamlines-manufacturing-and-business-processes-with-google-drive/feed/ 0 Bringing the power of Maps Coordinate to Google Maps Engine Pro https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-power-of-maps-coordinate-to-google-maps-engine-pro/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-power-of-maps-coordinate-to-google-maps-engine-pro/#comments Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:42:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=27ed597fa033cde7748a55bcadde268a Posted by Jen Kovnats, Product Manager, Google Maps for Business

Last fall, we launched Maps Engine Pro to give businesses and individual users an easy-to-use tool for collaborative map creation. Using Maps Engine Pro, you can create rich, multi-layered maps, share information with stakeholders and make decisions more collaboratively.

Starting today, all Maps Engine Pro users will also have access to Google Maps Coordinate, a mobile and web app that lets teams assign jobs and share their locations with each other in real-time. The new offering combines dynamic data visualization with location-based communication using Google Maps.

Pure Fix Cycles, a distributor of custom, fixed gear bikes, uses Maps Engine Pro to identify sales opportunities across target markets, helping to expand their business throughout the U.S. and around the world.

With the same $5 per user per month subscription to Maps Engine Pro, organizations will have access to this powerful suite of productivity tools. For example, a building management firm can organize the buildings they maintain on a map and when a maintenance call comes in, assign the nearest worker to the job.

In addition to making Maps Coordinate available to Pro users, we’re also opening the Coordinate app to anyone with a Google account — previously it was only available to Google Apps customers. This means more teams can use Maps Coordinate to share their locations and get jobs done.

With enhancements to the Maps Engine Pro offering and improvements to Maps Coordinate, businesses can do work with even more powerful, affordable and accessible Google Maps for Business tools. Starting today, new users can purchase Maps Engine Pro with Coordinate and existing Pro and Coordinate customers can begin using the combined app suite. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-power-of-maps-coordinate-to-google-maps-engine-pro/feed/ 0 Tory Burch ramps up retail expansion by sharing plans and project timelines with Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-apps/tory-burch-ramps-up-retail-expansion-by-sharing-plans-and-project-timelines-with-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/tory-burch-ramps-up-retail-expansion-by-sharing-plans-and-project-timelines-with-google-drive/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2014 19:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=922c34da8de4de684dc6281563c97f8e Posted by Mike Giresi, CIO, Tory Burch

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Mike Giresi, CIO of Tory Burch, the lifestyle brand known for its iconic bright colors and eclectic prints, available at 120 boutiques around the world and online at Toryburch.com. To learn more about how Tory Burch’s move to the cloud helped them build a thriving retail business, join our Hangout on Air with Mike and Google’s Head of Industry Solutions & Retail on Wednesday, August 6th.

Before opening a new Tory Burch store, we go through months of planning with as many as 200 people, with tasks ranging from hiring staff, importing custom fixtures, designing windows, and when we can, having Tory on hand to do the opening honors. Nearly all of the documentation around a store opening, like blueprints and project plans, are developed by teams, not just one person. Google Drive helps these teams collaborate on documents and make decisions faster — now we can open three stores in a single weekend, something we couldn’t have done before we moved to Google.

Every Tory Burch store needs to embody the brand, so the process requires careful coordination. The more accessible store information is, the easier it is to decide on next steps. But with our old IT system, emailing spreadsheets back and forth wasn’t enabling the speedy decision-making we need for a rapidly growing retail business. Teams couldn’t get their hands on the right information to push store development forward.

Using Google Drive lets our store-opening teams and outside partners like architects and visual designers connect and collaborate seamlessly. For each Tory Burch store, team managers can create master folders without relying on IT, making it easy for them to store and share project timelines, floor plans, and merchandise lists. With Drive, we don't have to worry about version control, which was a struggle when we shared files over email — now, we know that what's stored and shared is the true, up-to-date document.

Choosing Drive also means we won’t have to worry about storage for documents, especially as we expand the business. Purchasing our own servers and storage disks doesn’t make good business sense for us — why not simply rely on a company like Google that can scale storage much better than we can do ourselves?

We’ve got the perfect combination of fashion’s most colorful and eclectic clothing and accessories, and Tory herself to embody the brand — so we’re confident that the world is ready for many more Tory Burch stores. Google Drive has become a catalyst for our exciting growth plans.]]> Posted by Mike Giresi, CIO, Tory Burch

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Mike Giresi, CIO of Tory Burch, the lifestyle brand known for its iconic bright colors and eclectic prints, available at 120 boutiques around the world and online at Toryburch.com. To learn more about how Tory Burch’s move to the cloud helped them build a thriving retail business, join our Hangout on Air with Mike and Google’s Head of Industry Solutions & Retail on Wednesday, August 6th.

Before opening a new Tory Burch store, we go through months of planning with as many as 200 people, with tasks ranging from hiring staff, importing custom fixtures, designing windows, and when we can, having Tory on hand to do the opening honors. Nearly all of the documentation around a store opening, like blueprints and project plans, are developed by teams, not just one person. Google Drive helps these teams collaborate on documents and make decisions faster — now we can open three stores in a single weekend, something we couldn’t have done before we moved to Google.

Every Tory Burch store needs to embody the brand, so the process requires careful coordination. The more accessible store information is, the easier it is to decide on next steps. But with our old IT system, emailing spreadsheets back and forth wasn’t enabling the speedy decision-making we need for a rapidly growing retail business. Teams couldn’t get their hands on the right information to push store development forward.

Using Google Drive lets our store-opening teams and outside partners like architects and visual designers connect and collaborate seamlessly. For each Tory Burch store, team managers can create master folders without relying on IT, making it easy for them to store and share project timelines, floor plans, and merchandise lists. With Drive, we don't have to worry about version control, which was a struggle when we shared files over email — now, we know that what's stored and shared is the true, up-to-date document.

Choosing Drive also means we won’t have to worry about storage for documents, especially as we expand the business. Purchasing our own servers and storage disks doesn’t make good business sense for us — why not simply rely on a company like Google that can scale storage much better than we can do ourselves?

We’ve got the perfect combination of fashion’s most colorful and eclectic clothing and accessories, and Tory herself to embody the brand — so we’re confident that the world is ready for many more Tory Burch stores. Google Drive has become a catalyst for our exciting growth plans.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/tory-burch-ramps-up-retail-expansion-by-sharing-plans-and-project-timelines-with-google-drive/feed/ 0 Advanced security for Google Drive for Work https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/advanced-security-for-google-drive-for-work/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/advanced-security-for-google-drive-for-work/#comments Wed, 23 Jul 2014 16:01:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=48628f3bdfcbf21b62015efe72c7b759 Posted by Chuck Coulson, Head of Google Apps and Drive Technology Partnerships

Last month we announced Google Drive for Work, which includes advanced Drive auditing to give organizations control, security and visibility into how files are shared. This new security feature helps companies and IT managers protect confidential information and gain insights into how their employees work.

Drive audit helps IT admins view activity on documents, such as uploading and downloading files, renaming files, editing and commenting, and sharing with others. Filters make it easy to sort and find details like IP address, date range, document title and owner’s email address. To make advanced auditing reports easier to manage, admins can set up alerts for important events like files being shared outside the organization.

To help organizations derive even more value from Drive for Work, we’ve been working with partners to give you even more capabilities through the Drive Audit API:

Backupify protects your Google Apps data through secure, automatic, daily backup allowing IT users to easily search and restore ﬁles with advanced administrative features, safeguarding your business from data loss caused by user errors, malicious deletions, hackers, and app errors. (website, blog post)
BetterCloud, through their flagship cloud management and security tool, FlashPanel, has enhanced their offering through the Audit API to provide additional controls and insight. (website, blog post)
CloudLock, who provides a pure-cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution for SaaS applications, has released a new version of CloudLock for Google Drive, leveraging the new Google Drive audit APIs, to enable large organizations to extend their enterprise security controls to the cloud. (website, blog post)
SkyHigh for Google Drive delivers Data Loss Prevention (DLP), mobile-to-cloud support, application auditing, data discovery, and anomaly detection without changing the Google Drive experience users love. (website, blog post)

Backupify protects your Google Apps data through secure, automatic, daily backup allowing IT users to easily search and restore ﬁles with advanced administrative features, safeguarding your business from data loss caused by user errors, malicious deletions, hackers, and app errors. (website, blog post)
BetterCloud, through their flagship cloud management and security tool, FlashPanel, has enhanced their offering through the Audit API to provide additional controls and insight. (website, blog post)
CloudLock, who provides a pure-cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP) solution for SaaS applications, has released a new version of CloudLock for Google Drive, leveraging the new Google Drive audit APIs, to enable large organizations to extend their enterprise security controls to the cloud. (website, blog post)
SkyHigh for Google Drive delivers Data Loss Prevention (DLP), mobile-to-cloud support, application auditing, data discovery, and anomaly detection without changing the Google Drive experience users love. (website, blog post)

And this is only the beginning. We invite developers and customers alike to get started with the Audit API to provide additional advanced security solutions for Google Drive. Learn more by visiting developers.google.com.

Google is committed to enabling organizations to be successful by leveraging a large community of ISVs. One of the areas we constantly invest in is our APIs, that allow customers and ISVs to extend the functionality of the Google Apps platform. If you’d like to join our ISV community, check out developers.google.com. For a list of ISVs supporting Google Apps, please visit the Google Apps Marketplace.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/advanced-security-for-google-drive-for-work/feed/ 0 Working on the go gets easier with Google and Uber https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/working-on-the-go-gets-easier-with-google-and-uber/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/working-on-the-go-gets-easier-with-google-and-uber/#comments Tue, 22 Jul 2014 13:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=5074c818b5d7bbcc2eaf655cab047d7c Posted by Kelly Campbell, Director of Enterprise Marketing

Work doesn’t just get done in the office: ideas are born and deals are closed from the patios of coffee shops, the benches of train stations and the backseats of taxi cabs. And in the summer, when the office is often the last place many of us want to be, it’s even more essential to get work done faster from anywhere — even on the way to where you’re going.

At Google, we value mobility and want to find the best way for our customers to do their work when they’re on the go. That’s why we invested in new infrastructure in Boston to support free public Wifi at South Station last year. And it’s why we're now outfitting Uber partners' cars in Philadelphia with free Wifi for the summer, compliments of Google Apps for Business. Thousands of entrepreneurs, consultants, restaurateurs and business owners now have another way to help them get work done from anywhere throughout The City of Brotherly Love.

Uber helps millions of people get around in over 41 countries globally, so they know a thing or two about working on the go. And like more than 5 million businesses around the world, they do it with the help of Google Apps for Business. Collaborative tools like Google Docs and Sheets help employees brainstorm, evaluate and prioritize new markets and promotions, while video conferencing over Hangouts keeps globally-distributed teams connected and close. It was using products like these that inspired Uber to offer this technology in Uber partners' cars in Philadelphia.

So, Philadelphia, whether you’re on the way to Wawa, the Linc, the Shore, or the office, you now have one more place to get your work done quickly so you can spend more time enjoying the summer and less time looking at the walls of your cubicle. Read more details from Uber then take uberWIFI for a spin. Benjamin Franklin would approve.]]> Posted by Kelly Campbell, Director of Enterprise Marketing

Work doesn’t just get done in the office: ideas are born and deals are closed from the patios of coffee shops, the benches of train stations and the backseats of taxi cabs. And in the summer, when the office is often the last place many of us want to be, it’s even more essential to get work done faster from anywhere — even on the way to where you’re going.

At Google, we value mobility and want to find the best way for our customers to do their work when they’re on the go. That’s why we invested in new infrastructure in Boston to support free public Wifi at South Station last year. And it’s why we're now outfitting Uber partners' cars in Philadelphia with free Wifi for the summer, compliments of Google Apps for Business. Thousands of entrepreneurs, consultants, restaurateurs and business owners now have another way to help them get work done from anywhere throughout The City of Brotherly Love.

Uber helps millions of people get around in over 41 countries globally, so they know a thing or two about working on the go. And like more than 5 million businesses around the world, they do it with the help of Google Apps for Business. Collaborative tools like Google Docs and Sheets help employees brainstorm, evaluate and prioritize new markets and promotions, while video conferencing over Hangouts keeps globally-distributed teams connected and close. It was using products like these that inspired Uber to offer this technology in Uber partners' cars in Philadelphia.

So, Philadelphia, whether you’re on the way to Wawa, the Linc, the Shore, or the office, you now have one more place to get your work done quickly so you can spend more time enjoying the summer and less time looking at the walls of your cubicle. Read more details from Uber then take uberWIFI for a spin. Benjamin Franklin would approve.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/working-on-the-go-gets-easier-with-google-and-uber/feed/ 0 OVS streamlines its global supply chain using Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ovs-streamlines-its-global-supply-chain-using-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ovs-streamlines-its-global-supply-chain-using-google-drive/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:34:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=da9c0f8460d4622fdfdbcd1c9517bf4b Posted by Marco Grieco, Business Innovation and Change Director, OVS

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Marco Grieco, Business Innovation and Change Director at OVS, the leader in the Italian apparel market. Marco runs all major change initiatives throughout the company across supply chain, retail model and internationalization, and is currently leading the company in its move to Google Apps for Business.

Merging Italian style with international trends requires a complex process of research, design and production. The 700-person, multi-national supply team at OVS produces 180 million pieces of apparel each year, 40,000 different styles, which are then sold online and in 700 brick-and-mortar stores in Italy and abroad. There are a handful of moving pieces, to say the least, but with Google Drive, we’re able to link together the otherwise disparate parts of our retail business and share information better across the company.

Before Drive, our IT solution was old-fashioned and difficult to coordinate globally. Half of the team used one outdated IT tool, and the other half sent faxes (seriously) or exchanged e-mails: last year, our supply chain team sent five million emails. Two weeks after starting to use Drive, our email volume dropped by 40%. The transition was smooth and the benefits emerged quickly, since so many people were already familiar with Google and were excited to use it at work.

We use Drive to store and share everything product-related both inside the company and externally with our suppliers. From information about models, fabrics and sizing, to prototype images and the results of product tests, everything lives in Drive. We share and sync these files across desktops, tablets and smartphones so people have the information they need, no matter where they are or what device they’re using. Information is always updated, avoiding potential mistakes that could cause delays in our supply chain processes.

Drive is crucial for expediting our prototyping and testing process, which involves teams across the world. The prototyping team in China uses Drive to share sample image JPGs and testing kit PDFs with our team in Italy. The team in China can quickly share results and the team in Italy can request new tests if necessary — and they can all share their updates in a shared Google Sheet that’s stored and shared in the same shared folder with the rest of the assets they need, so everything — PDFs, JPGs, Sheets — can easily be found in a single place.

Drive has showed us how we can work better together and improve communication overall throughout the business, while also breaking down barriers between teams otherwise separated by tens of thousands of miles. Now, we’re rolling Drive out to our retail stores and sales associates, some of whom already started using Drive to upload and share images from their mobile phones and tablets — anything from inspirational window designs to new fashions and innovative store layouts — all without official training. We see major potential to use Drive across our business and make life easier for our employees while continuing to innovate for our customers.

]]> Posted by Marco Grieco, Business Innovation and Change Director, OVS

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Marco Grieco, Business Innovation and Change Director at OVS, the leader in the Italian apparel market. Marco runs all major change initiatives throughout the company across supply chain, retail model and internationalization, and is currently leading the company in its move to Google Apps for Business.

Merging Italian style with international trends requires a complex process of research, design and production. The 700-person, multi-national supply team at OVS produces 180 million pieces of apparel each year, 40,000 different styles, which are then sold online and in 700 brick-and-mortar stores in Italy and abroad. There are a handful of moving pieces, to say the least, but with Google Drive, we’re able to link together the otherwise disparate parts of our retail business and share information better across the company.

We use Drive to store and share everything product-related both inside the company and externally with our suppliers. From information about models, fabrics and sizing, to prototype images and the results of product tests, everything lives in Drive. We share and sync these files across desktops, tablets and smartphones so people have the information they need, no matter where they are or what device they’re using. Information is always updated, avoiding potential mistakes that could cause delays in our supply chain processes.

Drive is crucial for expediting our prototyping and testing process, which involves teams across the world. The prototyping team in China uses Drive to share sample image JPGs and testing kit PDFs with our team in Italy. The team in China can quickly share results and the team in Italy can request new tests if necessary — and they can all share their updates in a shared Google Sheet that’s stored and shared in the same shared folder with the rest of the assets they need, so everything — PDFs, JPGs, Sheets — can easily be found in a single place.

Drive has showed us how we can work better together and improve communication overall throughout the business, while also breaking down barriers between teams otherwise separated by tens of thousands of miles. Now, we’re rolling Drive out to our retail stores and sales associates, some of whom already started using Drive to upload and share images from their mobile phones and tablets — anything from inspirational window designs to new fashions and innovative store layouts — all without official training. We see major potential to use Drive across our business and make life easier for our employees while continuing to innovate for our customers.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ovs-streamlines-its-global-supply-chain-using-google-drive/feed/ 0 The Collaborative Economy https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-collaborative-economy/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-collaborative-economy/#comments Mon, 21 Jul 2014 13:26:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ac66c671c83dcaa3372cbc1d1f815e99 Posted by Kevin Ackhurst, Managing Director, Google Enterprise, Australia / New Zealand

Most Aussies would say that a collaborative workplace is the sort of place they want to work. Most employers want this too, because collaboration can help employees share information, come up with ideas and reduce waste.

But what exactly is collaboration, and just how valuable is it? We decided to ask Deloitte Access Economics to calculate the value of collaboration to the Australian economy.

They worked the numbers and the results amazed us. Their report, The Collaborative Economy, shows that companies that actively encourage collaboration perform better — by a lot. Companies that prioritised collaboration are:

Five times more likely to experience a considerable increase in employment
Twice as likely to be profitable
Twice as likely to outgrow competitors

But collaboration is about more than the bottom line — it’s about happier, more efficient employees.

Employees who collaborate are ten times more likely to be satisfied with their job
Over a third of respondents said collaboration helps them work faster
And three quarters of respondents said that collaboration improves the quality of work they produce

Five times more likely to experience a considerable increase in employment
Twice as likely to be profitable
Twice as likely to outgrow competitors

But collaboration is about more than the bottom line — it’s about happier, more efficient employees.

Employees who collaborate are ten times more likely to be satisfied with their job
Over a third of respondents said collaboration helps them work faster
And three quarters of respondents said that collaboration improves the quality of work they produce

What’s the current value to Australia of all this collaboration? Collaborative businesses contribute $46 billion to the country’s economy. That’s more than the agricultural sector is worth. And that’s just today. If all companies made the most of opportunities for employees to collaborate, we could add a further $9.3 billion to Australia’s economy.

But today, half of Australian businesses are leaving it to chance, with no dedicated collaboration strategy. There are plenty of things Aussie businesses can do to work more collaboratively — starting with the technology they use.

This first phase of research into The Collaborative Economy is available here. And to find out how Google can help your company collaborate more, visit our website.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-collaborative-economy/feed/ 0 Bridgeport Public Schools chooses Google for Education to bring affordable technology to their students https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bridgeport-public-schools-chooses-google-for-education-to-bring-affordable-technology-to-their-students/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bridgeport-public-schools-chooses-google-for-education-to-bring-affordable-technology-to-their-students/#comments Fri, 18 Jul 2014 16:09:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=2917ffac878ea99a57f426bc3b7d8ea1 Posted by David Andrade, CIO, Bridgeport Public Schools

Editor's note: Schools bought more than 1 million Chromebooks in the second quarter of 2014. Today’s guest blogger, David Andrade, the CIO for the Bridgeport Public Schools district, which serves 23,000 students in Connecticut, shares why they selected Chromebooks. Learn more about going Google and follow our Google for Education Google+ page to see a selection of tips from David.

When I started my role as CIO a year and a half ago, I found that our technology was not up to scratch to meet the needs of our students. We only had a few desktop PCs located in each elementary and middle school classroom, and only a few in our high school computer labs. We definitely needed more machines so students would get more time to work on class projects and do research.

Our district doesn’t have a lot of money for buying new technology, and grants can be hard to come by. Adding to our challenges, Bridgeport Public Schools are based in a working-class community with high unemployment (95% of students receive free or reduced lunches). Most students don't have access to computers outside of school and, at the time, there was a limited supply in our schools.

Bridgeport uses a variety of Chromebook models including devices from Samsung, Acer and HP.

When the technology committee for Bridgeport Public Schools raised the idea of bringing affordable computers into our classrooms, I suggested we consider Chromebooks, coupled with Google Apps for Education. I was a fan of the Chromebook right from the start because of their affordable price and ease of use. In 2010, Google sent me one of the first Chromebooks to review on my blog, Educational Technology Guy, where I write about technology resources for teachers and students.

The affordability and easy maintenance of Chromebooks clinched the deal – we could buy three Chromebooks for the price of a single desktop computer and the district’s small IT team wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up with the repairs and updates on aging PCs. We would also save on support time and costs since Chromebooks update automatically. Initially, we bought 4,000 Chromebooks for our high schools, where every classroom now has a Chromebook for each student. At the same time, we decided to start using Google Apps for Education so every student would have an email address, something we’d never been able to do before. We also used Google Drive to move student documents off of our internal file storage system – another way to save the IT team time and money. So they can now work together and communicate with teachers even while not in the classroom.

When we received some hard-won grant money, we bought more Chromebooks, and we’re now at 9,000 district-wide. Our goal is to bring Chromebooks to every classroom in grades 4 through 12. The Chromebooks have already changed how teachers teach and students learn: there’s less “listen-to-me” lecturing, and more active student involvement in creating their own projects.

Now that we've been using Chromebooks for a while, we've been able to provide our students access to technology and take the strain off of our IT department, but what makes this truly successful is the what our students say. One of our 12th graders told me she loves that she can "take school work anywhere" or as one of our 10th graders told me, "they make it easier to hand in work and decrease your chance of failing."]]> Posted by David Andrade, CIO, Bridgeport Public Schools

Editor's note: Schools bought more than 1 million Chromebooks in the second quarter of 2014. Today’s guest blogger, David Andrade, the CIO for the Bridgeport Public Schools district, which serves 23,000 students in Connecticut, shares why they selected Chromebooks. Learn more about going Google and follow our Google for Education Google+ page to see a selection of tips from David.

When I started my role as CIO a year and a half ago, I found that our technology was not up to scratch to meet the needs of our students. We only had a few desktop PCs located in each elementary and middle school classroom, and only a few in our high school computer labs. We definitely needed more machines so students would get more time to work on class projects and do research.

Our district doesn’t have a lot of money for buying new technology, and grants can be hard to come by. Adding to our challenges, Bridgeport Public Schools are based in a working-class community with high unemployment (95% of students receive free or reduced lunches). Most students don't have access to computers outside of school and, at the time, there was a limited supply in our schools.

Bridgeport uses a variety of Chromebook models including devices from Samsung, Acer and HP.

When the technology committee for Bridgeport Public Schools raised the idea of bringing affordable computers into our classrooms, I suggested we consider Chromebooks, coupled with Google Apps for Education. I was a fan of the Chromebook right from the start because of their affordable price and ease of use. In 2010, Google sent me one of the first Chromebooks to review on my blog, Educational Technology Guy, where I write about technology resources for teachers and students.

The affordability and easy maintenance of Chromebooks clinched the deal – we could buy three Chromebooks for the price of a single desktop computer and the district’s small IT team wouldn’t have to struggle to keep up with the repairs and updates on aging PCs. We would also save on support time and costs since Chromebooks update automatically. Initially, we bought 4,000 Chromebooks for our high schools, where every classroom now has a Chromebook for each student. At the same time, we decided to start using Google Apps for Education so every student would have an email address, something we’d never been able to do before. We also used Google Drive to move student documents off of our internal file storage system – another way to save the IT team time and money. So they can now work together and communicate with teachers even while not in the classroom.

When we received some hard-won grant money, we bought more Chromebooks, and we’re now at 9,000 district-wide. Our goal is to bring Chromebooks to every classroom in grades 4 through 12. The Chromebooks have already changed how teachers teach and students learn: there’s less “listen-to-me” lecturing, and more active student involvement in creating their own projects.

Now that we've been using Chromebooks for a while, we've been able to provide our students access to technology and take the strain off of our IT department, but what makes this truly successful is the what our students say. One of our 12th graders told me she loves that she can "take school work anywhere" or as one of our 10th graders told me, "they make it easier to hand in work and decrease your chance of failing."]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bridgeport-public-schools-chooses-google-for-education-to-bring-affordable-technology-to-their-students/feed/ 0 First Round Capital transforms venture capital with the help of Google Apps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/first-round-capital-transforms-venture-capital-with-the-help-of-google-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/first-round-capital-transforms-venture-capital-with-the-help-of-google-apps/#comments Thu, 17 Jul 2014 14:41:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=1508c4a9ef27170cee1fb7210c937896 Posted by Camille Ricketts, Editor in Chief, Platform Team of First Round Capital

Editor's note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangout from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work e-mails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today, we hear from Camille Ricketts, Editor in Chief at First Round Capital, a leading early-stage venture capital firm founded in Philadelphia with satellite offices in San Francisco and New York.

What do mega-startups Square, Uber, Warby Parker, and the unassuming town of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, have in common? One of the most influential seed-stage VC firms in the world, First Round Capital, which first started at a small office in the small suburb outside Philadelphia, has invested in them. In 2004, entrepreneur and investor Josh Kopelman set out to reinvent seed-stage funding and opened our first office in West Conshohocken. Since then, we’ve moved our headquarters to Philadelphia, grown to over 30 employees and three offices, and funded close to 400 startups. As we’ve expanded, though, we’ve consistently kept a premium on staying nimble and having a platform that both helps us work efficiently and stay connected.

Mobility, security, and accessibility are essential features when we set out to improve any process, so switching to Google Apps earlier this year seemed natural -- after nearly a decade of working with other solutions. Most of our staff members are used to using Google Apps like Gmail, Drive and Docs in their personal lives, so moving to Apps made perfect sense for the company as a whole.

Constant travel, meetings with entrepreneurs, and supporting the companies we fund demand reliability and security every step of the way. We move quickly because we’re on-call much of the time. It’s crucial to know that our e-mail is supported by Google’s infrastructure and doesn’t suffer from server downtime. Security matters are central to our efforts, as we’re handling significant investments and often working with companies that are operating in stealth mode. Our IT managers are able to easily manage access to sensitive documents — and two-step authentication adds an extra layer of much-needed security. If I leave my laptop on an airplane, it’s nice to have complete confidence that no one can access sensitive emails or documents.

With Google Hangouts, we’re able to video chat with our employees and entrepreneurs across offices, and to conduct interviews for the First Round Review -- our hub for entrepreneurial advice. Before Google Hangouts, we used used a variety of solutions with poor sound and video quality. When I only have 30 minutes to interview someone, I can’t afford to spend even five minutes worrying about whether or not the video will work.

First Round is on the move all the time serving the entrepreneurs we support, and we can’t have technology get in the way of the fast-paced nature of our work. We need technology that makes our jobs easier so we can continue helping startups build companies and products that will change the world. Sometimes we even forget we’re using Google Apps because it lets us focus on what we love to — inventing new ways to connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed.

]]> Posted by Camille Ricketts, Editor in Chief, Platform Team of First Round Capital

Editor's note: Whether it’s taking a meeting over Hangout from the airport before escaping to a much-deserved vacation or sending work e-mails from an air-conditioned neighborhood cafe, technology should help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy the summer months. To celebrate the season of sun, we’re sharing stories from customers who know all about the importance of technology when fostering a culture of mobility and flexibility. Today, we hear from Camille Ricketts, Editor in Chief at First Round Capital, a leading early-stage venture capital firm founded in Philadelphia with satellite offices in San Francisco and New York.

What do mega-startups Square, Uber, Warby Parker, and the unassuming town of West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, have in common? One of the most influential seed-stage VC firms in the world, First Round Capital, which first started at a small office in the small suburb outside Philadelphia, has invested in them. In 2004, entrepreneur and investor Josh Kopelman set out to reinvent seed-stage funding and opened our first office in West Conshohocken. Since then, we’ve moved our headquarters to Philadelphia, grown to over 30 employees and three offices, and funded close to 400 startups. As we’ve expanded, though, we’ve consistently kept a premium on staying nimble and having a platform that both helps us work efficiently and stay connected.

With Google Hangouts, we’re able to video chat with our employees and entrepreneurs across offices, and to conduct interviews for the First Round Review -- our hub for entrepreneurial advice. Before Google Hangouts, we used used a variety of solutions with poor sound and video quality. When I only have 30 minutes to interview someone, I can’t afford to spend even five minutes worrying about whether or not the video will work.

First Round is on the move all the time serving the entrepreneurs we support, and we can’t have technology get in the way of the fast-paced nature of our work. We need technology that makes our jobs easier so we can continue helping startups build companies and products that will change the world. Sometimes we even forget we’re using Google Apps because it lets us focus on what we love to — inventing new ways to connect entrepreneurs with the resources they need to succeed.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/first-round-capital-transforms-venture-capital-with-the-help-of-google-apps/feed/ 0 Bringing Google Earth Images to Business https://googledata.org/google-maps/bringing-google-earth-images-to-business/ https://googledata.org/google-maps/bringing-google-earth-images-to-business/#comments Wed, 16 Jul 2014 17:02:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=4c26e580ba5b8ee1a77755cf14067f47 Posted by Vinay Goel, Product Director, Google Maps for Business

Since launching Google Earth in 2005, imagery has become a powerful tool to virtually visit almost anywhere in the world right from a computer, tablet or phone. Organizations also need this type of imagery for their business—whether they’re mapping public service projects, reviewing the environmental impacts in a region or evaluating a property.

Today, we’re launching Google Maps for Business imagery, offering businesses the chance to purchase and use Google Earth imagery for the first time. This gives them access to high-resolution aerial imagery covering the continental U.S. And it will help customers like government agencies get the imagery they need without collecting their own aerial photography.

Using Google Maps Engine, organizations can quickly obtain Google Earth imagery as soon as it’s available and share it with colleagues or customers. By relying on Google’s cloud, they can bypass traditional delivery systems, such as an FTP or disc, while also avoiding the costs of maintaining their own data centers.

Organizations using Google Maps for Business imagery can access the imagery in several ways:

View it on a desktop GIS system via WMS
Include it with your Google Maps v3 JavaScript API web application
Overlay it directly within Google Earth
View it on native mobile applications and mobile websites.

Businesses want accurate, comprehensive and useful maps, and with Google Maps for Business imagery, organizations now have better access to commercial, high-quality satellite photography. Read on or contact our sales team to learn more about Google’s commercial imagery offering.

]]> Posted by Vinay Goel, Product Director, Google Maps for Business

Since launching Google Earth in 2005, imagery has become a powerful tool to virtually visit almost anywhere in the world right from a computer, tablet or phone. Organizations also need this type of imagery for their business—whether they’re mapping public service projects, reviewing the environmental impacts in a region or evaluating a property.

Today, we’re launching Google Maps for Business imagery, offering businesses the chance to purchase and use Google Earth imagery for the first time. This gives them access to high-resolution aerial imagery covering the continental U.S. And it will help customers like government agencies get the imagery they need without collecting their own aerial photography.

View it on a desktop GIS system via WMS
Include it with your Google Maps v3 JavaScript API web application
Overlay it directly within Google Earth
View it on native mobile applications and mobile websites.

Businesses want accurate, comprehensive and useful maps, and with Google Maps for Business imagery, organizations now have better access to commercial, high-quality satellite photography. Read on or contact our sales team to learn more about Google’s commercial imagery offering.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-maps/bringing-google-earth-images-to-business/feed/ 0 Celebrating the spirit of summer https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/celebrating-the-spirit-of-summer/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/celebrating-the-spirit-of-summer/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2014 14:26:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=20218b03e05f5592f693c7a96474b184 Posted by Kelly Campbell, Director of Enterprise Marketing

Whether you’re driving with the top down, escaping the scorching heat by stepping into an air-conditioned building, or grilling burgers and brats with family and friends as the sun goes down — it’s clear that summer is here. And the truth is, we all have things we’d rather be doing than sitting inside an office while the summer passes us by. That got us thinking about how technology can help us spend our time more efficiently. How can we make the most of our days during these fleeting summer months?

We’re asking you — companies, colleagues and friends — to consider how technology can help you get your work done faster so you can enjoy summer even more. With tools like Google Docs and Google+ Hangouts, people can get their work done from wherever they are, from any device, so they’re not forced to watch the sun-soaked days fly by from their desks. As we continue into those long summer days, we want to celebrate the independence that technology affords. So we’ll be working with a handful of our Google Apps customers, like Uber, Thrillist and Federal Donuts, to highlight how technology can make life easier and let us do our work when on the go.

And this is just the start. We’ll continue to find more ways to help bring mobility, freedom, and fulfillment to your workplace and workday. We want you to work the way you live, which means bringing your technology from life to work — whether it’s e-mail, spreadsheets or meetings —and finding that sweet spot between work and play.

In case you’re wondering how I plan to enjoy the summer, well, let’s just say that I’ll be taking my Friday afternoon meetings via Hangouts before heading to the beach. Here’s to celebrating the spirit of summer — at work, at home and on the go.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/celebrating-the-spirit-of-summer/feed/ 0 We think Germany will win. But don’t take our word for it… https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/we-think-germany-will-win-but-dont-take-our-word-for-it/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/we-think-germany-will-win-but-dont-take-our-word-for-it/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2014 13:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=fb5293c60f1678836d41e0467c9d53ae Posted by Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

We’ve had a great time giving you our predictions for the World Cup (check out our post before the quarter-finals and semi-finals). So far, we’ve gotten 13 of 14 games correct. But this isn't about us picking winners in World Cup soccer - it’s about what you can do with Google Cloud Platform. Now, we are open-sourcing our prediction model and packaging it up so you can do your own analysis and predictions.

We used Google Cloud Dataflow to ingest raw, touch-by-touch gameplay day from Opta for thousands of soccer matches. This data goes back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. We then polished the raw data into predictive statistics using Google BigQuery.

You can see BigQuery engineer Jordan Tigani (+JordanTigani) and developer advocate Felipe Hoffa (@felipehoffa) talk about how we did it in this video from Google I/O.

Our prediction for the final
It’s a narrow call, but Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55% chance of defeating Argentina due to a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).

But, 55% is only a small edge. And, although we've been trumpeting our 13 of 14 record, picking winners isn't exactly the same as predicting outcomes. If you'd asked us which scenario was more likely, a 7 to 1 win for Germany against Brazil or a 0 to 1 defeat of Germany by Brazil, we wouldn't have gotten that one quite right.

(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but the numbers still look good.)

But don’t take our word for it...
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at predicting. We have provided an IPython notebook that shows exactly how we built our model and used it to predict matches. We had to aggregate the data that we used, so you can't compute additional statistics from the raw data. However, for the real data geeks, you could try to see how well neural networks can predict the same data or try advanced techniques like principal components analysis. Alternatively, you can try adding your own features like player salaries or team travel distance. We've only scratched the surface, and there are lots of other approaches you can take.

You might also try simulating how the USA would have done if they had beat Belgium. Or how Germany in 2014 would fare against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. Or you could figure out whether the USA team is getting better by simulating the 2006 team against the 2010 and 2014 teams.

Here’s how you can do it
We’ve put everything on GitHub. You’ll find the IPython notebook containing all of the code (using pandas and statsmodels) to build the same machine learning models that we've used to predict the games so far. We've packaged it all up in a Docker container so that you can run your own Google Compute Engine instance to crunch the data. For the most up-to-date step-by-step instructions, check out the readme on GitHub. ]]> Posted by Benjamin Bechtolsheim, Product Marketing Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

We’ve had a great time giving you our predictions for the World Cup (check out our post before the quarter-finals and semi-finals). So far, we’ve gotten 13 of 14 games correct. But this isn't about us picking winners in World Cup soccer - it’s about what you can do with Google Cloud Platform. Now, we are open-sourcing our prediction model and packaging it up so you can do your own analysis and predictions.

We used Google Cloud Dataflow to ingest raw, touch-by-touch gameplay day from Opta for thousands of soccer matches. This data goes back to the 2006 World Cup, three years of English Barclays Premier League, two seasons of Spanish La Liga, and two seasons of U.S. MLS. We then polished the raw data into predictive statistics using Google BigQuery.

You can see BigQuery engineer Jordan Tigani (+JordanTigani) and developer advocate Felipe Hoffa (@felipehoffa) talk about how we did it in this video from Google I/O.

Our prediction for the final
It’s a narrow call, but Germany has the edge: our model gives them a 55% chance of defeating Argentina due to a number of factors. Thus far in the tournament, they’ve had better passing in the attacking half of their field, a higher number of shots (64 vs. 61) and a higher number of goals scored (17 vs. 8).

But, 55% is only a small edge. And, although we've been trumpeting our 13 of 14 record, picking winners isn't exactly the same as predicting outcomes. If you'd asked us which scenario was more likely, a 7 to 1 win for Germany against Brazil or a 0 to 1 defeat of Germany by Brazil, we wouldn't have gotten that one quite right.

(Oh, and we think Brazil has a tiny advantage in the third place game. They may have had a disappointing defeat on Tuesday, but the numbers still look good.)

But don’t take our word for it...
Now it’s your turn to take a stab at predicting. We have provided an IPython notebook that shows exactly how we built our model and used it to predict matches. We had to aggregate the data that we used, so you can't compute additional statistics from the raw data. However, for the real data geeks, you could try to see how well neural networks can predict the same data or try advanced techniques like principal components analysis. Alternatively, you can try adding your own features like player salaries or team travel distance. We've only scratched the surface, and there are lots of other approaches you can take.

You might also try simulating how the USA would have done if they had beat Belgium. Or how Germany in 2014 would fare against the unstoppable Spanish team of 2010. Or you could figure out whether the USA team is getting better by simulating the 2006 team against the 2010 and 2014 teams.

Here’s how you can do it
We’ve put everything on GitHub. You’ll find the IPython notebook containing all of the code (using pandas and statsmodels) to build the same machine learning models that we've used to predict the games so far. We've packaged it all up in a Docker container so that you can run your own Google Compute Engine instance to crunch the data. For the most up-to-date step-by-step instructions, check out the readme on GitHub. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/we-think-germany-will-win-but-dont-take-our-word-for-it/feed/ 0 Crunch Fitness launches data-driven marketing campaigns with Google Maps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crunch-fitness-launches-data-driven-marketing-campaigns-with-google-maps/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crunch-fitness-launches-data-driven-marketing-campaigns-with-google-maps/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2014 18:48:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=13e911c3ab6e2fcc10a3c7fa5ce4e455 Posted by Sara Aschheim, Media Manager, Crunch Fitness

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Sara Aschheim, Media Manager at Crunch Fitness. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business by viewing our Maps are Going Google series.

At Crunch, we’re all about making fitness fun. From our humble beginnings in a New York City basement, to full-service gyms with signature classes like B-Method and Cycle Karaoke, we realize that staying fit doesn’t just mean having access to a treadmill. This year, we’ve already opened over 13 gyms and plan to add several more this year.

The gym industry often relies on outdoor advertising and direct mail to spread the word about its offerings, like new locations, classes, and pricing. At Crunch, we firmly believe in making sure our advertisements are relevant and targeted. With Google Maps Engine Pro, our marketing and sales departments can make smarter, data-driven decisions by visualizing business-critical data.

As someone responsible for making sure we get the most from our media investments, I can use Maps Pro to map potential outdoor advertising placements in the more than 70 cities where we’re currently located. I do this by importing an Excel spreadsheet filled with information like price, geographic coordinates, and vendor name to a Google Map. Using Maps Pro, I can customize icons so anyone can quickly glance at the map and understand exactly where the advertising opportunities lie.

We also use Maps Pro to overlay customer location data around our franchise locations. Although some customers are willing to travel across town for a particular class, it’s important to us that we make the Crunch experience as convenient as possible. We also use these maps to figure out where potential customers are located and where we should launch direct mail campaigns.

The best thing about Maps Pro is that it’s simple to use for anyone who has used Google Maps. It’s easy to share and customize our data in Google Maps, such as changing the icon of one of our club’s to include hours. This has increased our level of cross-departmental collaboration and cut down on the time typically required to implement marketing campaigns. With our previous mapping partner, we had to send maps as email attachments, creating different versions for each change, and as a result people were discouraged from collaborating.

Convenience and location play a huge role in making Crunch, one of the most popular, recognizable fitness chains today. Maps Engine Pro helps us know who our members and potential customers are, and where they are, so we can be smarter about how we communicate with them. ]]> Posted by Sara Aschheim, Media Manager, Crunch Fitness

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Sara Aschheim, Media Manager at Crunch Fitness. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business by viewing our Maps are Going Google series.

At Crunch, we’re all about making fitness fun. From our humble beginnings in a New York City basement, to full-service gyms with signature classes like B-Method and Cycle Karaoke, we realize that staying fit doesn’t just mean having access to a treadmill. This year, we’ve already opened over 13 gyms and plan to add several more this year.

The gym industry often relies on outdoor advertising and direct mail to spread the word about its offerings, like new locations, classes, and pricing. At Crunch, we firmly believe in making sure our advertisements are relevant and targeted. With Google Maps Engine Pro, our marketing and sales departments can make smarter, data-driven decisions by visualizing business-critical data.

As someone responsible for making sure we get the most from our media investments, I can use Maps Pro to map potential outdoor advertising placements in the more than 70 cities where we’re currently located. I do this by importing an Excel spreadsheet filled with information like price, geographic coordinates, and vendor name to a Google Map. Using Maps Pro, I can customize icons so anyone can quickly glance at the map and understand exactly where the advertising opportunities lie.

We also use Maps Pro to overlay customer location data around our franchise locations. Although some customers are willing to travel across town for a particular class, it’s important to us that we make the Crunch experience as convenient as possible. We also use these maps to figure out where potential customers are located and where we should launch direct mail campaigns.

The best thing about Maps Pro is that it’s simple to use for anyone who has used Google Maps. It’s easy to share and customize our data in Google Maps, such as changing the icon of one of our club’s to include hours. This has increased our level of cross-departmental collaboration and cut down on the time typically required to implement marketing campaigns. With our previous mapping partner, we had to send maps as email attachments, creating different versions for each change, and as a result people were discouraged from collaborating.

Convenience and location play a huge role in making Crunch, one of the most popular, recognizable fitness chains today. Maps Engine Pro helps us know who our members and potential customers are, and where they are, so we can be smarter about how we communicate with them. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/crunch-fitness-launches-data-driven-marketing-campaigns-with-google-maps/feed/ 0 Welcome Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Docker and more to the Kubernetes community https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-microsoft-redhat-ibm-docker-and-more-to-the-kubernetes-community/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-microsoft-redhat-ibm-docker-and-more-to-the-kubernetes-community/#comments Thu, 10 Jul 2014 15:58:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=f11155f7a658a0a67dafe92687ab0886 Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Kubernetes is an open source manager for Docker containers, based on Google’s years of experience using containers at Internet scale. Today, Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Docker, Mesospehere, CoreOS and SaltStack are joining the Kubernetes community and will actively contribute to the project. Each company brings unique strengths, and together we will ensure that Kubernetes is a strong and open container management framework for any application and in any environment - whether in a private, public or hybrid cloud.

Our shared goal is to allow a broad range of developers to take advantage of container technologies. Kubernetes was built from the ground up as a lean, extensible and portable framework for managing Docker workloads. It lets customers manage their applications the way that Google manages hyper-scale applications like Search and Gmail.

Containers offer tremendous advantages for developers. Predictable deployments and simple scalability are possible because Docker packages all of a workload’s dependencies with the application. This allows for ultimate portability; you can avoid vendor lock-in and run containers in the cloud of your choice. It is just as important that the management framework has the same properties of portability and scalability, and that is what the community will bring to Kubernetes.

We look forward to the contributions of the expanded Kubernetes community:

Microsoft is working to ensure that Kubernetes works great in Linux environments in Azure VMs. Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft told us, “Microsoft will help contribute code to Kubernetes to enable customers to easily manage containers that can run anywhere. This will make it easier to build multi-cloud solutions including targeting Microsoft Azure.”
Red Hat is working to bring Kubernetes to the open hybrid cloud. Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies at Red Hat, told us, “Red Hat has a rich history of contributing to and maturing innovative, open source projects. Through this collaboration with Google on Kubernetes, we are contributing to the evolution of cloud computing and helping deliver the promises that container technologies offer to the open hybrid cloud.”
IBM is contributing code to Kubernetes and the broader Docker ecosystem to ensure that containers are enterprise-grade, and is working with the community to create an open governance model around the project.
Docker is delivering the full container stack that Kubernetes schedules into, and is looking to move critical capabilities upstream and align the Kubernetes framework with Libswarm.
CoreOS is working to ensure that Kubernetes can work seamlessly with the suite of CoreOS technologies that support cloud-native application development on any cloud.
Mesosphere is actively integrating Kubernetes with Mesos, making the advanced scheduling and management capabilities available to Kubernetes customers.
SaltStack is working to make Kubernetes a portable container automation framework that is designed for the reality of the platform-agnostic, multi-cloud world.

You can view the source and documentation for Kubernetes on GitHub. We look forward to the contributions of these companies alongside the already vibrant open source community.

]]> Posted by Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Kubernetes is an open source manager for Docker containers, based on Google’s years of experience using containers at Internet scale. Today, Microsoft, RedHat, IBM, Docker, Mesospehere, CoreOS and SaltStack are joining the Kubernetes community and will actively contribute to the project. Each company brings unique strengths, and together we will ensure that Kubernetes is a strong and open container management framework for any application and in any environment - whether in a private, public or hybrid cloud.

Our shared goal is to allow a broad range of developers to take advantage of container technologies. Kubernetes was built from the ground up as a lean, extensible and portable framework for managing Docker workloads. It lets customers manage their applications the way that Google manages hyper-scale applications like Search and Gmail.

Containers offer tremendous advantages for developers. Predictable deployments and simple scalability are possible because Docker packages all of a workload’s dependencies with the application. This allows for ultimate portability; you can avoid vendor lock-in and run containers in the cloud of your choice. It is just as important that the management framework has the same properties of portability and scalability, and that is what the community will bring to Kubernetes.

We look forward to the contributions of the expanded Kubernetes community:

Microsoft is working to ensure that Kubernetes works great in Linux environments in Azure VMs. Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and Enterprise group at Microsoft told us, “Microsoft will help contribute code to Kubernetes to enable customers to easily manage containers that can run anywhere. This will make it easier to build multi-cloud solutions including targeting Microsoft Azure.”
Red Hat is working to bring Kubernetes to the open hybrid cloud. Paul Cormier, President, Products and Technologies at Red Hat, told us, “Red Hat has a rich history of contributing to and maturing innovative, open source projects. Through this collaboration with Google on Kubernetes, we are contributing to the evolution of cloud computing and helping deliver the promises that container technologies offer to the open hybrid cloud.”
IBM is contributing code to Kubernetes and the broader Docker ecosystem to ensure that containers are enterprise-grade, and is working with the community to create an open governance model around the project.
Docker is delivering the full container stack that Kubernetes schedules into, and is looking to move critical capabilities upstream and align the Kubernetes framework with Libswarm.
CoreOS is working to ensure that Kubernetes can work seamlessly with the suite of CoreOS technologies that support cloud-native application development on any cloud.
Mesosphere is actively integrating Kubernetes with Mesos, making the advanced scheduling and management capabilities available to Kubernetes customers.
SaltStack is working to make Kubernetes a portable container automation framework that is designed for the reality of the platform-agnostic, multi-cloud world.

You can view the source and documentation for Kubernetes on GitHub. We look forward to the contributions of these companies alongside the already vibrant open source community.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/welcome-microsoft-redhat-ibm-docker-and-more-to-the-kubernetes-community/feed/ 0 Maps are going Google: Decide with Instant Insights https://googledata.org/google-maps/maps-are-going-google-decide-with-instant-insights/ https://googledata.org/google-maps/maps-are-going-google-decide-with-instant-insights/#comments Wed, 09 Jul 2014 18:20:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c6d5bbc4ecf0505ddc832c87b59c59c2 Posted by Jay Remley, Director, Google Maps for Business

Editor's note: In today’s digital age, information overload is a common problem, both in our lives and at work. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are investing in map visualization tools to help them manage and use data more effectively. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Data is critical for businesses, helping to steer day-to-day operations as well as future strategies. But when it comes to using data at work, there’s a fine line between empowered and overwhelmed. Unless your team can analyze and interpret all the information available to them, they’re far more likely to end up on the wrong side of that line.

According to a recent study* that surveyed 300 enterprise professionals, data of all forms — internal, external, structured, and unstructured — has grown by 38 percent over the past two years. With so much information available, companies need a real-time mechanism to understand fresh data, make decisions and communicate those decisions internally.

To stay ahead of information overload, savvy business leaders, like those at BioSolar, are realizing the benefits that maps can bring. Based in Australia, the solar company’s mission is to make renewable energy affordable for the folks “down under.” But with 23 million residents spread across nearly 3 million square miles, selling and installing solar panel systems isn’t easy.

Rather than asking sales and marketing reps to pour over the data needed to identify solar candidates, BioSolar puts prospective customer information on a map. This lets the team see exactly where they need to be and who they need to target. Since deploying Google Maps, BioSolar’s total sales appointments per day have increased from 20 to 180.

Biosolar is just one company who is realizing the benefits of seeing data in context to its location. Whether reporting to senior executives or doing your own analysis, overlaying dispersed data sets on a map allows an organization to present their information in one clear picture. This lets employees gather insights more effectively and improve communications.

As a business grows, finding better ways to use data is essential. For more information about how maps can help your organization glean instant insights, sign up for our “Maps are going Google” series or read Chapter 2 now.

* Map Data@Work Study, 2014]]> Posted by Jay Remley, Director, Google Maps for Business

Editor's note: In today’s digital age, information overload is a common problem, both in our lives and at work. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are investing in map visualization tools to help them manage and use data more effectively. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Data is critical for businesses, helping to steer day-to-day operations as well as future strategies. But when it comes to using data at work, there’s a fine line between empowered and overwhelmed. Unless your team can analyze and interpret all the information available to them, they’re far more likely to end up on the wrong side of that line.

According to a recent study* that surveyed 300 enterprise professionals, data of all forms — internal, external, structured, and unstructured — has grown by 38 percent over the past two years. With so much information available, companies need a real-time mechanism to understand fresh data, make decisions and communicate those decisions internally.

Biosolar is just one company who is realizing the benefits of seeing data in context to its location. Whether reporting to senior executives or doing your own analysis, overlaying dispersed data sets on a map allows an organization to present their information in one clear picture. This lets employees gather insights more effectively and improve communications.

As a business grows, finding better ways to use data is essential. For more information about how maps can help your organization glean instant insights, sign up for our “Maps are going Google” series or read Chapter 2 now.

* Map Data@Work Study, 2014]]> https://googledata.org/google-maps/maps-are-going-google-decide-with-instant-insights/feed/ 0 Scotts Miracle-Gro uses Google Apps and Drive to power its global growth strategy https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/scotts-miracle-gro-uses-google-apps-and-drive-to-power-its-global-growth-strategy/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/scotts-miracle-gro-uses-google-apps-and-drive-to-power-its-global-growth-strategy/#comments Tue, 08 Jul 2014 19:22:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=a145826b5cdaa752e78f824b9e56c3bb Posted by Greg Hohenbrink, Enterprise IT Manager, Scotts Miracle-Gro

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today we hear from Greg Hohenbrink, Enterprise IT Manager at Scotts Miracle-Gro, which provides lawn and gardening products to customers around the world.

Scotts Miracle-Gro was founded in Marysville, Ohio, in 1868 as a premium seed company. By 1940, the company reached $1 million in sales and expanded to 60 associates. Today, we have more than 10,000 associates across North America, Europe and Asia, and we sell about $2.8 billion in lawn and gardening care products and services annually. We manage the entire supply chain, from raw materials to shipping, and we’re always looking to streamline the process to become faster and more efficient as the company expands.

In 2012, we took a good, hard look at the IT department and realized that associates spent too much time managing files, folders and emails. We were using a combination of Exchange 2007 and 2010, with teams using a mix of products for cloud-based storage that made our processes disjointed and cross-team collaboration difficult. Our associates needed a platform to be efficient with documents and information. We spent a year evaluating productivity suites with an internal focus group of 100 associates. The overwhelming majority wanted Google Apps and, with help from Onix, we made the move quickly and smoothly.

We’ve seen organic adoption and satisfaction with Google Apps across the company. Most people were already familiar with Gmail, Docs and Drive, so collaboration happened naturally with teams of associates working in the same document instead of saving different versions on the server.

We’re now able to centralize our storage needs with Drive. Most teams use Docs, Slides and Sheets, while relying on Word, Excel and Powerpoint as needed. Since Drive supports all file types, we can store and share everything in one place. We’re seeing growth in adoption of the Drive desktop sync client, which lets associates drag and drop files into a folder in their home drive and have it automatically sync with Drive on the web.

With Drive, we can access all of our files and documents on the go. Recently, I was at an event and my colleague needed me to edit something immediately. I was able to find and open the file through my smartphone and address his concerns on the spot. In the past, I would have had to find a computer, VPN in, and fumble with a log-in. Thanks to Google Apps, what used to take half a day now only takes 30 minutes.

Hangouts is spreading across the organization as well. Our engineering team uses it twice a week to hold video calls with a developer in Hawaii. They also appreciate being able to share code in the same screen. Using a Chromebox in his office, our CIO holds daily standups with the Business Transformation leadership team, which makes videoconferencing quick and easy.

We’re also building applications on top of Google App Engine, which has been surprisingly easy to pick up. Our first big application was a CRM app, which we developed and rolled out with our sales force in a relatively short timeframe. With App Engine, we’re able to support this application without having to think about any of the underlying infrastructure.

For more than a century, Scotts Miracle-Gro has used innovation to help consumers create beautiful, healthy lawns and gardens. With Google Apps, we continue to find innovative ways to empower our associates to support this mission. ]]> Posted by Greg Hohenbrink, Enterprise IT Manager, Scotts Miracle-Gro

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today we hear from Greg Hohenbrink, Enterprise IT Manager at Scotts Miracle-Gro, which provides lawn and gardening products to customers around the world.

Scotts Miracle-Gro was founded in Marysville, Ohio, in 1868 as a premium seed company. By 1940, the company reached $1 million in sales and expanded to 60 associates. Today, we have more than 10,000 associates across North America, Europe and Asia, and we sell about $2.8 billion in lawn and gardening care products and services annually. We manage the entire supply chain, from raw materials to shipping, and we’re always looking to streamline the process to become faster and more efficient as the company expands.

In 2012, we took a good, hard look at the IT department and realized that associates spent too much time managing files, folders and emails. We were using a combination of Exchange 2007 and 2010, with teams using a mix of products for cloud-based storage that made our processes disjointed and cross-team collaboration difficult. Our associates needed a platform to be efficient with documents and information. We spent a year evaluating productivity suites with an internal focus group of 100 associates. The overwhelming majority wanted Google Apps and, with help from Onix, we made the move quickly and smoothly.

We’ve seen organic adoption and satisfaction with Google Apps across the company. Most people were already familiar with Gmail, Docs and Drive, so collaboration happened naturally with teams of associates working in the same document instead of saving different versions on the server.

We’re now able to centralize our storage needs with Drive. Most teams use Docs, Slides and Sheets, while relying on Word, Excel and Powerpoint as needed. Since Drive supports all file types, we can store and share everything in one place. We’re seeing growth in adoption of the Drive desktop sync client, which lets associates drag and drop files into a folder in their home drive and have it automatically sync with Drive on the web.

With Drive, we can access all of our files and documents on the go. Recently, I was at an event and my colleague needed me to edit something immediately. I was able to find and open the file through my smartphone and address his concerns on the spot. In the past, I would have had to find a computer, VPN in, and fumble with a log-in. Thanks to Google Apps, what used to take half a day now only takes 30 minutes.

Hangouts is spreading across the organization as well. Our engineering team uses it twice a week to hold video calls with a developer in Hawaii. They also appreciate being able to share code in the same screen. Using a Chromebox in his office, our CIO holds daily standups with the Business Transformation leadership team, which makes videoconferencing quick and easy.

We’re also building applications on top of Google App Engine, which has been surprisingly easy to pick up. Our first big application was a CRM app, which we developed and rolled out with our sales force in a relatively short timeframe. With App Engine, we’re able to support this application without having to think about any of the underlying infrastructure.

For more than a century, Scotts Miracle-Gro has used innovation to help consumers create beautiful, healthy lawns and gardens. With Google Apps, we continue to find innovative ways to empower our associates to support this mission. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/scotts-miracle-gro-uses-google-apps-and-drive-to-power-its-global-growth-strategy/feed/ 0 Google Apps and Drive feed the buzz at BuzzFeed https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-apps-and-drive-feed-the-buzz-at-buzzfeed/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-apps-and-drive-feed-the-buzz-at-buzzfeed/#comments Mon, 07 Jul 2014 16:57:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=1a76b87988dc2f2ce8943861c80feff5 Posted by Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead, BuzzFeed

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead at BuzzFeed, a social news and entertainment company.

BuzzFeed is a content-heavy company—from our popular list posts to in-depth news features to lifestyle surveys, GIFs and videos, we have something for everyone. As our founder, Jonah Peretti, likes to say, our publishing is a lot like a Paris cafe: you may be sitting around reading a philosophy book or something equally mentally stimulating, but if you see a cute dog under the table next to you, you’re still going to want to pet it and enjoy that interaction. People are a lot more complex and multidimensional than liking just one or the other: as with everything, a balance is important.

In order to be able to manage that steady stream of material and get that balance, we need a platform that keeps us organized and helps us collaborate (because sometimes it takes a team to collect the 40 greatest dog GIFs of all time). That’s where Google Apps comes into play.

Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead, Buzzfeed

Each day, our team shares, submits and receives over 400 ideas for posts, which come from our editors, our reporters, and our community, and come in all sorts of formats, from .docx, and .zip to .jpg to .mpeg. And no matter the file type or source, we use Drive to store the constant flow of material and ideas, so we can stay organized and the right people can access them from one central place. When an editor receives a proposal or piece they know is perfect for a certain group, they’ll drop it into a Drive folder and share it with the appropriate email alias.

My IT team relies on Drive to share all sorts of documents, spreadsheets and other files. I receive vendor price quotes throughout the week, typically as PDFs, which I store in a shared folder with my group so they can review and comment on them whenever they have the time. We use Drive for important work functions like setting up new hires — what equipment & software they need as well as what email aliases they need to be added to. We use Drive to keep track of inventory in the office as well, so if I need to reference a software key and compare it to an invoice, I have everything where I need it. The Drive mobile app allows me to access all my files when I’m away from my laptop, saving time and encouraging efficiency within the team; just the other night, I received an updated floor plan for our office, which I was able to pull up and approve without having to run home, find and boot up my laptop.

The Google Apps suite as a whole makes us work better and also nurtures the culture we pride ourselves on (you can probably tell from our listicles that we like to have fun—did you see what happened when a member of our edit team accidentally emailed the whole company recently?). BuzzFeed’s editorial team organized a Jorts Week celebration in honor of the revival of the mid-70s uber-short jean shorts, and employees voted for team activities and customized their jorts designs with Forms and tracked jorts sizes in Sheets. The editorial team similarly used Forms to collect submissions for our “What Secrets You Want to Tell Your Mother” feature for Mother’s Day.

From an IT perspective, another major strength of being on the Google platform is the marketplace of third-party tools that make systems management so much easier. We use FlashPanel by BetterCloud to streamline Google Apps management and add security to our Apps domain. We can prompt employees to reset passwords on a regular basis, see which third-party applications people have installed and view publicly shared Drive documents to make sure nothing is public that shouldn’t be.

With Google Drive, we have an easy, reliable way to store, manage and share all the different types of content and information we get from sources around the world. And with the full Apps suite, our editorial team can focus on publishing even more great content while my IT team can focus on giving our company the best tools for their jobs. Google helps us to turn that raw material into the amusing, provocative and quirky posts that make people laugh, cry and keep coming back for more. ]]> Posted by Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead, BuzzFeed

Editor's note: A few weeks ago, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead at BuzzFeed, a social news and entertainment company.

BuzzFeed is a content-heavy company—from our popular list posts to in-depth news features to lifestyle surveys, GIFs and videos, we have something for everyone. As our founder, Jonah Peretti, likes to say, our publishing is a lot like a Paris cafe: you may be sitting around reading a philosophy book or something equally mentally stimulating, but if you see a cute dog under the table next to you, you’re still going to want to pet it and enjoy that interaction. People are a lot more complex and multidimensional than liking just one or the other: as with everything, a balance is important.

In order to be able to manage that steady stream of material and get that balance, we need a platform that keeps us organized and helps us collaborate (because sometimes it takes a team to collect the 40 greatest dog GIFs of all time). That’s where Google Apps comes into play.

Justine Bienkowski, IT Team Lead, Buzzfeed

Each day, our team shares, submits and receives over 400 ideas for posts, which come from our editors, our reporters, and our community, and come in all sorts of formats, from .docx, and .zip to .jpg to .mpeg. And no matter the file type or source, we use Drive to store the constant flow of material and ideas, so we can stay organized and the right people can access them from one central place. When an editor receives a proposal or piece they know is perfect for a certain group, they’ll drop it into a Drive folder and share it with the appropriate email alias.

My IT team relies on Drive to share all sorts of documents, spreadsheets and other files. I receive vendor price quotes throughout the week, typically as PDFs, which I store in a shared folder with my group so they can review and comment on them whenever they have the time. We use Drive for important work functions like setting up new hires — what equipment & software they need as well as what email aliases they need to be added to. We use Drive to keep track of inventory in the office as well, so if I need to reference a software key and compare it to an invoice, I have everything where I need it. The Drive mobile app allows me to access all my files when I’m away from my laptop, saving time and encouraging efficiency within the team; just the other night, I received an updated floor plan for our office, which I was able to pull up and approve without having to run home, find and boot up my laptop.

The Google Apps suite as a whole makes us work better and also nurtures the culture we pride ourselves on (you can probably tell from our listicles that we like to have fun—did you see what happened when a member of our edit team accidentally emailed the whole company recently?). BuzzFeed’s editorial team organized a Jorts Week celebration in honor of the revival of the mid-70s uber-short jean shorts, and employees voted for team activities and customized their jorts designs with Forms and tracked jorts sizes in Sheets. The editorial team similarly used Forms to collect submissions for our “What Secrets You Want to Tell Your Mother” feature for Mother’s Day.

From an IT perspective, another major strength of being on the Google platform is the marketplace of third-party tools that make systems management so much easier. We use FlashPanel by BetterCloud to streamline Google Apps management and add security to our Apps domain. We can prompt employees to reset passwords on a regular basis, see which third-party applications people have installed and view publicly shared Drive documents to make sure nothing is public that shouldn’t be.

With Google Drive, we have an easy, reliable way to store, manage and share all the different types of content and information we get from sources around the world. And with the full Apps suite, our editorial team can focus on publishing even more great content while my IT team can focus on giving our company the best tools for their jobs. Google helps us to turn that raw material into the amusing, provocative and quirky posts that make people laugh, cry and keep coming back for more. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-apps-and-drive-feed-the-buzz-at-buzzfeed/feed/ 0 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS® powers home sales with Google Apps and Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/berkshire-hathaway-homeservices-fox-roach-realtors-powers-home-sales-with-google-apps-and-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/berkshire-hathaway-homeservices-fox-roach-realtors-powers-home-sales-with-google-apps-and-drive/#comments Tue, 01 Jul 2014 15:57:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=48ad569d27bd580a0300e9e800e03814 Posted by Scott Crowley, SVP & Chief Information Officer, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS®

Editor's note: Last week, we announced Google Drive for Work, a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls. To celebrate the announcement and show how Drive helps businesses around the world, we’re sharing a few stories from a handful of customers using Drive (and the rest of the Google Apps suite) in innovative ways. Today’s guest blogger is Scott Crowley, SVP & Chief Information Officer at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices (BHHS) Fox & Roach, REALTORS®, a part of HomeServices of America, the nation’s second-largest provider of total home services.

Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Fox & Roach, REALTORS®, is the largest REALTOR® in the tri-state area of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. We’re constantly looking for competitive advantages to recruit and retain experienced agents, while also appealing to the next generation entering the workforce. Because our more than 4,000 sales associates spend most of their time on the road, all the tools need to be available on mobile phones and tablets. They need to access important information at their fingertips, whether they’re in the car, a property site or at one of our 65 offices.

A little over a year ago, we realized that not only was our technology platform lacking the mobility our workforce needed, but our sales associates and employees were not solely using the technology we provided them. They were looking elsewhere for IT solutions, forwarding work email to personal third party accounts for additional storage and using third party cloud storage providers. We needed a solution that could provide the same quality of technology tools to our users without them going outside of IT -- and knew Google Apps was the answer. After running a pilot with our IT department last July, we migrated our more than 5,000 users to the new platform throughout with winter with the help of Cloud Sherpas, our Google Apps reseller.

The move to Google has enabled us to provide our users with an all-in-one communication and collaboration platform to increase productivity and efficiency by bringing our tools together in one place, with one login. Among the additional benefits that Google Apps provides, it’s easy to use, works seamlessly with mobile devices, and offers significantly more storage space.

Google Drive allows us to share documents instead of sending attachments back and forth, making it easier for teams to work together on projects more effectively and collaborate on live documents. Not only is Drive transforming how we collaborate and collect information from around our footprint, but it also provides a great cloud backup, especially as a personal disaster recovery solution in case hardware fails or mobile devices are lost or stolen. Google Drive works for any kind of file type, not just Google Sheets, Slides and Docs — which is important in a business where we still work heavily with PDF contracts and photos for listings. Today, everything is automatically stored in the cloud for access from any device, anywhere.

We’ve been using the shared Google calendar to revamp our closing process. Instead of calling remote offices to book rooms, our coordinators can now schedule the settlement, invite all parties involved and book the room all at the same time. If the settlement gets postponed or moved, all participants are notified immediately, saving critical time and making us more efficient.

With the flexibility of Google Apps, it’s much easier for us to integrate with other systems. Via Google Sync, we can push and pull contacts directly to and from our CRM, providing our sales associates constant access to all leads as they arrive, particularly on their mobile devices. Our transaction management system allows documents to be uploaded directly from Drive, which eliminates the need for local storage and makes working from a mobile device a true advantage.

We’re constantly growing our usage of Google Apps products. Our IT department uses Hangouts to help diagnose problems for remote staff, allowing them to resolve issues faster and provide better support. Later this year, we plan to use a combination of Google+ and Sites to replace our existing Sharepoint based intranet.

With Google, we get a technology partner, not just a vendor. We receive several updates a month, instead of waiting for bi-annual releases, each providing new innovative functionality to our company. No one asks
“what version of Google apps are you running” -- everything is up to date without IT intervention. Our sales associates and employees now have the ability to work and communicate in one platform, making the entire company more efficient, integrated, and successful.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/berkshire-hathaway-homeservices-fox-roach-realtors-powers-home-sales-with-google-apps-and-drive/feed/ 0 Education tools help teachers do more https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/education-tools-help-teachers-do-more/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/education-tools-help-teachers-do-more/#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2014 12:13:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ce8c1c254fb81e8f7888144e6211d790 Posted by Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist, Google for Education

As giddy students in the US are beginning to enjoy their summer break, we're feeling nostalgic looking back on the school year and are equally inspired by all the teachers we've had the chance to work with.

For example, the educators at Fairfield County Schools -- a rural district in South Carolina -- are committed to helping each and every student achieve success in academics and dedicated to helping them pursue their personal passions. The IT team may be small, but their achievements are not. And while the district is using Google for Education tools, it’s really the teachers there that make the difference.

It's because of inspiring educators, like those at Fairfield, that we work closely with teachers to build new tools made just for the classroom — to enable them to spend more time teaching & less "tech-ing". And we’re now expanding the availability of these tools, giving even more teachers new ways to engage students when school starts in the Fall.

One destination to find the right content for students
To make it easier for teachers to find content that inspires their students, we announced last week that we expanded Google Play for Education — creating a single destination for US K12 schools to find and distribute educational content — whether students are using Chromebooks, tablets, or both. Schools that use Chromebooks can start using the site for flexible book rentals, to distribute a selection of free Chrome apps and to share YouTube EDU videos. Administrators for Chromebooks can enable Google Play for Education today by visiting google.com/edu/play. If you do this by July 15 you’ll get a $20 credit for your school to use for book rentals. Learn more.

New tools to enhance Google Apps for Education
Last month we announced Classroom, a new tool coming to Google Apps for Education. We designed Classroom side-by-side with teachers to help them better engage their students and make time-consuming tasks like managing assignments easier. Classroom is currently in an invite-only preview but we are working to make it available to all Google Apps for Education schools in August. In the meantime, teachers can view the demonstration video. Administrators will also gain a new tool that saves them time: Google Apps School Directory Sync. It allows a school to export data from their student information system and quickly sync it to their Google Apps for Education domain. With this tool, it’s easy to create users, organizational units, and Google Groups, and also to keep everything in sync. Learn more.

More value and flexibility from tablets
Based on feedback from schools, we’ve made a few changes to help schools gain more flexibility to meet classroom and student needs with tablets. Schools told us they want students to be able to share devices so we’ve made some changes and now our tablets can be shared with up to 5 students. We’ve also taken the first steps to make tablets compatible with standardized testing for the 2014-2015 school year, releasing a single-task-mode tool for developers so they can design apps that restrict the device for assessments only. Partners like Pearson (a PARCC assessment provider) have already started implementing this functionality with their on-line assessment delivery system, TestNav. Learn more.

Connect with other teachers
Educators at the ISTE conference can visit booth #2414 to demo Google for Education and see over 50 presentations in our teaching theater. If you are not at ISTE, follow along online by searching #googleedu. We’re asking educators to share tips each day to surface great ideas for when school starts.

]]> Posted by Jaime Casap, Global Education Evangelist, Google for Education

As giddy students in the US are beginning to enjoy their summer break, we're feeling nostalgic looking back on the school year and are equally inspired by all the teachers we've had the chance to work with.

For example, the educators at Fairfield County Schools -- a rural district in South Carolina -- are committed to helping each and every student achieve success in academics and dedicated to helping them pursue their personal passions. The IT team may be small, but their achievements are not. And while the district is using Google for Education tools, it’s really the teachers there that make the difference.

It's because of inspiring educators, like those at Fairfield, that we work closely with teachers to build new tools made just for the classroom — to enable them to spend more time teaching & less "tech-ing". And we’re now expanding the availability of these tools, giving even more teachers new ways to engage students when school starts in the Fall.

One destination to find the right content for students
To make it easier for teachers to find content that inspires their students, we announced last week that we expanded Google Play for Education — creating a single destination for US K12 schools to find and distribute educational content — whether students are using Chromebooks, tablets, or both. Schools that use Chromebooks can start using the site for flexible book rentals, to distribute a selection of free Chrome apps and to share YouTube EDU videos. Administrators for Chromebooks can enable Google Play for Education today by visiting google.com/edu/play. If you do this by July 15 you’ll get a $20 credit for your school to use for book rentals. Learn more.

New tools to enhance Google Apps for Education
Last month we announced Classroom, a new tool coming to Google Apps for Education. We designed Classroom side-by-side with teachers to help them better engage their students and make time-consuming tasks like managing assignments easier. Classroom is currently in an invite-only preview but we are working to make it available to all Google Apps for Education schools in August. In the meantime, teachers can view the demonstration video. Administrators will also gain a new tool that saves them time: Google Apps School Directory Sync. It allows a school to export data from their student information system and quickly sync it to their Google Apps for Education domain. With this tool, it’s easy to create users, organizational units, and Google Groups, and also to keep everything in sync. Learn more.

More value and flexibility from tablets
Based on feedback from schools, we’ve made a few changes to help schools gain more flexibility to meet classroom and student needs with tablets. Schools told us they want students to be able to share devices so we’ve made some changes and now our tablets can be shared with up to 5 students. We’ve also taken the first steps to make tablets compatible with standardized testing for the 2014-2015 school year, releasing a single-task-mode tool for developers so they can design apps that restrict the device for assessments only. Partners like Pearson (a PARCC assessment provider) have already started implementing this functionality with their on-line assessment delivery system, TestNav. Learn more.

Connect with other teachers
Educators at the ISTE conference can visit booth #2414 to demo Google for Education and see over 50 presentations in our teaching theater. If you are not at ISTE, follow along online by searching #googleedu. We’re asking educators to share tips each day to surface great ideas for when school starts.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/education-tools-help-teachers-do-more/feed/ 0 Bringing the best of Google to work https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-best-of-google-to-work-and-school/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-best-of-google-to-work-and-school/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:59:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=c7e1b25eb33b539d286300d78e6b99e9 Posted by Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise

Google I/O, our annual developer conference, kicked off this morning in San Francisco with more than 6,000 developers in person and millions more on the livestream. This year, 41 percent of live attendees represent companies that develop business-to-business (B2B) applications, which validates what we’ve known for a while: there’s great demand for better apps in the workplace. People want to work the way they live and use the apps and tools they love, whether they’re at home or in the office.

This drives so much of what we’re doing to bring the best of Google to our users at home to work. For those who missed it, earlier today Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome & Apps and Urs Hölzle, SVP of Technical Infrastructure, announced and showed off a lineup of new products and features for Apps, Android, Chromebooks and Cloud Platform. Here are some of the highlights:

Introducing Google Drive for Work and updates to Google Docs

Already, 190 million people actively use Drive at home, school or work, while companies like Crate & Barrel, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, Seagate and Tory Burch and rely on it to work faster and to connect employees and customers. Now, we’re making Drive even better for business with Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.
As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.
Quickoffice is now full integrated into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android, your Chrome browser and coming soon to iOS. This means you can open, edit, save and send Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files from your favorite device. You no longer have to buy additional software — it just works.

Reimagining developer productivity and data analytics in the cloud with Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Dataflow, a managed service designed to help developers and companies process large datasets quickly and efficiently, was introduced today at Google I/O. Based on ten years of internal research and development, Cloud Dataflow is designed to let you focus on getting actionable insights from your data, while leaving the management, tuning, sweat and tears to Google.
To enhance application management and operations in production, we’re launching Google Cloud Monitoring, built on the technology of Stackdriver, a company that recently joined Google, and introducing new tracing and debugging tools to increase developer productivity.
We’re making it easier for mobile developers to build on our platform with a new version of Google Cloud Save and improved integrations in Android studio.

Already, 190 million people actively use Drive at home, school or work, while companies like Crate & Barrel, HP, Jaguar Land Rover, Seagate and Tory Burch and rely on it to work faster and to connect employees and customers. Now, we’re making Drive even better for business with Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.
As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.
Quickoffice is now full integrated into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android, your Chrome browser and coming soon to iOS. This means you can open, edit, save and send Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files from your favorite device. You no longer have to buy additional software — it just works.

Reimagining developer productivity and data analytics in the cloud with Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Dataflow, a managed service designed to help developers and companies process large datasets quickly and efficiently, was introduced today at Google I/O. Based on ten years of internal research and development, Cloud Dataflow is designed to let you focus on getting actionable insights from your data, while leaving the management, tuning, sweat and tears to Google.
To enhance application management and operations in production, we’re launching Google Cloud Monitoring, built on the technology of Stackdriver, a company that recently joined Google, and introducing new tracing and debugging tools to increase developer productivity.
We’re making it easier for mobile developers to build on our platform with a new version of Google Cloud Save and improved integrations in Android studio.

Today we also announced new features that are slated to launch in the next Android release — “L” — that are intended for enterprises. These features will make the transition for users from work to play more seamless, and provide IT administrators with more options to keep their employees' data secure and easy to access. Businesses will also be able buy apps in bulk on Google Play and make them available to employees — great for admins, great for developers. You can also read more about some of the updates coming to schools here.

Today has been exhilarating, but it’s still just the beginning. Google I/O continues through the end of tomorrow, so tune in at google.com/io for more news and check back here for more updates and news throughout the week.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-the-best-of-google-to-work-and-school/feed/ 0 Unlimit your business with Google Drive for Work https://googledata.org/google-apps/unlimit-your-business-with-google-drive-for-work/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/unlimit-your-business-with-google-drive-for-work/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:42:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=b562ed8de726434365056ad3fd379ebf Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

The workplace is full of files that capture your best ideas or your team’s most productive collaborations. But those files aren’t useful if you’re unable to access or share them effectively. That’s why, just two years ago, we introduced Google Drive. Today more than 190 million people actively use it at home, school and work. Drive keeps all your work safe, and makes it available everywhere and easy to share. Companies around the world like Crate & Barrel, Seagate, Tory Burch, HP and Jaguar Land Rover rely on Drive to work faster and collaborate better with their coworkers and customers.

But we’ve also heard from businesses that they want more control and security, visibility into how files are shared, and a product that will grow with them. So we’ve been working to make Drive even better for business, and today at Google I/O we announced Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.

More control, more visibility
Google Drive for Work combines the familiar storage, sync and share experience of Google Drive with new admin controls, advanced file audit reporting and eDiscovery services. New fine-grained controls let admins customize the Drive experience, such as which employees can install the desktop sync client. With the new audit view you can see activity like moving, deleting or sharing a file within or outside the company, and an audit API will also be available for developers. Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, is also included with Drive for Work, expanding to cover all content stored in Drive, including Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as any other file type.

More than enough space for all your work
Every year companies create more data than the last, adding megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Well, today, we’re taking bytes out of the conversation. For $10/user/month, businesses get unlimited storage for all their employees and can store files up to 5 TB in size (To put that in perspective, no desktop or laptop on the market today even has a hard drive big enough to capture and store a file that size).

More security
As of today, all files uploaded to Google Drive will be encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers.

More productivity
Some of the most common file types stored in Drive are Microsoft Word, Excel® and PowerPoint® files. We’ve now built the power of Quickoffice into Docs, Sheets and Slides, so you can open and edit those documents in their native format using Office Compatibility Mode directly on Android and Chrome browser today, and coming soon to iOS. No need to buy additional software or decide how to open your file. Editing Office files is just a click or tap away from Drive on your computer, tablet or phone.

Ready for your business, available today
Google Drive for Work includes the benefits and guarantees of Google Apps for Business, like 24x7 phone support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. You also get access to all of Google’s productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Hangouts, so you collaborate in even more ways. Drive for Work also offers enterprise-grade security and compliance, including a SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, SOC 2-audit, ISO 27001 certification, adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, and can support industry-specific requirements like HIPAA.

Drive for Work is available globally, today. If you’re a current Apps customer you can upgrade from the Admin console to get new features like unlimited storage. If you’re new to using Google at work you can learn more about Google Drive for Work on the web, or contact us for more information.]]> Posted by Scott Johnston, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

The workplace is full of files that capture your best ideas or your team’s most productive collaborations. But those files aren’t useful if you’re unable to access or share them effectively. That’s why, just two years ago, we introduced Google Drive. Today more than 190 million people actively use it at home, school and work. Drive keeps all your work safe, and makes it available everywhere and easy to share. Companies around the world like Crate & Barrel, Seagate, Tory Burch, HP and Jaguar Land Rover rely on Drive to work faster and collaborate better with their coworkers and customers.

But we’ve also heard from businesses that they want more control and security, visibility into how files are shared, and a product that will grow with them. So we’ve been working to make Drive even better for business, and today at Google I/O we announced Google Drive for Work — a new premium offering for businesses that includes unlimited storage, advanced audit reporting and new security controls for $10/user/month.

More control, more visibility
Google Drive for Work combines the familiar storage, sync and share experience of Google Drive with new admin controls, advanced file audit reporting and eDiscovery services. New fine-grained controls let admins customize the Drive experience, such as which employees can install the desktop sync client. With the new audit view you can see activity like moving, deleting or sharing a file within or outside the company, and an audit API will also be available for developers. Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, is also included with Drive for Work, expanding to cover all content stored in Drive, including Docs, Sheets and Slides, as well as any other file type.

Ready for your business, available today
Google Drive for Work includes the benefits and guarantees of Google Apps for Business, like 24x7 phone support and a 99.9% uptime guarantee. You also get access to all of Google’s productivity apps like Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites and Hangouts, so you collaborate in even more ways. Drive for Work also offers enterprise-grade security and compliance, including a SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II, SOC 2-audit, ISO 27001 certification, adherence to the Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, and can support industry-specific requirements like HIPAA.

Drive for Work is available globally, today. If you’re a current Apps customer you can upgrade from the Admin console to get new features like unlimited storage. If you’re new to using Google at work you can learn more about Google Drive for Work on the web, or contact us for more information.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/unlimit-your-business-with-google-drive-for-work/feed/ 0 Google Play for Education comes to Chromebooks https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-play-for-education-comes-to-chromebooks/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-play-for-education-comes-to-chromebooks/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2014 18:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ecb9befa6c205e15faa27ffcf59737f8 Posted by Pratip Banerji, Product Manager, Google Play for Education

Whenever I visit schools and talk to teachers, I’m reminded of the innovation that happens every day in the classroom. The English teacher who knows just the book to send a curious student’s mind racing, or the Physics teacher who shows how force and acceleration factored into the goal that tied the US vs. Portugal World Cup game.

Google for Education aims to make technology easy for students to use, simple for schools to manage, and affordable. But these tools don’t make a difference without the teachers who bring them to life. That’s why, in the last year, we worked closely with teachers to build tools that save time and provide flexibility -- tools like Google Play for Education.

Google Play for Education helps teachers find and share exactly the right educational content -- giving them the freedom to adapt their approach based on students’ current needs and interests. Google Play for Education started with tablets, but teachers told us they wanted to use it to find apps, books, and videos for Chromebooks too. So today we’re expanding Google Play for Education to US K-12 Chromebook schools.

The landing page for Google Play for Education helps schools find the perfect content for their students across Android apps, Chrome apps, books and videos.

Chromebook teachers can use Google Play for Education to:

Share Chrome apps instantly, with the whole class or with individual students -- starting with favorites like GeoGebra, TechSmith SnagIt and CK-12. Soon we’re adding brand new apps from partners like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Discovery Education and Scholastic.
Adapt classroom reading to students’ current interests as they choose from thousands of K-12 books, from the latest non-fiction to free classics like Huckleberry Finn and Jane Eyre.
Create custom YouTube playlists for students using videos from educator-approved channels.

As a result, districts like Council Bluffs in Iowa are trying new things. David Fringer, the Director of IT for the district, has seen a change in the way teachers are approaching classroom reading:

"With Google Play for Education, we're no longer limited by the number of hard copies of books available. It's easy for teachers to find appropriate reading, then assign it to individual students or the whole class. As a result, we’re saving time and money as we make the transition to digital."

Two students in Fresno, CA, work together on a Chromebook. When they head back to school next year, their teachers will be able to send them apps through Google Play for Education.

The landing page for Google Play for Education helps schools find the perfect content for their students across Android apps, Chrome apps, books and videos.

Chromebook teachers can use Google Play for Education to:

Share Chrome apps instantly, with the whole class or with individual students -- starting with favorites like GeoGebra, TechSmith SnagIt and CK-12. Soon we’re adding brand new apps from partners like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Discovery Education and Scholastic.
Adapt classroom reading to students’ current interests as they choose from thousands of K-12 books, from the latest non-fiction to free classics like Huckleberry Finn and Jane Eyre.
Create custom YouTube playlists for students using videos from educator-approved channels.

Two students in Fresno, CA, work together on a Chromebook. When they head back to school next year, their teachers will be able to send them apps through Google Play for Education.

If you’re a domain administrator managing Chromebooks, visit play.google.com/edu to turn on Google Play for Education. Enable by July 15 and we’ll send you a $20 credit for your school to use on paid books and other content purchases. If you’re an education developer for Chrome or Android interested in participating in Google Play for Education, learn how to get your app included.

If you’re coming to the ISTE conference this weekend, check out the sessions in our teaching theater at booth 2414, which include more information on the expansion of Google Play for Education. Stay tuned for more information next week on this blog, at ISTE, and by following #googleedu.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-play-for-education-comes-to-chromebooks/feed/ 0 Commune Hotels bets on the future of boutique hospitality using Google Drive https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/commune-hotels-bets-on-the-future-of-boutique-hospitality-using-google-drive/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/commune-hotels-bets-on-the-future-of-boutique-hospitality-using-google-drive/#comments Tue, 24 Jun 2014 16:45:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=aac43ab280c3bfbf16a8f6e40dcc8df1 Posted by Mike Blake, CIO, Commune Hotels and Resorts

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Mike Blake, CIO at Commune Hotels and Resorts, a San Francisco-based hotel management company focused on boutique hotels

At Commune Hotels and Resorts, we have a clear vision for the future of hospitality. Our three brands cater to a clientele that’s diverse in its tastes, but unified in its desire for a first-class experience. From Big Sur to Hawaii, our Joie de Vivre hotels are local and quirky. The Thompson Hotels in cities like London, Toronto and Chicago have a more international flair. And our newest brand, Tommie hotels, will offer ergonomic rooms and speedy services like self check-in and gourmet food to go. We’re expanding quickly and anticipating the evolving needs of customers. We need technology that will take us forward, and fast. That’s why we’re using Google Apps and Drive.

When I joined Commune as CIO in April of 2013, we were using Microsoft Exchange, but with the growth we were seeing, we were in dire need of a flexible system that would help employees collaborate better together. We evaluated Office 365 and Google Apps, and concluded decisively that Apps would put us on a path of growth and innovation. This was an essential differentiation: technology isn’t just about what’s available today, but about what will also put you in the best position for the years ahead. Google is hands down the company best suited to carry us forward. So in 2013, we switched over with the help of Cloud Sherpas, our Google Apps partner.

The strengths and vision of Google Drive, in particular, convinced us of the power and potential of Google Apps. It was clear to us that Drive was a particularly heavy area of focus for Google, and we loved that it was a core part of the company’s product strategy — that updates and improvements were happening all the time. In fact, I believe Drive is becoming the next new shared file structure — the next big way of saving, organizing and sharing all your files — as we move away from desktop network folders that hide behind firewalls and VPN access.

Mike Blake, CIO

Drive adoption has been swift and organic across our organization. For example, our development and acquisitions team has a shared Drive folder organized by state, city and hotel or location, where they store everything they need, like blueprints from architects in PDF format, which they then pass on to construction firms and other partners. Executives use Drive to share photos and video of potential acquisitions in JPG and MPEGs with each other, as well as competitive information. They don’t need a VPN and they can access the information from anywhere, whether they’re on the road or in the office.

Our sales operations team also created a set of shared folders in Drive, housed on a page built on Google Sites, with key information for our salespeople, like training documents, marketing campaign materials, promotional assets and property information. This solved a huge problem we faced after growing quickly without much central coordination, where employees resorted to emailing each other for information, often leaving them with either nothing or outdated material. Now, with Drive and Sites, our entire sales team can go to one single place for all the collateral they need. It’s become a quick success: not only do our reps spend less time searching for information, but we’ve seen a significant increase in cross-selling across hotel chains since all brands are in one site. Our teams are developing a more portfolio-focused, rather than hotel-specific, mindset.

Google Apps has already improved the way we work, but it’s the years ahead we’re really looking forward to. As an aggressively growing lifestyle company with an ambitious vision and big goals, we know we’re in good hands with a company like Google that’s always thinking one step (or a mile) ahead.]]> Posted by Mike Blake, CIO, Commune Hotels and Resorts

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Mike Blake, CIO at Commune Hotels and Resorts, a San Francisco-based hotel management company focused on boutique hotels

At Commune Hotels and Resorts, we have a clear vision for the future of hospitality. Our three brands cater to a clientele that’s diverse in its tastes, but unified in its desire for a first-class experience. From Big Sur to Hawaii, our Joie de Vivre hotels are local and quirky. The Thompson Hotels in cities like London, Toronto and Chicago have a more international flair. And our newest brand, Tommie hotels, will offer ergonomic rooms and speedy services like self check-in and gourmet food to go. We’re expanding quickly and anticipating the evolving needs of customers. We need technology that will take us forward, and fast. That’s why we’re using Google Apps and Drive.

When I joined Commune as CIO in April of 2013, we were using Microsoft Exchange, but with the growth we were seeing, we were in dire need of a flexible system that would help employees collaborate better together. We evaluated Office 365 and Google Apps, and concluded decisively that Apps would put us on a path of growth and innovation. This was an essential differentiation: technology isn’t just about what’s available today, but about what will also put you in the best position for the years ahead. Google is hands down the company best suited to carry us forward. So in 2013, we switched over with the help of Cloud Sherpas, our Google Apps partner.

The strengths and vision of Google Drive, in particular, convinced us of the power and potential of Google Apps. It was clear to us that Drive was a particularly heavy area of focus for Google, and we loved that it was a core part of the company’s product strategy — that updates and improvements were happening all the time. In fact, I believe Drive is becoming the next new shared file structure — the next big way of saving, organizing and sharing all your files — as we move away from desktop network folders that hide behind firewalls and VPN access.

Mike Blake, CIO

Drive adoption has been swift and organic across our organization. For example, our development and acquisitions team has a shared Drive folder organized by state, city and hotel or location, where they store everything they need, like blueprints from architects in PDF format, which they then pass on to construction firms and other partners. Executives use Drive to share photos and video of potential acquisitions in JPG and MPEGs with each other, as well as competitive information. They don’t need a VPN and they can access the information from anywhere, whether they’re on the road or in the office.

Our sales operations team also created a set of shared folders in Drive, housed on a page built on Google Sites, with key information for our salespeople, like training documents, marketing campaign materials, promotional assets and property information. This solved a huge problem we faced after growing quickly without much central coordination, where employees resorted to emailing each other for information, often leaving them with either nothing or outdated material. Now, with Drive and Sites, our entire sales team can go to one single place for all the collateral they need. It’s become a quick success: not only do our reps spend less time searching for information, but we’ve seen a significant increase in cross-selling across hotel chains since all brands are in one site. Our teams are developing a more portfolio-focused, rather than hotel-specific, mindset.

Google Apps has already improved the way we work, but it’s the years ahead we’re really looking forward to. As an aggressively growing lifestyle company with an ambitious vision and big goals, we know we’re in good hands with a company like Google that’s always thinking one step (or a mile) ahead.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/commune-hotels-bets-on-the-future-of-boutique-hospitality-using-google-drive/feed/ 0 Google Drive helps town of Hopkinton boost productivity and inform citizens https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-drive-helps-town-of-hopkinton-boost-productivity-and-inform-citizens/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-drive-helps-town-of-hopkinton-boost-productivity-and-inform-citizens/#comments Mon, 23 Jun 2014 16:29:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=4a095fcc37031559cc6d6b462e26782a Posted by Christopher McClure, IT director of the town of Hopkinton

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Christopher McClure, IT director of the town of Hopkinton, Mass., home to the Boston Marathon’s starting point.

Here in historic Hopkinton, Massachusetts — affectionately known as the starting point of the Boston Marathon — our small town’s civic-minded citizens are thirsty for information about local events and news. Until recently, though, they had to get it through word-of-mouth and phone calls to city offices, which was slow, inefficient and frustrating. Communication between police and fire departments, schools and town offices, and boards and committees was fragmented. Documents were siloed. Collaboration was limited to sending emails. We were wasting time tracking down information and weren’t working together as well as we knew we could if we had access to the right tools. That all changed when we moved to Google Apps two years ago. Now, our officials and citizens are getting the information they need, when they need it, and we haven’t looked back.

Drive in particular has been instrumental in creating a hub for storing, finding and sharing information. City employees, firefighters and police use Drive as the central storage for files ranging from PDFs to JPEGs, Word docs to videos, and for everything from meeting agendas to department staff lists, and from research reports to contracts. Our firefighters recently used a Drive shared folder as the main repository for all files involved in a recent study on consolidating firefighting resources among our nearby communities, so everyone involved could access key files, whenever they needed them. Our police department uses Drive to share policies and procedures among officers, since it’s so easy to pull up files whether they’re on their Android devices in the field or on their laptops back at headquarters.

Hangouts play a similarly major role in supporting our town’s governance. Officials use Hangouts to go over town budgets together, so they can review the numbers in Sheets while being able to see each other face-to-face. Just recently, we hosted a town meeting and used Hangouts to connect everyone from remote locations. We worked through and discuss all the motions, amendments and documents that had been distributed to citizens through Drive, Google Groups and Google+, all while feeling like we were meeting in person.

Hangouts also helps in emergency planning. Our fire department recently held a Hangout to discuss our “code red” plan, and everyone involved was impressed with both the ease of use — getting connected instantly just by clicking from the invitation in Google Calendar — and the strength of the sharing function, especially compared with past experience using Skype and GoToMeeting.

Google Apps has made sharing news, documents and updates with both our staff and citizens a breeze, and the impact is real and powerful. Not only are employees and residents happier, but we’re seeing quantitative results, like the 50% drop in call volume to the police and fire departments during Hurricane Sandy due to the ability to post emergency information to a public Google site in real-time. Going Google with Apps and Drive has made our town more than just the starting point of the Boston Marathon — it’s become the model of a beacon of information for citizens everywhere.

]]> Posted by Christopher McClure, IT director of the town of Hopkinton

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Christopher McClure, IT director of the town of Hopkinton, Mass., home to the Boston Marathon’s starting point.

Here in historic Hopkinton, Massachusetts — affectionately known as the starting point of the Boston Marathon — our small town’s civic-minded citizens are thirsty for information about local events and news. Until recently, though, they had to get it through word-of-mouth and phone calls to city offices, which was slow, inefficient and frustrating. Communication between police and fire departments, schools and town offices, and boards and committees was fragmented. Documents were siloed. Collaboration was limited to sending emails. We were wasting time tracking down information and weren’t working together as well as we knew we could if we had access to the right tools. That all changed when we moved to Google Apps two years ago. Now, our officials and citizens are getting the information they need, when they need it, and we haven’t looked back.

Drive in particular has been instrumental in creating a hub for storing, finding and sharing information. City employees, firefighters and police use Drive as the central storage for files ranging from PDFs to JPEGs, Word docs to videos, and for everything from meeting agendas to department staff lists, and from research reports to contracts. Our firefighters recently used a Drive shared folder as the main repository for all files involved in a recent study on consolidating firefighting resources among our nearby communities, so everyone involved could access key files, whenever they needed them. Our police department uses Drive to share policies and procedures among officers, since it’s so easy to pull up files whether they’re on their Android devices in the field or on their laptops back at headquarters.

Hangouts play a similarly major role in supporting our town’s governance. Officials use Hangouts to go over town budgets together, so they can review the numbers in Sheets while being able to see each other face-to-face. Just recently, we hosted a town meeting and used Hangouts to connect everyone from remote locations. We worked through and discuss all the motions, amendments and documents that had been distributed to citizens through Drive, Google Groups and Google+, all while feeling like we were meeting in person.

Hangouts also helps in emergency planning. Our fire department recently held a Hangout to discuss our “code red” plan, and everyone involved was impressed with both the ease of use — getting connected instantly just by clicking from the invitation in Google Calendar — and the strength of the sharing function, especially compared with past experience using Skype and GoToMeeting.

Google Apps has made sharing news, documents and updates with both our staff and citizens a breeze, and the impact is real and powerful. Not only are employees and residents happier, but we’re seeing quantitative results, like the 50% drop in call volume to the police and fire departments during Hurricane Sandy due to the ability to post emergency information to a public Google site in real-time. Going Google with Apps and Drive has made our town more than just the starting point of the Boston Marathon — it’s become the model of a beacon of information for citizens everywhere.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/google-drive-helps-town-of-hopkinton-boost-productivity-and-inform-citizens/feed/ 0 Bangor Daily News uses Drive API to cut production time so reporters can work from the field https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bangor-daily-news-uses-drive-api-to-cut-production-time-so-reporters-can-work-from-the-field/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bangor-daily-news-uses-drive-api-to-cut-production-time-so-reporters-can-work-from-the-field/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2014 19:24:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=5a51b5a81d29c0d2ff7515d6d0411226 Posted by William Davis, Director of Research and Innovation, Bangor Daily News

Editor's note: Today’s guest post comes from William Davis, Director of Research and Innovation at the Bangor Daily News, a 4th-generation family-owned online and daily print publication covering news from around the state of Maine.

The Bangor Daily News has witnessed and reported on quite a long list of moments in American history since it first went to press back in 1889. From world wars to local fires, peace protests to suffrage laws, we’ve covered it all — keeping the people of Maine up to date and in the loop. And we’ve kept it all in the family along the way: our current publisher, Richard J. Warren, is the great-grandson of our founder, and his sister is our chairman of the board.

The last decade has been especially tumultuous as our business has changed rapidly. With people reading news online instead of in print and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, we’ve re-evaluated how we define ourselves as a newsroom. And our legacy systems were holding us back as we tried to compete with a new wave of digital-only publishers.

One of the biggest issues we faced were slow, expensive systems that kept reporters in the newsroom instead of finding and researching stories in the field. With a large newsroom flung all across the state, traditional desktop and local server-based programs just didn’t cut it. To file a story, reporters often sent their editor an email with a Microsoft Word attachment, and the story would have to be copied and pasted into our local system. To push the story to our website, someone copied and pasted it into WordPress, added images and hyperlinks, formatted it, and published it. If the reporter filed a newer version of the story, the process started back from the beginning and all changes were lost. The process was painful for everyone involved.

That all changed when we moved to Google Apps. Now we use the Drive API to complete the process in a single click. We connected Drive, WordPress, and Adobe InDesign to make a tedious and slow process easier and faster.

In our new system, reporters and editors write their stories in Docs, using collaborative real-time editing, comments and revision history to make process quick and painless. We then use the Drive API to capture the text of the story, strip out comments and editing notes, and push it directly to our website — no copying and pasting. The text also flows into InDesign fully formatted, making the production of our print newspaper easier, faster and cheaper as well.

We also use the Drive API for project budgeting, which is how our newsroom tracks and prioritizes articles using metadata like wordcount, category, story importance and estimated submission time. Editors use the budget to plan our online content strategy for the day and decide what will go in the next day’s paper. As a reporter submits a budget line to let his or her editors know to expect it, a Doc is created via the API, keeping everything tied together and easy to track.

Google Apps costs next to nothing and lets us work the way we want. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on complex systems, we can spend that money on reporters. And in an industry where seconds, pennies and flexibility matter, Google Apps has helped our business focus on what’s really critical — breaking news that matters to Maine.]]> Posted by William Davis, Director of Research and Innovation, Bangor Daily News

Editor's note: Today’s guest post comes from William Davis, Director of Research and Innovation at the Bangor Daily News, a 4th-generation family-owned online and daily print publication covering news from around the state of Maine.

The Bangor Daily News has witnessed and reported on quite a long list of moments in American history since it first went to press back in 1889. From world wars to local fires, peace protests to suffrage laws, we’ve covered it all — keeping the people of Maine up to date and in the loop. And we’ve kept it all in the family along the way: our current publisher, Richard J. Warren, is the great-grandson of our founder, and his sister is our chairman of the board.

The last decade has been especially tumultuous as our business has changed rapidly. With people reading news online instead of in print and the rise of the 24-hour news cycle, we’ve re-evaluated how we define ourselves as a newsroom. And our legacy systems were holding us back as we tried to compete with a new wave of digital-only publishers.

One of the biggest issues we faced were slow, expensive systems that kept reporters in the newsroom instead of finding and researching stories in the field. With a large newsroom flung all across the state, traditional desktop and local server-based programs just didn’t cut it. To file a story, reporters often sent their editor an email with a Microsoft Word attachment, and the story would have to be copied and pasted into our local system. To push the story to our website, someone copied and pasted it into WordPress, added images and hyperlinks, formatted it, and published it. If the reporter filed a newer version of the story, the process started back from the beginning and all changes were lost. The process was painful for everyone involved.

That all changed when we moved to Google Apps. Now we use the Drive API to complete the process in a single click. We connected Drive, WordPress, and Adobe InDesign to make a tedious and slow process easier and faster.

In our new system, reporters and editors write their stories in Docs, using collaborative real-time editing, comments and revision history to make process quick and painless. We then use the Drive API to capture the text of the story, strip out comments and editing notes, and push it directly to our website — no copying and pasting. The text also flows into InDesign fully formatted, making the production of our print newspaper easier, faster and cheaper as well.

We also use the Drive API for project budgeting, which is how our newsroom tracks and prioritizes articles using metadata like wordcount, category, story importance and estimated submission time. Editors use the budget to plan our online content strategy for the day and decide what will go in the next day’s paper. As a reporter submits a budget line to let his or her editors know to expect it, a Doc is created via the API, keeping everything tied together and easy to track.

Google Apps costs next to nothing and lets us work the way we want. Instead of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on complex systems, we can spend that money on reporters. And in an industry where seconds, pennies and flexibility matter, Google Apps has helped our business focus on what’s really critical — breaking news that matters to Maine.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bangor-daily-news-uses-drive-api-to-cut-production-time-so-reporters-can-work-from-the-field/feed/ 0 Ulster-Greene ARC improves patient care with Chromebooks https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ulster-greene-arc-improves-patient-care-with-chromebooks/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ulster-greene-arc-improves-patient-care-with-chromebooks/#comments Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:07:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=d4c895fb36fa1177cc0240499cacfc55 Posted by Bart Louwagie, CIO, Ulster-Greene ARC

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Bart Louwagie, CIO of Ulster-Greene ARC (UGARC). UGARC is a private, nonprofit agency offering support for intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals in Ulster and Greene counties in New York.

At UGARC, we provide a full array of customized support and services for individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities, these include educational programs, vocational readiness, job training, residential options and clinical services. We have over a thousand employees helping more than 1,300 people live full and meaningful lives.

There are a lot of medically frail people in our care who need 24/7 support. At the same time, our direct support workers need to record every event that takes place when they are “on the clock” including daily activities, food preferences and behavioral events. This information is collected in different databases and pulled up by other direct support workers or nurses who might work with the same person. The challenge for our employees is multi-tasking — it’s hard to give someone your undivided attention when you’re also trying to take notes down before you forget.

For a long time, direct support workers used pen and paper and then spent time entering their notes into a computer when they had some down time. It’s not the most efficient, but paper is easy. You just slap it on the table and start scribbling. As the leader of the IT department, I wanted to introduce technology that was as frictionless as paper and as “invisible” as possible, so our employees could spend more time focusing on the individual.

As a nonprofit we didn’t have many resources to use on new technology. With Chromebooks and Google Apps we were able to create an incredibly affordable, secure and easy-to-manage system for employees to collect and share patient information. We purchased 130 Samsung Chromebooks and locked them down in Kiosk mode, via the management console, so a staff member could only access essential web-based forms. We synchronized this with Active Directory so logons are easy. Now, when direct support staff are with the people, they simply turn on the Chromebook, log into the Electronic Healthcare records and start taking notes right away. By cutting down their note taking time, our direct support staff can focus on what is most important for the person.

As a healthcare provider, we needed to meet stringent regulations around data privacy and security. Chromebooks are by far the easiest computers to manage and secure, thanks to the remote management console. Chromebooks give us granular control over who can access what data, preventing problems with confidentiality of personal information. Since we store no data, we are confident that losing a device will not lead to data loss.

Our employees love Chromebooks, but I think the IT department has felt the biggest impact. Because Google automatically sends updates to each device, all we need to worry about is managing permissions for each user. We’ve saved hours of work each week by not having to maintain laptops, their applications and managing upgrades. It takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new Chromebook just the way we want, versus the hours it would have taken with a Windows-based netbook.

Chromebooks have truly achieved my desire for “invisible” technology that’s simple to use, easy to manage and affordable. We hope to roll out more Chromebooks in the future.]]> Posted by Bart Louwagie, CIO, Ulster-Greene ARC

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Bart Louwagie, CIO of Ulster-Greene ARC (UGARC). UGARC is a private, nonprofit agency offering support for intellectually and developmentally disabled individuals in Ulster and Greene counties in New York.

At UGARC, we provide a full array of customized support and services for individuals with intellectual and other developmental disabilities, these include educational programs, vocational readiness, job training, residential options and clinical services. We have over a thousand employees helping more than 1,300 people live full and meaningful lives.

There are a lot of medically frail people in our care who need 24/7 support. At the same time, our direct support workers need to record every event that takes place when they are “on the clock” including daily activities, food preferences and behavioral events. This information is collected in different databases and pulled up by other direct support workers or nurses who might work with the same person. The challenge for our employees is multi-tasking — it’s hard to give someone your undivided attention when you’re also trying to take notes down before you forget.

For a long time, direct support workers used pen and paper and then spent time entering their notes into a computer when they had some down time. It’s not the most efficient, but paper is easy. You just slap it on the table and start scribbling. As the leader of the IT department, I wanted to introduce technology that was as frictionless as paper and as “invisible” as possible, so our employees could spend more time focusing on the individual.

As a nonprofit we didn’t have many resources to use on new technology. With Chromebooks and Google Apps we were able to create an incredibly affordable, secure and easy-to-manage system for employees to collect and share patient information. We purchased 130 Samsung Chromebooks and locked them down in Kiosk mode, via the management console, so a staff member could only access essential web-based forms. We synchronized this with Active Directory so logons are easy. Now, when direct support staff are with the people, they simply turn on the Chromebook, log into the Electronic Healthcare records and start taking notes right away. By cutting down their note taking time, our direct support staff can focus on what is most important for the person.

As a healthcare provider, we needed to meet stringent regulations around data privacy and security. Chromebooks are by far the easiest computers to manage and secure, thanks to the remote management console. Chromebooks give us granular control over who can access what data, preventing problems with confidentiality of personal information. Since we store no data, we are confident that losing a device will not lead to data loss.

Our employees love Chromebooks, but I think the IT department has felt the biggest impact. Because Google automatically sends updates to each device, all we need to worry about is managing permissions for each user. We’ve saved hours of work each week by not having to maintain laptops, their applications and managing upgrades. It takes less than 10 minutes to configure a new Chromebook just the way we want, versus the hours it would have taken with a Windows-based netbook.

Chromebooks have truly achieved my desire for “invisible” technology that’s simple to use, easy to manage and affordable. We hope to roll out more Chromebooks in the future.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/ulster-greene-arc-improves-patient-care-with-chromebooks/feed/ 0 Aerospace and Defense company Rockwell Collins enters the next phase of computing with Google Apps https://googledata.org/google-apps/aerospace-and-defense-company-rockwell-collins-enters-the-next-phase-of-computing-with-google-apps/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/aerospace-and-defense-company-rockwell-collins-enters-the-next-phase-of-computing-with-google-apps/#comments Wed, 18 Jun 2014 16:29:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=941cffe162962a7fdd2da8606c591436 Posted by John Paul Besong, SVP & CIO, Rockwell Collins

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is John Paul Besong, SVP & CIO at Rockwell Collins, a Fortune 500 manufacturer of communication, aviation electronic, and information management systems, services and solutions.

In 1933, Rockwell Collins — then less than a year old and known as Collins Radio — supplied the equipment to establish a communications link with the South Pole expedition of Rear Admiral Richard Byrd. It was an exhilarating start to what would, over the next 80 years, include a number of industry milestones, including providing communications for the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury programs, pioneering GPS navigation, and more recently, developing the industry's only aviation head-up synthetic vision system.

Today, we're one of the world’s leading aerospace and defence companies. Our team of about 20,000 employees builds systems to ensure pilots around the world arrive and land safely. Our aviation electronics are installed in the cockpits or cabins of nearly every commercial air transport aircraft in the world. And our communication systems transmit about 70 percent of U.S. and allied military airborne communications.

Because we operate in an industry that places a premium on safety and serve clients that prioritize security, our technology — and our IT environment — has to be safe, trustworthy and reliable. Recently, I realized these priorities, along with our risk averse culture, had left us with IT tools that kept our operations secure and consistent but left our employees and our IT team frustrated.

The problems were widespread. With our legacy mail system, less than 10 percent of our employees — those with company Blackberries — could check their email and calendar on the go. A majority of our engineers expressed dissatisfaction with our development tools. And we were having trouble attracting young new talent. After digging deeper, I sent out a company-wide survey, and the message came through loud and clear: our employees wanted a faster, more flexible platform that was safe and let them access their info and collaborate on the go and from multiple devices.

We looked at a number of options, and after an extended evaluation process, decided that Google Apps for Business was the best solution for both protecting sensitive company information and giving our employees the consumer-friendly collaboration tools they were asking for. With the help of Maven Wave, our Google Apps implementation partner, we made the move successfully and completed our official go-live just a few weeks ago.

Google Apps is moving us into the next era of user-centric computing by allowing our employees to use technology at work the same way they do at home. To start, we’ve replaced the legacy mail system with Google Apps for email, calendar, storage, documents and video chat, and all employees can access their Google Apps account on their own mobile devices — Android, iPhone, tablet, whatever they choose to use. We have also deployed a campus-wide employee wireless network so people don’t feel chained to their desks.

Our employees are now exploring and adopting all of the other collaborative features of Google Apps as well. Three weeks into our deployment, 12,500 employees are using Drive for secure file storage and document sharing, with more than 750,000 files uploaded to Drive. Nearly 20,000 Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have been created. And finally, approximately 10,000 files have already been shared on a read/write access basis, enabling employees to co-author and collaborate within a single document.

Rockwell Collins is a Fortune 500 company with employees located across the globe, and we need to leverage technology to collaborate better and to work more efficiently. Now that our employees can respond to each other almost instantly and work from virtually anywhere with Google Apps, I believe we’re paving the way for the next phase of Rockwell Collins’ journey.]]> Posted by John Paul Besong, SVP & CIO, Rockwell Collins

In 1933, Rockwell Collins — then less than a year old and known as Collins Radio — supplied the equipment to establish a communications link with the South Pole expedition of Rear Admiral Richard Byrd. It was an exhilarating start to what would, over the next 80 years, include a number of industry milestones, including providing communications for the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury programs, pioneering GPS navigation, and more recently, developing the industry's only aviation head-up synthetic vision system.

Today, we're one of the world’s leading aerospace and defence companies. Our team of about 20,000 employees builds systems to ensure pilots around the world arrive and land safely. Our aviation electronics are installed in the cockpits or cabins of nearly every commercial air transport aircraft in the world. And our communication systems transmit about 70 percent of U.S. and allied military airborne communications.

Because we operate in an industry that places a premium on safety and serve clients that prioritize security, our technology — and our IT environment — has to be safe, trustworthy and reliable. Recently, I realized these priorities, along with our risk averse culture, had left us with IT tools that kept our operations secure and consistent but left our employees and our IT team frustrated.

The problems were widespread. With our legacy mail system, less than 10 percent of our employees — those with company Blackberries — could check their email and calendar on the go. A majority of our engineers expressed dissatisfaction with our development tools. And we were having trouble attracting young new talent. After digging deeper, I sent out a company-wide survey, and the message came through loud and clear: our employees wanted a faster, more flexible platform that was safe and let them access their info and collaborate on the go and from multiple devices.

We looked at a number of options, and after an extended evaluation process, decided that Google Apps for Business was the best solution for both protecting sensitive company information and giving our employees the consumer-friendly collaboration tools they were asking for. With the help of Maven Wave, our Google Apps implementation partner, we made the move successfully and completed our official go-live just a few weeks ago.

Google Apps is moving us into the next era of user-centric computing by allowing our employees to use technology at work the same way they do at home. To start, we’ve replaced the legacy mail system with Google Apps for email, calendar, storage, documents and video chat, and all employees can access their Google Apps account on their own mobile devices — Android, iPhone, tablet, whatever they choose to use. We have also deployed a campus-wide employee wireless network so people don’t feel chained to their desks.

Our employees are now exploring and adopting all of the other collaborative features of Google Apps as well. Three weeks into our deployment, 12,500 employees are using Drive for secure file storage and document sharing, with more than 750,000 files uploaded to Drive. Nearly 20,000 Google Docs, Sheets and Slides have been created. And finally, approximately 10,000 files have already been shared on a read/write access basis, enabling employees to co-author and collaborate within a single document.

Rockwell Collins is a Fortune 500 company with employees located across the globe, and we need to leverage technology to collaborate better and to work more efficiently. Now that our employees can respond to each other almost instantly and work from virtually anywhere with Google Apps, I believe we’re paving the way for the next phase of Rockwell Collins’ journey.]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/aerospace-and-defense-company-rockwell-collins-enters-the-next-phase-of-computing-with-google-apps/feed/ 0 The best of Google+ for our Apps customers https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-best-of-google-for-our-apps-customers/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-best-of-google-for-our-apps-customers/#comments Mon, 16 Jun 2014 17:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=38682f443d0ca018c64c7438d12d897f Posted by Michael Cai, Product Manager

It’s now easier to connect with co-workers and discuss important business decisions face-to-face with some new updates to Google+ and Hangouts. In the past, some of you may have noticed an admin option to enable a preview of “Google+ premium features.” Today we’re rolling out these premium features to everybody. It won’t change the way you’ve previously interacted with Google+ or Hangouts, but it will let you access several great business-specific features you may have missed out on before now.

These changes will let organizations do two things: first, you’ll have a more tailored Google+ experience with enhanced control options, like making Google+ posts restricted to your domain by default or the ability to hide employee profiles in external searches.

Second, you can save time and money while meeting face-to-face with colleagues using 15-person HD video calls with Google Hangouts. So the next time you need to quickly chat with a colleague or hash out a decision, you can just jump into a Hangout with one click from Calendar or an email invitation.

All new Google Apps customers will see these updates from the moment they register, and current users will see these great updates in the next month. Read more about these changes in our Help Center.]]> Posted by Michael Cai, Product Manager

It’s now easier to connect with co-workers and discuss important business decisions face-to-face with some new updates to Google+ and Hangouts. In the past, some of you may have noticed an admin option to enable a preview of “Google+ premium features.” Today we’re rolling out these premium features to everybody. It won’t change the way you’ve previously interacted with Google+ or Hangouts, but it will let you access several great business-specific features you may have missed out on before now.

These changes will let organizations do two things: first, you’ll have a more tailored Google+ experience with enhanced control options, like making Google+ posts restricted to your domain by default or the ability to hide employee profiles in external searches.

Second, you can save time and money while meeting face-to-face with colleagues using 15-person HD video calls with Google Hangouts. So the next time you need to quickly chat with a colleague or hash out a decision, you can just jump into a Hangout with one click from Calendar or an email invitation.

All new Google Apps customers will see these updates from the moment they register, and current users will see these great updates in the next month. Read more about these changes in our Help Center.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/the-best-of-google-for-our-apps-customers/feed/ 0 FiLIP Goes Google: Keeping Kids Safe with Google Maps https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/filip-goes-google-keeping-kids-safe-with-google-maps/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/filip-goes-google-keeping-kids-safe-with-google-maps/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2014 13:55:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=3e65a48cc4c941bfb2b9534f9104aa87 Posted by Sten Kirkbak, Founder and Chief Creative Officer, FiLIP

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is from FiLIP, maker of the first smart locator for kids. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business: Maps are Going Google.

The inspiration behind a company comes in many different forms and at FiLIP we have a unique story. It all began the day I lost track of my 3-year-old son at a shopping mall. We found him safe and sound, but those 30 minutes were heart-stopping, terrifying and something a father should never experience.

No parent should ever feel that way — especially in today’s hyper-connected world. Businesses now use mapping technology to monitor of all their valuable assets. Parents need the same tools to protect the most precious assets of all: their children. This is the idea behind the FiLIP watch, a location-aware, communication device developed just for kids.

Millions of people today have smart phones with Google Maps already installed. Knowing this, we developed a similarly-sophisticated piece of technology for kids — one with Wifi, a mobile network and mapping APIs that can provide real-time location data. This lets parents see exactly where their children are at all times, on the same Google Maps interface they already know and understand how to use. Kids can also call their parents directly from their watch. By combining voice capabilities with location technology, families have a simple, yet powerful way to communicate.

Because kids tend to lose or forget things, it made sense to develop a product they would want to wear, rather than a device they would have to carry. That’s why we embarked on a whole new frontier — wearable technology.

Partnering with Google gave my team access to developers who have been at the forefront of wearables and data analysts who could help us understand how to optimize location data and get it on a map. Using their insights, we created a product that lets parents keep tabs on their most important possession, while being fun for kids and parents to use together.

My son, Filip, still remembers the day he got lost. Recently, when his teacher asked all the kids what they want to be when they grow up — Filip said he would be chairman for the company his father named after him. I love knowing my products help parents be truly connected with their children. But the thing I love most about my job is developing something my son is so connected to. As a father, that’s a great thing.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/filip-goes-google-keeping-kids-safe-with-google-maps/feed/ 0 CI&T uses Google Cloud Platform to power the Coca-Cola “Happiness Flag” unveiled on the pitch at the opening match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ https://googledata.org/google-app-engine/cit-uses-google-cloud-platform-to-power-the-coca-cola-happiness-flag-unveiled-on-the-pitch-at-the-opening-match-of-the-2014-fifa-world-cup/ https://googledata.org/google-app-engine/cit-uses-google-cloud-platform-to-power-the-coca-cola-happiness-flag-unveiled-on-the-pitch-at-the-opening-match-of-the-2014-fifa-world-cup/#comments Sat, 14 Jun 2014 15:00:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=d6d7e0c22a672f7e986ada77aee2ee1c Posted by Daniel Viveiros, CI&T’s Head of Technology

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Platform Blog)

Editor's note: Today's guest post is from Daniel Viveiros, Head of Technology at CI&T, a Google Cloud Platform Partner of the Year LATAM 2013. In this post, Daniel describes how CI&T in partnership with Coca-Cola built the ‘Happiness Flag’ for the Coca-Cola 2014 FIFA World Cup™ campaign in Brazil. To learn more about the Happiness flag visit this website.

As part of the ‘The World’s Cup’ campaign, Coca-Cola wanted to do something that would visually illustrate soccer’s global reach. Coca-Cola invited fans around the world to share their photos to create the Happiness Flag -- the world’s largest mosaic flag crafted from thousands of crowdsourced images submitted by people in more than 200 countries. The flag, 3,015 square meters in size, was unveiled during the opening ceremony of the 2014 FIFA World Cup™.

A project of this scale calls for high performing and reliable technology, so when we started working with Coca-Cola to build the infrastructure for the Happiness Flag campaign, we knew we had to use Google Cloud Platform. By using Google Cloud Platform, we turned a big, innovative idea into reality on a global scale.

To create the Happiness Flag, we leveraged the whole Google Cloud Platform stack as shown below:

Google App Engine enabled us to handle the computing workload, capable of handling millions of images via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and email, to the searches for images and view requests. The architecture was scalable to meet this kind of transaction demand and the fluctuations in traffic. We stored all the images in Google Cloud Storage, where integrated edge caching support and image services made it an ideal choice for serving the images. Meanwhile, Google Compute Engine gave us the capability for long-running processes, such as the Twitter integration and advanced image transformations. We were able to show how powerful the creation of hybrid environments can be, using both Platform-as-a-Service (Google App Engine) and raw virtual machines (Google Compute Engine) in the cloud.

We used other out-of-the-box Google Cloud Platform technologies like Memcache, Datastore and Task Queues to ensure outstanding levels of performance and scalability. We know that many fans will be viewing the Happiness Flag on their mobile devices, so we needed a platform that would offer different capacities of computational power. The system provides amazing user experience with high performance and low latency, regardless of the device and its location. Using Google Cloud Platform, the campaign runs smoothly 24/7 and includes redundancy, failover techniques, backups and state-of-the-art monitoring. Plus, it’s affordable.

After the physical flag was unveiled before the opening match, the digital mosaic was made available with a Google map-like zoom in and out with eleven levels of detail. Anyone who submitted an image can now search for themselves on the virtual flag and the search results will show up as pins in the mosaic, like locations found in a Google map. By clicking on the pin, their photos open up in an overlay and they are taken to the maximum level of zoom in to see the "neighborhood" around their image in the flag. After the match, a link to the Happiness Flag site was sent to each participant as a souvenir.

Our goal was to help Coca-Cola create a project that would celebrate the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ by enabling fans from all over the world to express their creativity in a show of unity and art. What better way to open the games than by displaying the Happiness Flag, which is a symbol of the spirit of the game and its fans.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-app-engine/cit-uses-google-cloud-platform-to-power-the-coca-cola-happiness-flag-unveiled-on-the-pitch-at-the-opening-match-of-the-2014-fifa-world-cup/feed/ 0 Hayneedle takes the pain out of buying furniture online with the Google Search Appliance https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/hayneedle-takes-the-pain-out-of-buying-furniture-online-with-the-google-search-appliance/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/hayneedle-takes-the-pain-out-of-buying-furniture-online-with-the-google-search-appliance/#comments Thu, 12 Jun 2014 18:02:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=ed2824a5121288846076a4ae63e0cdba Posted by David Markle, Director of Retail Experience, Hayneedle

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is David Markle, Director of Retail Experience for Hayneedle, an online retailer of home furnishings. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

Hayneedle.com offers millions of home products, requiring a robust shopping experience to help customers discover exactly what they're looking for. The name "hayneedle" contains the seed of a promise – a perfect find for each customer's unique needs and tastes. To that end, Hayneedle has embarked on a process of continuous improvement of our site's discovery tools, including the addition of a much better search solution, powered by Google Search Appliance.

Our previous search solutions couldn't handle the large amount of content indexing and diversity of search queries that hayneedle.com customers entered. Performance lagged, and the search results weren't highly relevant. Our customers demanded better, and we set out to fix the situation.

We considered every possible search provider in the market, grading them on a list of more than 100 features with a focus on performance and search relevancy. We evaluated each for its potential to provide us a scalable solution that could grow with our business. Google Search Appliance emerged as the leader in the areas that mattered most to our customers and clearly offered the best return on investment.

Since we began using Google Search, hayneedle.com has seen revenue per search increase by more than 20%. In addition, the conversion rate for shoppers who use search has increased by 12%, and the average order value for shoppers who use search has gone up 5%. Google is the perfect partner as we seek to continually improve our retail search solution and help our customers find the perfect products for their home.]]> Posted by David Markle, Director of Retail Experience, Hayneedle

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is David Markle, Director of Retail Experience for Hayneedle, an online retailer of home furnishings. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

Hayneedle.com offers millions of home products, requiring a robust shopping experience to help customers discover exactly what they're looking for. The name "hayneedle" contains the seed of a promise – a perfect find for each customer's unique needs and tastes. To that end, Hayneedle has embarked on a process of continuous improvement of our site's discovery tools, including the addition of a much better search solution, powered by Google Search Appliance.

Our previous search solutions couldn't handle the large amount of content indexing and diversity of search queries that hayneedle.com customers entered. Performance lagged, and the search results weren't highly relevant. Our customers demanded better, and we set out to fix the situation.

We considered every possible search provider in the market, grading them on a list of more than 100 features with a focus on performance and search relevancy. We evaluated each for its potential to provide us a scalable solution that could grow with our business. Google Search Appliance emerged as the leader in the areas that mattered most to our customers and clearly offered the best return on investment.

Since we began using Google Search, hayneedle.com has seen revenue per search increase by more than 20%. In addition, the conversion rate for shoppers who use search has increased by 12%, and the average order value for shoppers who use search has gone up 5%. Google is the perfect partner as we seek to continually improve our retail search solution and help our customers find the perfect products for their home.]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/hayneedle-takes-the-pain-out-of-buying-furniture-online-with-the-google-search-appliance/feed/ 0 Introducing organizational unit search restrictions for Google Apps Vault https://googledata.org/google-apps/introducing-organizational-unit-search-restrictions-for-google-apps-vault/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/introducing-organizational-unit-search-restrictions-for-google-apps-vault/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2014 15:59:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=53b015dc1965dcf868532102c31bd770 Posted by Deborah Hsieh, Product Manager, Google Apps Vault

Google Apps Vault helps businesses, schools, and governments of all sizes archive, retain and manage business business-critical information. Vault also helps with continuity, compliance, and regulatory purposes. Last January, the introduction of targeted legal holds gave our customers even more control over the emails they retain by restricting holds to searchable criteria.

Now, Vault customers can assign Vault privileges based organization units (OU). This allows customers to limit specific administrators to search and export only specific OUs, addressing privacy and security concerns over allowing administrators to access all licensed Vault users in a domain. Last month, we launched OU-based search, which lets Vault administrators search for data within a specific OU. Vault’s OU-based search and OU-restricted search reduce the number of irrelevant search results that a domain-wide search can produce, and eliminates the need to specify individual accounts. For example, if your OUs are structured by geography, you can restrict your administrator based in London to only search your users in Europe.

To learn more about Vault, please visit our Vault Help Center.

]]> Posted by Deborah Hsieh, Product Manager, Google Apps Vault

Google Apps Vault helps businesses, schools, and governments of all sizes archive, retain and manage business business-critical information. Vault also helps with continuity, compliance, and regulatory purposes. Last January, the introduction of targeted legal holds gave our customers even more control over the emails they retain by restricting holds to searchable criteria.

Now, Vault customers can assign Vault privileges based organization units (OU). This allows customers to limit specific administrators to search and export only specific OUs, addressing privacy and security concerns over allowing administrators to access all licensed Vault users in a domain. Last month, we launched OU-based search, which lets Vault administrators search for data within a specific OU. Vault’s OU-based search and OU-restricted search reduce the number of irrelevant search results that a domain-wide search can produce, and eliminates the need to specify individual accounts. For example, if your OUs are structured by geography, you can restrict your administrator based in London to only search your users in Europe.

To learn more about Vault, please visit our Vault Help Center.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/introducing-organizational-unit-search-restrictions-for-google-apps-vault/feed/ 0 Developers code their way to more efficient government at the GovDev Challenge https://googledata.org/google-apps/developers-code-their-way-to-more-efficient-government-at-the-govdev-challenge/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/developers-code-their-way-to-more-efficient-government-at-the-govdev-challenge/#comments Wed, 11 Jun 2014 13:19:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=81e1ab8b9ae1c2c94face9dac2a706f9 Posted by Scott McIntyre, Director, Google Enterprise Government Team

What can you do with 24 hours? Google teamed with the States of Colorado and Wyoming to ask more than 100 passionate developers at our inaugural GovDev Challenge, a live coding competition in Denver on May 17 and 18. After an all-nighter cranking out ideas, the coders came up with solutions to transform the way state governments work by using technology to bring innovative ideas to life.

Google collaborated with the State of Colorado and State of Wyoming to host the Challenge. We worked closely with the CIO Offices of both Colorado and Wyoming to identify tough problems that were meaningful to the states and able to be addressed during the 24-hour coding challenge. We’d like to give programmers from across the country the unique chance to make a real difference. To support the event, Wyoming CIO Flint Waters sent a school bus packed with programmers and spectators to Denver to attend. “It’s a great example of how to increase public engagement to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government,” said Brandon Williams from the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology.

As they coded their way to better government services, participants got the chance to master tools like Google Cloud Platform, which enables developers to build, test and deploy applications on Google’s reliable infrastructure. They also used other Google solutions such as Google Maps, Google Apps and the Google Search Appliance.

The specific challenges weren’t announced until game day, so participants showed up having no idea what kinds of applications they’d be developing. Colorado requested tools for managing records and tracking donations during natural disasters. “We’re looking to you to make the lives easier of citizens and volunteers who show up at disaster assistance centers,” Williams told the crowd.

Winners included the GovSafe team, who created a website that allows victims from disasters and volunteers to fill out a form online that could spare them the hassle of entering the same information multiple times for various paper documents. Recognizing that the government is not quite ready to go fully paperless, GovSafe incorporated hard copies into their system and used a printer to demonstrate the impact.

For the Wyoming challenge, competitors developed solutions allowing the public to see how taxpayer dollars are being spent. Although that data is publicly available, individuals can’t gather and visualize it without help from government workers. “This should really help us provide better information to our citizens so they know what’s going on,” explained Flint Waters, Wyoming’s CIO.

The CodeRangers team placed first for designing a mobile and desktop tool that displays the geographic distribution of public sector payments to private vendors. The public can easily see the location of vendors on a Google Map and can tell how much payment goes out of the state. They can drill down to the department level and see their spending patterns. They can also run queries by vendor names. “Governmental transparency is vitally important for citizen oversight of how our democratic process works,” said team member Anne Gunn. “The money comes from all of us, and we should know how it is being spent.”

Congratulations to everyone who took part in the GovDev Challenge, from the coders who traveled from far and wide to the officials who helped us with every step of the planning. We hope the event will serve as a blueprint for future partnerships between Google and the government, forged with the shared goal of solving tough problems with private sector talent. Together we help transform government, one innovation at a time.

]]> Posted by Scott McIntyre, Director, Google Enterprise Government Team

What can you do with 24 hours? Google teamed with the States of Colorado and Wyoming to ask more than 100 passionate developers at our inaugural GovDev Challenge, a live coding competition in Denver on May 17 and 18. After an all-nighter cranking out ideas, the coders came up with solutions to transform the way state governments work by using technology to bring innovative ideas to life.

Google collaborated with the State of Colorado and State of Wyoming to host the Challenge. We worked closely with the CIO Offices of both Colorado and Wyoming to identify tough problems that were meaningful to the states and able to be addressed during the 24-hour coding challenge. We’d like to give programmers from across the country the unique chance to make a real difference. To support the event, Wyoming CIO Flint Waters sent a school bus packed with programmers and spectators to Denver to attend. “It’s a great example of how to increase public engagement to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of government,” said Brandon Williams from the Colorado Governor’s Office of Information Technology.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-apps/developers-code-their-way-to-more-efficient-government-at-the-govdev-challenge/feed/ 0 Chesterfield County Schools (VA) goes Google with 32,000 Chromebooks https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chesterfield-county-schools-va-goes-google-with-32000-chromebooks/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chesterfield-county-schools-va-goes-google-with-32000-chromebooks/#comments Fri, 06 Jun 2014 11:10:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=63abe584918ddcb1ecf874515f945877 Posted by Jason Katcher, Head of North America Large Customer Education Sales

Editor's note: If you are thinking about going Google with Chromebooks, complete the interest form on our website and a member of our team will be in touch.

As students in the United States put down their pencils and head out for summer vacation, educators across the country are hard at work planning for the school year ahead. For some, it means putting together the summer reading list or having year-end conferences. For others, it means studying materials for a new syllabus or decorating the classroom. And for Chesterfield County Schools, one of the country’s 100 largest school systems, it means securing the best teaching materials and technology to greet students when they return to school next year -- including 32,000 new Chromebooks.

Chesterfield, which serves students across 62 schools in Virginia, joins a number of other large districts who have chosen Chromebooks for the 2014-15 school year. They join Oakland Unified School District (8,000 devices), Boston Public Schools (10,000 devices), Milwaukee Public Schools (11,400 devices), Edmonton Public Schools (13,000 devices), and Chicago Public Schools (16,000 devices).

Chesterfield is one of many public school districts that believe providing access to technology for every student is possible even when budgets are tight. They chronicled their journey on a website they created, called “Anytime, Anywhere Learning,” so the community could engage in the project and efforts. One of the most important steps the District took was running an in-depth pilot study where teachers, students and administrators tested 6 pilot devices in the classrooms, to determine which were best for their schools.

Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, letting younger students test the new Chromebooks

After testing and assessing the devices, Chesterfield selected Chromebooks for all 32,475 middle and high school students. What’s especially remarkable is that they were able to move to Chromebooks with existing funds — without requesting additional budget, since Chromebooks are nearly half the cost of PC desktops and laptop alternatives. Chesterfield also saved by reducing the amount of classroom peripheral devices such as interactive whiteboards, which they could replace with web-based tools. They selected Dell Chromebooks with local partner TIG, who committed to provide training and support for the journey to ensure students, teachers and administrators could take full advantage of the many benefits of the new technology.

Choosing Chromebooks wasn’t just about selecting a piece of hardware - it was about meeting Chesterfield’s goals at the right price to bring great education to all students. As Chesterfield Superintendent Dr. Marcus Newsome explained, "anytime, anywhere learning is a tenet of our strategic plan made possible by highly trained teachers, and actionable by our students' access to Chromebooks.” And as Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, said, “with Chromebooks, we are now able to provide students with more opportunities to pursue their interests both inside and outside of the classroom." ]]> Posted by Jason Katcher, Head of North America Large Customer Education Sales

Editor's note: If you are thinking about going Google with Chromebooks, complete the interest form on our website and a member of our team will be in touch.

As students in the United States put down their pencils and head out for summer vacation, educators across the country are hard at work planning for the school year ahead. For some, it means putting together the summer reading list or having year-end conferences. For others, it means studying materials for a new syllabus or decorating the classroom. And for Chesterfield County Schools, one of the country’s 100 largest school systems, it means securing the best teaching materials and technology to greet students when they return to school next year -- including 32,000 new Chromebooks.

Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, letting younger students test the new Chromebooks

After testing and assessing the devices, Chesterfield selected Chromebooks for all 32,475 middle and high school students. What’s especially remarkable is that they were able to move to Chromebooks with existing funds — without requesting additional budget, since Chromebooks are nearly half the cost of PC desktops and laptop alternatives. Chesterfield also saved by reducing the amount of classroom peripheral devices such as interactive whiteboards, which they could replace with web-based tools. They selected Dell Chromebooks with local partner TIG, who committed to provide training and support for the journey to ensure students, teachers and administrators could take full advantage of the many benefits of the new technology.

Choosing Chromebooks wasn’t just about selecting a piece of hardware - it was about meeting Chesterfield’s goals at the right price to bring great education to all students. As Chesterfield Superintendent Dr. Marcus Newsome explained, "anytime, anywhere learning is a tenet of our strategic plan made possible by highly trained teachers, and actionable by our students' access to Chromebooks.” And as Adam Seldow, Executive Director of Technology, said, “with Chromebooks, we are now able to provide students with more opportunities to pursue their interests both inside and outside of the classroom." ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/chesterfield-county-schools-va-goes-google-with-32000-chromebooks/feed/ 0 Bringing personalized learning to shared tablets with Google Play for Education https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-personalized-learning-to-shared-tablets-with-google-play-for-education/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-personalized-learning-to-shared-tablets-with-google-play-for-education/#comments Thu, 05 Jun 2014 11:58:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=f2bd08da0c69390c0d838e0e50e11951 Posted by Emily Bernier, Software Engineer, Google Play for Education

While most schools eventually want to get to 1:1, it’s not always practical to start with a dedicated tablet for every student. Asking students to share a single account isn’t advisable either -- too often the result is one-size-fits-all technology with more than a few management headaches.

That’s why we’re adding support for multiple accounts to tablets with Google Play for Education, making it possible for schools to provide personalized learning for up to five students on the same shared device.

With multiple accounts, schools can test out tablets at a meaningful scale before buying hardware for every student. Here’s how it works:

“Bump” tablets together as usual to get them set up -- you now have the option to specify the number of students who’ll be sharing each tablet (up to 5).
Students complete setup by signing into one of the the tablets you’ve configured, then setting a pin code for individual access.
From then on, each student can pick up their assigned tablet, select their account, and enter their pin to get back to all their stuff.

With multiple accounts, schools can test out tablets at a meaningful scale before buying hardware for every student. Here’s how it works:

“Bump” tablets together as usual to get them set up -- you now have the option to specify the number of students who’ll be sharing each tablet (up to 5).
Students complete setup by signing into one of the the tablets you’ve configured, then setting a pin code for individual access.
From then on, each student can pick up their assigned tablet, select their account, and enter their pin to get back to all their stuff.

When each student has their own account it’s easy for them to collaborate on class projects using Docs, Drive, and other Google Apps. And teachers can use Google Play for Education to instantly send students the apps, books, and videos that match their academic needs and speak to their unique interests.

It's easy for your school to scale to 1:1 when you're ready -- just set up any new tablets with the student accounts you’ve already been using. The apps teachers have already assigned to each student will download automatically.

You can read more about multiple accounts in the Google Play for Education Help Center or contact our sales team to learn about a starting trial at your school.

]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/bringing-personalized-learning-to-shared-tablets-with-google-play-for-education/feed/ 0 Major Turkish bank Yapı Kredi makes search the focus with the GSA https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/major-turkish-bank-yapi-kredi-makes-search-the-focus-with-the-gsa/ https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/major-turkish-bank-yapi-kredi-makes-search-the-focus-with-the-gsa/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2014 19:05:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=634cc668d6068cb5c10b7f1745a7a5f7 Posted by Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager for Alternative Distribution Channels, Yapı Kredi

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager in charge of Alternative Distribution Channels at Yapı Kredi, one of the largest retail banks and the largest credit card issuing bank in Turkey. View their case study to learn more and see what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

For me, one of the best things about working at Yapi Kredi is the genuine desire to make the banking experience as simple and enjoyable as possible for our customers. With this in mind, my team and I recently undertook a major re-design project to help improve the customer experience for the three million unique monthly visitors to our website.

And it was a big re-design. We literally got rid of everything on the site apart from a search bar. No confusing menus. No clutter. Visitors to the site can type what they need into the search bar and get directed straight to the answer. It is easy to use and we have had fantastic feedback from our customers. Not only has the number of daily site searches increased by 1000%, but users are spending an extra 30 seconds on average on the site.

Most importantly of all, the shift to the new site has made a genuine business impact. We’ve seen a 134% increase in loan applications since we re-designed the site and I attribute this to how easy it is to navigate around and use the site.

It’s safe to say we couldn’t have done any of this without the GSA. It offered advanced relevancy, ease of use, familiarity and lower TCO. Data security is very important to us and the GSA’s ability to integrate all of the domain’s security features was crucial.

Despite the enormous growth in use of the site, thanks to the GSA the number of admin staff I need to allocate to search remains the same. And because the volume of searches is now so much higher, we can better understand what customers need and are looking for the most. This, combined with web analytics, opens up a high level of insight into our customer’s expectations, frustrations and needs.

This enhanced visibility also enables us to better target our promotion of products to the right people at the right time during their visit, and increase sales. I firmly believe we’ve set a new standard for a simple, effective website experience in the financial sector. ]]> Posted by Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager for Alternative Distribution Channels, Yapı Kredi

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Yakup Dogan, Assistant General Manager in charge of Alternative Distribution Channels at Yapı Kredi, one of the largest retail banks and the largest credit card issuing bank in Turkey. View their case study to learn more and see what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

For me, one of the best things about working at Yapi Kredi is the genuine desire to make the banking experience as simple and enjoyable as possible for our customers. With this in mind, my team and I recently undertook a major re-design project to help improve the customer experience for the three million unique monthly visitors to our website.

And it was a big re-design. We literally got rid of everything on the site apart from a search bar. No confusing menus. No clutter. Visitors to the site can type what they need into the search bar and get directed straight to the answer. It is easy to use and we have had fantastic feedback from our customers. Not only has the number of daily site searches increased by 1000%, but users are spending an extra 30 seconds on average on the site.

Most importantly of all, the shift to the new site has made a genuine business impact. We’ve seen a 134% increase in loan applications since we re-designed the site and I attribute this to how easy it is to navigate around and use the site.

It’s safe to say we couldn’t have done any of this without the GSA. It offered advanced relevancy, ease of use, familiarity and lower TCO. Data security is very important to us and the GSA’s ability to integrate all of the domain’s security features was crucial.

Despite the enormous growth in use of the site, thanks to the GSA the number of admin staff I need to allocate to search remains the same. And because the volume of searches is now so much higher, we can better understand what customers need and are looking for the most. This, combined with web analytics, opens up a high level of insight into our customer’s expectations, frustrations and needs.

This enhanced visibility also enables us to better target our promotion of products to the right people at the right time during their visit, and increase sales. I firmly believe we’ve set a new standard for a simple, effective website experience in the financial sector. ]]> https://googledata.org/google-enterprise/major-turkish-bank-yapi-kredi-makes-search-the-focus-with-the-gsa/feed/ 0 New visibility and insights with Admin Reports https://googledata.org/google-apps/new-visibility-and-insights-with-admin-reports/ https://googledata.org/google-apps/new-visibility-and-insights-with-admin-reports/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2014 17:12:00 +0000 https://googledata.org/?guid=0793a176c8eb6333408f1a26a1f58be2 Posted by Rishi Dhand, Product Manager, Google Apps

Google Apps helps millions of businesses, schools and governments get work done with easy to use apps that are built for the cloud. Working in the cloud not only makes it easier to get things done, but also allows new insights into how your organization is using Google Apps. Starting today, we’re introducing a new Reports section to the Admin console to make it easier for admins to manage Google Apps and also gain insights that help their entire organization run more efficiently.

See a snapshot of all activity
The Highlights page, located in the new Reports section, gives you a quick overview of all the activity across your domain. You can see how many Hangouts, Docs, Sheets and Slides your organization created, who is close to reaching their Drive and Gmail storage quota and how many files have been shared outside the company. You can also export any report to Google Sheets to slice and dice your data for further analysis.

Drill down to user level Reports
The Apps Usage Activity page shows data on how individual users are working with Gmail, Drive, storage and other apps. Choose what information you want to see and move the columns around to customize your view.

Filters
Use filters to quickly find who owns a specific file, people with a high number of uploads and shares, and granular data such as all the people who have between 1000 and 2000 documents.

Security
The Security page is another customizable user report that provides security related information like 2-step verification enrollment, how many files are shared externally, the number of external apps that are installed and other important information like account status and Gmail IMAP usage. Like the Apps Usage Activity report, Admins can customize column names and apply sorting and filters on the columns.

Login Audit
Monitor any security concerns by reviewing the specific IP addresses and dates of all logins and any failed or suspicious logins on the Login Audit page. Admins can use this report to track suspicious activity and take corrective action like resetting passwords.

To use the new Reports page, go to your Admin console and click on the Reports icon or the View Reports link on the right side panel. Mobile data will be added soon, in the meantime you can revert to the old Reports if needed. We have many additions planned for the future so stay tuned.

]]> Posted by Rishi Dhand, Product Manager, Google Apps

Google Apps helps millions of businesses, schools and governments get work done with easy to use apps that are built for the cloud. Working in the cloud not only makes it easier to get things done, but also allows new insights into how your organization is using Google Apps. Starting today, we’re introducing a new Reports section to the Admin console to make it easier for admins to manage Google Apps and also gain insights that help their entire organization run more efficiently.

See a snapshot of all activity
The Highlights page, located in the new Reports section, gives you a quick overview of all the activity across your domain. You can see how many Hangouts, Docs, Sheets and Slides your organization created, who is close to reaching their Drive and Gmail storage quota and how many files have been shared outside the company. You can also export any report to Google Sheets to slice and dice your data for further analysis.

Filters
Use filters to quickly find who owns a specific file, people with a high number of uploads and shares, and granular data such as all the people who have between 1000 and 2000 documents.