Google Data

Posted by Stephen Cho, Head of Google Apps and Hangouts Technology Partnerships

Today, technology allows us to work across devices, at all hours, around the world. But, sometimes working face-to-face is most effective.

That’s why we recently launched a Hangout start button that can be embedded in any app or website. Whether you’re a sales rep working in a CRM app or an engineer in a project management tool, it only takes one click to launch a Hangout and your team will automatically be invited. You can even improve customer service with the ability to quickly launch into a video Hangout with a client to resolve an issue.

With this new Hangouts button, apps everywhere will let colleagues, partners, and customers meet face-to-face anytime, anywhere, and work more effectively together with just one click. A number of our early partners have already enriched their applications with Hangouts:

• Collaboration and Project Management: Team members collaborating on a project are now able to easily start a video Hangout from Smartsheet. Developers on a project team can enjoy the same experience with Insightly.
• Shared Documents: Lucidchart enables team members working on a complex diagram to view and video chat while collaborating on the diagram
• Sales and Marketing: Sales reps working in Salesforce.com can automatically kick off a Hangout with their account team through Esna; in myERP, a sales rep can start a video meeting with any customer prospect
• Customer Support: Zendesk helps support agents start a Hangout to consult with other agents and internal staff, while Freshdesk lets a customer service agent Hangout with a customer to quickly resolve support issues
• Social: Zoho Connect’s social app facilitates both 1:1 and group Hangouts initiated by anyone in a given group
• Human Resources: With Zoho Recruit, an interviewer can automatically kick off a Hangout with a candidate

And this is only the beginning. We invite developers to get started here to make it easier for users to work face-to-face.

Posted by Vishal Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer, NoMoreRack

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Vishal Agarwal, Chief Marketing Officer of NoMoreRack, an online retailer of discounted brand-name apparel and household products based in New York City. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

When we launched NoMoreRack in 2010 we started out with eight products a day on our website. Today, we have 15,000 apparel, home, and electronics products at any given time. To make our fast-growing inventory easy for customers to find, we’ve chosen Google Search Appliance (GSA).

As we evolve NoMoreRack, we’re working hard to turn the flash-sale shopping model on its head. We’re not about buying a small number of discount products from closeout companies, and then getting rid of them quickly. We buy thousands of units of in-demand day to day quality goods directly from the same manufacturers and suppliers who sell to top retailers, so we can keep products in stock for days instead of hours. We also want to provide a better online shopping experience than what people usually expect from a discount retailer – which is where the GSA plays the perfect role.

Our previous site search was custom built by our in-house team. It was based on tagging, and although it served the purpose, it did not have advanced features like suggest as you type, relevance or linguistics strategy. This meant sometimes customers couldn’t find the exact product they wanted.

GSA gives all of the tools we missed from our homegrown search – both internally and for customers. GSA will index every word from product descriptions, so if customers use some of that language in a search – like “floral floor-length sun dress” – they are far more likely to see these products in search results. We expect the search results to be more relevant, since GSA will adapt to how our customers search, and will serve up better results over time. Our customers will get to use refinements for things like color, size, and price to narrow down results faster and more accurately.

With tools like Searchandiser, a third party tool powered by the GSA, we’ll create special webpages around popular products or brands that customers search for, and display these eye-catching pages once they’ve conducted a search or refined by a category.

We’ve got the right merchandise at the right prices that our customers are asking for – and with the GSA, we can show them the right product at the right time.

Posted by Richard Huré, CIO, Fred & Farid Group

Editor’s note: Our guest blogger is Richard Huré, CIO of digital creative group Fred & Farid Group. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Fred & Farid Group is the first French independent Digital Creative Group based in Paris and Shanghai. Founded in 2006 by Frederic Raillard and Farid Mokart, we create digital integrated ad campaigns for global brands such as Audi, Porsche, Diesel, Société Générale, Garnier, and Mondelez. We’ve grown extremely fast and now have more than 350 employees in our Paris and Shanghai offices and have won 129 digital distinctions since 2011.

Though Fred & Farid is known for its tech-savvy campaigns spanning web, mobile, social, video and music, until recently, we used old-school business applications like Lotus Notes and Microsoft Office. When I joined in 2011, I wanted to move our company to the cloud to improve efficiency and increase collaboration between our creative, technology, and business teams in France and China. I chose to roll out Chromebooks because Chrome OS is the perfect operating system for the cloud — it’s easy to manage and maintain, makes collaboration a snap, and offers integrated security and control.

Macs are a popular choice among the creative team. But I soon realized not everyone needs a Mac, especially the 60 percent of our employees who work in office roles like marketing, sales, IT, and administration. We recently rolled out 10 Samsung Chromebooks in a small pilot and plan to have 200 employees on Chromebooks by the end of the year. Our decision to adopt Chromebooks wasn’t based solely on price — though we expect to save a significant amount compared to deploying Macs — but also a desire to have faster collaboration. When you have a Chromebook, you think less about downloading stuff to your hard drive and more about sharing information in the cloud. With Google Drive, we’re able to store, sync and share all our important files easily, whether it’s when we’re on our Chromebooks or on our phones and tablets on the go.

We use Google Hangouts for all our voice communications — we don’t even have phone lines in our offices anymore. In the Paris office alone, we conduct more than 50 Hangouts each day. Of course, we also use Drive for document sharing and Calendar for scheduling.

From an IT management perspective, Chromebooks are a dream. Using the management console, we can push apps onto employees’ devices, including some in-house collaboration apps we’ve created like the Fred & Farid Bridge, a social network where employees share photos, videos, music, and other creative ideas. In the future, when we have 200 Chromebooks, we’ll explore new ways to use the Management Console, including for security and analytics.

Chrome OS is like a blank canvas, and we can’t wait to come up with new ways to use it. I’m thinking about installing scannable tabs on meeting room doors, and when employees enter they can check in with their smartphones so the rooms show up as ‘booked’ in Google Calendar. Creativity thrives when people can freely communicate, collaborate, and share ideas. Chromebooks will help us unify employees across time zones into one collaborative team — even as the company grows at an unstoppable pace.

Posted by Dale Edman, Vice President of E-Commerce and Online Marketing, The Wasserstrom Company

Revised Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Dale Edman, Vice President of E-Commerce and Online Marketing for The Wasserstrom Company, a supplier and distributor of restaurant and food service supplies based in Columbus, Ohio. Due to a misprint, the Search speed improved for businesses and consumers, with results delivered in 300 milliseconds not .003 seconds. See what other organizations that use Google Search Appliance have to say.

When our customers in the restaurant and foodservice industries visit our website, they don’t have time for leisurely browsing – they know what they need and they want to find it fast. The same goes for consumers who don’t want to waste time hunting for that perfect cast-iron skillet or chef’s knife from among our 100,000 products. Search results on our website used to take as long as 10 seconds to show up, which was frustrating for shoppers and would drive them away. We needed to bring speed to our search, as well as more user-friendly ways to promote our products in our search tools without calling in IT help. We knew we had to go Google. It made sense to choose the people who know search the best.

One of the things slowing searches down was the way our IBM search product managed our customized catalogues, which is how our business customers shop for their own hand-picked products. Even if a catalogue contained only a couple of hundred products, every search request looked for matches within the entire product database – an unnecessary process that created delays.

For both the business and consumer sides of the business, we chose the Google Search Appliance (GSA), an improved search product targeted at online retailers like us. We also used the Searchandiser, a third party tool powered by the GSA, that gave us more control over how we promote products in search pages – for example, we can add synonyms and refinements that help customers search more accurately.

Search speed improved for businesses and consumers, with results delivered in 300 milliseconds instead of 10 seconds. The GSA searches only the products within a business customer’s catalogue, which means results turn around faster. In the near future, we’ll use GSA to add even more custom touches to business customers’ catalogues – like detailed descriptions of products, and special search landing pages built around brands or product types. With the GSA, our customers find what they need faster, which means less time spent searching and more time for making their kitchens run smoothly.

Posted by Director Chen Shou-Chiang, Information Management Office of Directorate General of Highways (DGH)

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Director Chen Shou-Chiang, who leads the Information Management Office of DGH. Read their full story here, learn about the six ways Maps are Going Google and see what other organisations that have gone Google have to say.

Taiwan is prone to natural disasters. Earthquakes, typhoons, landslides and heavy rainfall are very common, especially during the monsoon season. As the authority in charge of Taiwan’s land transport infrastructure, the Directorate General of Highways needs to ensure the safety of road users across 7,000km of highways, 4,000 bridges and 200 tunnels.

We used to rely on civilian drivers or news media for updates on road conditions. This did not allow us to respond fast enough to emergencies. We want to be able to predict crisis situations so that we can alert motorists and the general public. We also want to know when we need to dispatch rescue teams immediately.

We were already using the free version of Google Earth for our existing web-based platform known as thb-GIS (Geographic Information System). The platform consolidated important weather and environment information across 19 government agencies and private companies. The agencies accessed the platform for safety management and disaster prevention.

However, these databases could not provide us with intelligence that we could use directly. It took time to join the data before we could use it. We wanted a solution that could overlay images, terrain and vector data over the map of Taiwan to quickly identify areas that are likely to be affected by a weather crisis.

We ran comprehensive tests to trial Google Earth Enterprise and were confident that it met our requirement for stability, performance, security and user-friendliness. Google Earth Enterprise allows us to define access rights for different groups of users. This is an important requirement if we want to share the intelligence with other agencies and the public. Our next step was to develop SafeTaiwan, a platform that overlays crucial data used in emergency response to a map of Taiwan. This gives us a rich visual dashboard that immediately provides insights for better decision-making and risk management.

With Google Earth Enterprise powering SafeTaiwan, we are now able to monitor real-time conditions on the ground. To further complement available data, we installed 2,800 CCTVs across the country, streaming live images that help us to accurately assess and prioritise our responses during emergencies. The solution improved emergency response time tremendously. Previously, it took us hours to determine the magnitude of any disaster. Today, it only takes us minutes. More importantly, it allows us to analyse historical data to help in predictive disaster management. For example, rainfall readings collected at ten-minute intervals are displayed on Google Earth Enterprise’s dashboard to forecast an approaching typhoon or flash flood. Warning signals are then sent out through SafeTaiwan to alert the public and agencies concerned.

The positive feedback we received from our employees and the public has spurred us on to continue developing the platform for greater use. We have a vision to expand the boundaries of SafeTaiwan to share data from around the region. Eventually, we want to promote greater cooperation in disaster preparedness and recovery efforts across borders. We are confident that with Google Earth Enterprise we will be up for this challenge.

Posted by Uzi Bashan, Fire Officer with Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission

Editor’s note: Today, guest blogger Uzi Bashan, Fire Officer with Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission, tells us how his organization relies on Google Maps for Business to quickly identify and put out tens of thousands of fires per year. Discover why forward-thinking organizations are investing in tools to help them prepare for situations in advance, including mapping technology. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Israel’s Fire and Rescue Commission runs the nationwide emergency fire response system, dispatching a team of 1,850 firefighters to blazes large and small within minutes of fires starting. We operate 24 call centers that field 87,000 emergency calls per year, 44,000 of which are fire-related.

Responding to fires is a complex process. Call center operators quickly obtain details, alert the closest firefighters and report the incident to the national control center. Then, operators at the control center calculate the fastest route for the firefighting team, often guiding them through dangerous terrain. We used to rely on a GIS application, which was integrated into a larger nationwide network for managing and monitoring all fire incidents.The GIS application was plagued with slow response times, causing delays getting firefighters to fires: firefighters must reach fires within seven minutes, on average, before risks to life and property dramatically increase. Our old system took too long to calculate routes to fires, costing us precious minutes.

After the devastating Mt. Carmel fire in December 2010, which killed 44 people, injured dozens, and wiped out nearly 40,000 acres of forest, senior officers at the Fire and Rescue Commission realized we needed a more advanced fire alert system. This prompted our decision to deploy mapping technology from Google.

Now, using Google Earth Enterprise as our main GIS mapping platform, each call center operator has two screens – one displaying information from the national system, and the other displaying maps with Google Earth. Google Earth maps, with customized data layers, are automatically updated in real-time to show exactly where fires are and which firefighters are the closest to them. What used to take minutes now takes seconds.

Google Maps have a resolution at least four times higher than the old GIS system, so dispatchers can clearly visualize the area around a fire. Using custom information layers developed by the Fire and Rescue Commission’s IT team, dispatchers can get access to deeper information, such as building height and depth and type of terrain, within a few clicks. They can also visually locate the nearest water sources, including hydrants, reservoirs and private pools and ground-level details, helping dispatchers determine if a street is too narrow for a fire truck to pass. The information helps us make split-second decisions around which firefighter teams to send and how to get them there quickly.

Call center operators and firefighters alike are simply stunned at how Google mapping technologies have helped them do their jobs. With 99.9% up time, an easy-to-use interface, and automatic, real-time incident updates, Google Earth Enterprise provides the reliable tools we need to respond to fires quickly and safely. Now, our emergency responder can reach fires in seconds instead of minutes. And in a profession where every one of those second matters, gaining that time back helps us save lives and property across Israel.

Posted by Eduardo Gomide, CEO of Foreducation

Editor’s note: Today’s guest blogger is Eduardo Gomide, CEO of Foreducation, an organization created to deploy and manage the use of Google technology in the classroom. Eduardo is also the grandson of the founders of Colégio Mater Dei, a leading private school in São Paulo, Brazil. Today, Colégio Mater Dei is part of Weducation, a K-12 educational group comprised of seven campuses, 550 employees, and 3,000 students.

Since 1962, Colégio Mater Dei has been a family-run school that prides itself on its adoption of innovative technology. As part of our move to incorporate technology into the academic environment — inside and outside the classroom walls — we started using Google Apps for Education in 2013 after noticing that teachers and administrators were using Gmail and Google Drive on their own. We’re already seeing great results; since introducing Google Apps to math and science classes, teachers report that our students are earning better grades on assignments and tests and are more engaged.

Now, we’re taking things even further by creating the first ever physical Google Learning Space, a collaborative learning center where students of all ages come to read, learn, and share using technology in a specially designed environment. The colorful space is equipped with two Chromecasts, which students use to project assignments, presentations and videos from their laptops and tablets; two Smart TVs; a sound system; and a high-performance wireless network. The room is set up to accommodate a variety of learning activities — students can choose from beanbags for independent reading, stools for guided instruction, or mats for interactive group work.

In the Google Learning Space students can use the Google Apps they already enjoy using to home, while they are at school. As Mater Dei high school student Thiago Pinheiro says, “Google tools make my life easier and more versatile because I can work wherever I am without worrying about storage, access or the possibility of losing something.” At the elementary level, all students are using educational apps with Google Play, a portal for Android apps on tablets.

Watching students improve their test scores and grades with Google tools has been incredibly rewarding, but the biggest impact of going Google is the new level of enthusiasm students bring to the classroom. When students are more engaged, they learn better — our kids have proven that to us. Creating a learning environment in which students are truly engaged with technology distinguishes Mater Dei as what we like to think of as a school of the future.

Posted by Clayton Jones, Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Bring your own device (BYOD) is no longer just a trend — it’s how business gets done. With thousands of mobile applications to choose from and an increasing number of websites optimized for mobile, today’s employees can work whenever and wherever they choose. It also means IT organizations now have the dual challenge of both helping employees be more productive and protecting corporate data.

We’re adding new features to Google Apps Mobile Management for Android to help your organization meet these challenges head on:

1. Inactive account wipe: Set policies that will wipe an inactive account from a device if it has not been synced for a predetermined number of days, so a lost device that wasn’t reported or the old device left in a drawer does not cause a security risk.
2. Support for EAP-based WiFi Networks: Configure settings and distribute certificate authority (CA) based certs for EAP networks.
3. Compromised device detection: Set policies that will detect signals for common forms of a compromised device, such as “rooting” or installing a custom “ROM”, and block that device.
4. Additional reporting fields: Access new reporting fields via the API and Admin console to better understand the devices that are in use and troubleshoot issues. Additional fields include: Serial number, IMEI, MEID, WiFi MAC address, baseband version, kernel version, build number, mobile operator/carrier, language settings, and account ownership/management.

To learn more about these mobile device management features visit our Help Center. You can also visit the Google Admin console at admin.google.com to enable this service to help you rest assured that your corporate data stays safe.

Posted by Liz Sproat, Head of Education, EMEA

Around the world, schools are finding innovative ways to use technology to break down the traditional walls of the classroom, while overcoming the challenges of higher academic standards and tighter budgets. Today, we’re pleased to share the stories from two schools in Wales who’ve gone Google to help them meet the demands of a modern-day education system.

Gowerton School in Gowerton Village serves 1,135 students aged 11 to 18. The IT team migrated students and educators from on-premise email to Gmail and Google Apps. Industry experts recognize them as one of the first schools in Britain to embrace cloud technologies.

The school’s entire curriculum – from geography to cooking – is taught with Google Apps. Students can access assignments, lesson plans and other learning resources through Google Drive, while teachers can provide immediate feedback through Google Docs. This has brought about significant teaching and learning benefits including greater collaboration and more tailored feedback.

Additionally, the move to Google allowed the school to re-invest cost savings from using cloud-based technologies. Gowerton saved £30,000 (US$50,000) in licensing and server maintenance, allowing them to buy numerous Chromebooks. Chromebooks are ideal for Gowerton because they’re easy to maintain and can be used by anyone without much training.

“We’re very keen to deploy more Chromebooks. Students love them because they are intuitive to use and give them instant access to Google Apps,” said Darren Long, Teacher of ICT and ICT Coordinator at Gowerton. “They’re also great from an administration point of view. We experimented with laptops for a while but found they were too expensive and high-maintenance. With Chromebooks, we don’t need to worry about maintenance, updates are automatic, and they are good value.”

Students at Gowerton School using Chromebooks

Coleg Cambria in North East Wales has also gone Google. Coleg Cambria is one of the largest colleges in the United Kingdom, serving more than 7,000 full-time and 30,000 part-time students. Previously, students used Microsoft Live@edu accounts — but as the college expanded, the IT team struggled to support all the new accounts from a time and cost perspective. The problem was solved when the IT department moved everyone to Google Apps and installed Chromebooks around campus. Thanks to the remote, web-based management console, Coleg Cambria found Chromebooks easy to deploy to a large, growing body of students. Furthermore, the IT team no longer had to spend time going to each computer to install an update, since Google pushes these automatically.

With Google Apps, students and teachers are more proactive when it comes to learning and teaching. Teachers find apps from the Chrome App Store and incorporate them in lesson plans. Assignments and resources are saved to students’ Google Drive accounts. As a result, students can simply log into their Google accounts to access their own virtual “classroom.”

“The freedom for students and tutors to find and work with interesting applications — anything from anatomy to mind-mapping — has changed the way they think about learning and teaching,” said Mark Brandish, Head of IT Services at Coleg Cambria. “Traditionally students and teachers have just taken what we’ve provided. Now we’re a facilitator, giving them access to tools that allow them to be more innovative.”

Students from Coleg Cambria using Chromebooks outside the classroom

You can read more stories of how passionate educators and talented students are using Google for Education in their learning environments. We’re excited to hear such stories of how technology helps prepare today’s youth for a better future.

Posted by Jay Remley, Director, Google Maps for Business

Editor’s note: During public emergencies, quick response and recovery is critical. That’s why forward-thinking organizations are investing in tools to help them prepare for situations in advance, including mapping technology. Read more about the six ways Maps are Going Google.

Over the thousands of years people have lived in cities, we’ve developed sophisticated infrastructure to keep things humming. Generally, we’ve gotten pretty good at creating safe places where people can work and live. So when it comes to running cities in the year 2014, what could go wrong? Rolling blackouts, spikes in population, and natural disasters drive home one very important point: We can’t control the unexpected. We can, however, plan for it.

Take Pedro Junqueira, CEO and Chief Operating Officer of the Center of Operations (COR) in Rio de Janeiro. As Brazil’s second-largest city gets ready to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, Pedro needs to keep this vibrant city safe and running smoothly. He heads a team of 400 people who constantly monitor the city’s activities — while integrating the efforts of nearly 90,000 employees from 30 agencies, including the Mayor’s Office and the Municipal Guard.

With all of these different teams working together to minimize public risk, it’s crucial that communication be efficient. To gain a complete real-time picture of what’s happening, Pedro and his team are implementing maps to visualize information from various organizations and present it on a screen in the command center.

Like Pedro, government and business leaders are tapping into the richness that real-time location data can bring to operations. From the Red Cross to Florida Power and Light Company, a growing number of organizations are using maps as part of a solution to:

• Spot potential crises, alert citizens to possible danger, and keep emergencies from becoming disasters.
• Provide the public with up-to-date, critical information, such as evacuation plans, road closures, and shelter locations.
• Coordinate rescue and relief efforts by seeing up-to-date status of teams, volunteers and citizens.
• Verify employee whereabouts in affected areas and more efficiently communicate with remote workers. 

Preparedness starts with having a game plan everyone understands and can implement quickly. Today, corporations, small businesses, and municipal governments have access to practical map solutions that can ease their day-to-day operations and help them run better. We can’t control the weather or prevent every single crisis, but we can take measures to plan for the unexpected.

To learn how maps can help your organization prepare, recover and respond, sign up for our exclusive “Maps are going Google” series or read Chapter 2 now.

Posted by Martin King, Head of IT Services at Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College (EHWLC)

Editor’s note: Today’s post comes from Martin King, Head of IT Services at Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College (EHWLC). EHWLC is one of the largest further education colleges in the United Kingdom, with over 21,000 students and 1,000 employees across four campuses in London.

Ealing, Hammersmith & West London College (EHWLC) is one of the largest further education colleges in the United Kingdom. Like “continuing education” programmes in the U.S., further education colleges focus on teaching post-secondary school students the skills they need to succeed in today’s competitive workforce. As a result, a lot of education takes place outside the classroom. For example, we might help students find mentors from the BBC or Michelin-starred restaurants, or show them how to produce their own music album under the College’s own record label.

Going Google perfectly supported our approach by providing anytime, anywhere access to a productivity suite that encourages collaboration. In 2008, we rolled out Google Apps for Education to students, teachers and support staff. We give every student a Google Apps account for life, so in total, the IT team manages about 75,000 accounts.

We began by using Google Apps in simple ways, such as collaborating on group projects in Drive or sharing assignments and feedback in real-time, even if the student isn’t in class. With our Apps account we can also use other Google products, like Google+ and Hangouts. Teachers use Hangouts to connect students to outside mentors. In one of our technology classrooms, we held a Hangout with someone at Google. That was a popular session.

Google+ has added a new social element, when it comes to learning. With nothing more than a smartphone, teachers and students across all campuses can instantly share photos of college projects, post thought provoking articles and announce college events. The teachers and students have many G+ communities where they exchange ideas and encourage each other.

From an IT perspective, Google Apps was easy to set up. Every year I can deploy over 20,000 new student accounts with 600 terabytes of storage in less than five minutes. Our environmental cost savings are substantial — in terms of staff email alone, we will be able to save at least £2,000 ($3,365) in energy costs and reduce emissions by 16 tonnes each year, as well as eliminate expensive server disposal costs.

Although we talk a lot about openness, our administrators would not have allowed us to use Google Apps if it didn’t meet the UK’s high standards for data privacy and security. After consultation with UK academic institutions the conclusion was that with Google, we’re actually even more secure. In the past, we had the occasional problem of someone losing a thumb drive with important information, but by storing everything in Google-managed servers, we no longer have to worry about that issue.

It’s been six years since we began going Google and we’re still discovering new and delightful ways to use Google Apps to broaden our students’ learning horizons. This is especially important at a further education college where a lot of education takes place outside the classroom.

Posted by Jeni Britton Bauer, Founder, President and Creative Director, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams

Editor’s note: Did you know 60% of young business owners saw an increase in customer engagement after getting a professional email address? Or that 81% of young business owners said that online file sharing is critical to their businesses? That’s just a snapshot of what we learned from the Young Business Success report and infographic we released to kick off National Small Business Week. To recognize and celebrate the young businesses taking the entrepreneurial leap, we’re revisiting a few customers to hear how they got their businesses off the ground and what they’ve learned along the way. Today, we hear from Jeni Britton Bauer, Founder, President and Creative Director or Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams, who first shared their Gone Google story in 2012.

What was the inspiration for starting Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream?
I was 22 when I knew I wanted to make ice cream. I had spent some time blending perfumes with essential oils, and one day, decided to mix some cayenne essential oil with a cup of chocolate ice cream. It was cold. It tasted like chocolate. After a few seconds it burst into flames in the back of my throat. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and knew I’d found my canvas. So I left Ohio State University, started Scream, and sold the delicious dessert concoctions out of the North Market in Columbus, Ohio.

Scream lasted two years, and while it failed to become a profitable business, it made the foundation for what became Jeni’s just a few years later. I learned a lot in those two years, especially the importance of having a balance between being new and being consistent — I loved making new, unique flavors like goat cheese with fresh cherries each day, while customers sometimes just wanted their go-to salted caramel day after day. So I created a dipping cabinet for our signature blends, and kept another for the experimental concoctions. It worked. And here we are today, with nearly 400 employees and our ice creams being sold in over 1,200 grocery stores.

How has using Google Apps helped you in building and growing your business?
Google Apps makes it possible for businesses like ours to exist at all. When I started Jeni’s, I didn’t have to hire an IT guy to tell me how many servers I would need, which meant we could put that money towards our ice cream flavors instead.

Equally important is how Google Apps helps our business feel like a family. Yes, being profitable is essential (I learned that with Scream), but it’s the people that make us successful, and Hangouts keep us connected as we grow and hire throughout the country. We hold company all-hands meetings, new flavor brainstorm sessions and weekly status check-ins over Hangouts, so our employees in California feel like they know their colleagues in New York, despite the distance and lack of in-person contact.

Also, here’s a fun fact: I wrote two books on Google Docs. We organize recipes and track our changes and tweaks along the way in Docs, so everyone can access a single document and add their updates and comments, and it just made sense for me to do the same for my books.

Any advice for other aspiring or budding entrepreneurs?
Starting with nothing is a hidden blessing, so don’t let a need for scrappiness get in the way of launching your business. Having your boots on the ground from the get-go means learning about every aspect of the business — not just the fun stuff (the ice cream mixing) but the hands-on stuff (serving the goods) and the stuff you thought you’d never imagined yourself doing (financial statements). You learn the ins and outs and the nitty gritty details of running a company, which is an essential skill for any small business owner. And never distance yourself too much from the customer; they’re the ones your livelihood relies on, so make sure you keep an ear on the ground.

Make sure you do something you love. I’ve gone through plenty of tough times, but I didn’t question what I was doing because I knew it was my passion. I took the plunge for something I knew I was meant to do.

Posted by Amit Singh, President of Google Enterprise

Millions of businesses trust Google to keep their data safe—a responsibility we take very seriously. We focus on protecting our customers’ data from all unauthorized access, whether from common phishing, sophisticated hacking, or state-sponsored intrusions. That’s why this spring we implemented new, mandatory HTTPS connections to secure user access to Gmail and protect email messages as they move to Gmail servers.

Our commitment to your security doesn’t stop there, which is why we’ve recently added even more business-friendly features for our Google Apps Business, Government and Education customers:

• Mail routing, delivery controls and SMTP relay service—Control the flow of information to and from your company with policy-based routing to ensure that company messages are filtered, even if they are sent from third-party or other non-Gmail sources.
• Attachment compliance—Protect your business by blocking or rerouting messages based on what is attached to emails, providing controls over what content is sent and received.
• TLS Encryption of message content—Prevent eavesdropping and message spoofing through secure encryption and delivery.

In addition to these increased security measures, as we recently announced, we’ve now turned off ads in Google Apps services. This means administrators no longer have the option or ability to turn on ads in these services. We’ve also permanently removed all ads scanning in Gmail for Google Apps, which means Google does not collect or use data in Google Apps services for advertising purposes.

Customers who have chosen to show AdSense ads on their Google Sites will still be able to display those existing ads on their websites. However, it will no longer be possible to edit or add new AdSense ads to new or existing sites.

All this is part of our commitment to providing the best security to ensure your data is protected, while strengthening the features our Google Apps customers care about the most.

Posted by Adam Wilson, Co-Founder and Chief Software Architect, Orbotix

Editor’s note: Did you know 60% of young business owners saw an increase in customer engagement after getting a professional email address? Or that 81% of young business owners said that online file sharing is critical to their businesses? That’s just a snapshot of what we learned from the Young Business Success report and infographic we released to kick off National Small Business Week. To recognize and celebrate the young businesses taking the entrepreneurial leap, we’re revisiting a few customers to hear how they got their businesses off the ground and what they’ve learned along the way. Today, we hear from Adam Wilson, Co-Founder and Chief Software Architect at Orbotix, who first shared their Gone Google story in 2013.

What was the inspiration for your business? What made you decide you’d stop what you were doing and pursue it?

Our inspiration was simple: change the way people interact with robots. Before we started Orbotix, my co-founder Ian and I shared a frustration with the lack of cost effective computing brainpower in the robotics space, especially with phones. We decided to use smartphones to change the robotics world — with Sphero, a robotic ball that could be controlled with your smartphone. Our idea has broadened to the “connected play” space, but we still aim to change the interaction of the physical with the digital.

Our decision to go full forward happened quickly. We had built a fully functioning prototype that people were genuinely excited about and we were propelled into working on Orbotix officially full-time when we were accepted to Techstars, a seed incubator in Boulder, Colorado.

Was there a pivotal moment when you realized you’d made it? That you’d really turned that business a reality?

Ian and I were both humbled by our first prototype Sphero being shown on Gizmodo — the video got nearly 60,000 views in a single weekend. For us, it seemed we had discovered a form factor that struck a chord with the world. Securing our series A funding was another obvious milestone, but was really just the beginning of a long journey towards success.

How has using Google Apps helped you in building and growing your business?

Let’s face it — setting up email, calendars, a shared “drive” space, simple forms, a QA site and hosting, among other things, would just slow us down from our real goals. Using Google Apps lets our company focus on what we do best, and have someone else focus on keeping our email secure and syncing our calendars across all our devices.

If you had to do it all over again, what would you do differently?

We would’ve launched our education program earlier on in the game. We started pretty late with SPRK — “Schools, Parents, Robots, Kids” — to inspire and teach kids to be tomorrow’s inventors and innovators by teaching them concepts in programming, robotics and math in a fun way, and wish we had thought of it earlier. The Sphero product is a really natural educator of technology, but it took a few years to realize we could build an educational curriculum for students around it.

Any advice for other aspiring or budding entrepreneurs?

After Ian and I secured our Series A funding, we asked our lead investors if there was anything we could do that they would get upset about. We got two pieces of advice that I’d pass along to other aspiring entrepreneurs:

1. Be extremely critical of your own products, dream big, and go HUGE.
2. Don’t get in over your head, be intellectually honest with yourself, co-workers and the board.

Posted by Noah Dorrance, Co-Founder, Banshee Wines

Editor’s note: Did you know 60% of young business owners saw an increase in customer engagement after getting a professional email address? Or that 81% of young business owners said that online file sharing is critical to their businesses? That’s just a snapshot of what we learned from the Young Business Success report and infographic we released to kick off National Small Business Week. To recognize and celebrate the young businesses taking the entrepreneurial leap, we’re revisiting a few customers to hear how they got their businesses off the ground and what they’ve learned along the way. Today, we hear from Noah Dorrance, co-founder of Banshee Wines, who first shared their Gone Google story back in 2012.

What inspired you to start Banshee Wines?

The inspiration for Banshee was a shared love of wine among friends paired with a great opportunity in the market. We started our business in the midst of the late 2000s economic crash, but for us the timing was perfect: things were relatively cheap and possibilities that weren’t there a few years before were suddenly open.

Since we’re all friends, we had an acute sense of trust in one another’s capabilities and a good sense of how all those things fit together. Without each other, none of us would have been able to build what we have built together.

What made you decide you’d actually stop what you were doing and turn your idea into a business?

We started Banshee as a side project while we kept our day jobs. In a sense, we were burning the candle at both ends, which is much easier to do when you’re finding success. The demand just kept growing until we had to drop everything and work on Banshee full-time.

Although it’s not feasible for every entrepreneur, I highly advise getting as far down the road as possible with your startup before leaving a steady paycheck. I’ve done it the other way, and this way was much more fun.

Was there a pivotal moment when you realized you’d made it? That you’d really turned that business a reality?

While there have been lots of small gratifying moments and milestones — like a friend texting photos of Banshee at a Michelin starred restaurant or getting our first order from Denmark — I think what pushes us to grow and build Banshee is feeling like we haven’t actually made it at all. Yes, we’ve created a successful livelihood for ourselves, but we wake up everyday with a little chip on our shoulder, a good dollop of ambition and a small dose of fear. I consider it well aligned with the message of one of my favorite Nike ad campaigns: “There is no finish line.”

How has using Google Apps helped you in building and growing your business?

When we first started, we didn’t have an office or any real infrastructure. We were just three driven guys with the right idea, skills and set of contacts. Google Apps gave our bootstrapped, fledgling business a core set of tools that allowed us to work together more efficiently and organize ourselves with ease. We were able to devote more time to making and selling wine because of Google Apps.

Any advice for other aspiring or budding entrepreneurs?

There may a few examples to disprove this, but I’d suggest figuring out first how and who to sell your product to. If you can do that, everything else is possible.

Second, make sure you’re willing to invest all of yourself in your idea. Think of it like getting married. Be ready to eat, breath, and drink it every day.