Official Google Cloud Blog: September 2009

Cloud adoption and getting voted best mid-market solution at the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Several speakers touched upon using the latest Internet technologies to accelerate business results. Geoffrey Moore presented on the importance of businesses focusing on their core competencies as a way of driving innovation and amplifying their competitive advantage. Andrew McAfee, who teaches at Harvard Business School and coined the phrase "Enterprise 2.0," explained how the collaborative opportunities offered by tools such as wikis and user-rated intranet search results can reinvigorate employee engagement and accelerate innovation.

Finally, we took the pulse of the conference by surveying attendees on their attitude toward Software as a Service (SaaS) or, as it's also known, cloud computing. Our survey reached about 70% of the conference attendees, and it's interesting to note that 46% reported either "actively embracing the cloud" or having "implemented one or two apps." That said, another 40% described themselves as "curious but hesitant," so it was great for us to engage with audiences who still have questions about how Google Apps can work for their business.

Posted by Mike Lee, Google Apps team

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

Last week, I attended the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit West in Los Angeles. I enjoyed the opportunity to hear from industry leaders and thinkers and connect with CIOs and senior IT leaders from a wide variety of companies and industries. The hot topic of the conference? Cloud computing and how it can drive innovation.
Several speakers touched upon using the latest Internet technologies to accelerate business results. Geoffrey Moore presented on the importance of businesses focusing on their core competencies as a way of driving innovation and amplifying their competitive advantage. Andrew McAfee, who teaches at Harvard Business School and coined the phrase "Enterprise 2.0," explained how the collaborative opportunities offered by tools such as wikis and user-rated intranet search results can reinvigorate employee engagement and accelerate innovation.

It was heartening to hear these ideas because this is very much how we do things at Google and what we hear from our leading-edge customers. For example, it's very common practice for our global, cross-functional teams to use Google Sites (an easy way to create and publish web pages) to manage product launches (just recently, JohnsonDiversey talked about how Google Sites powers a global leadership council, an HR talent review process, and many other things).

Finally, in our breakout sessions we showcased how businesses have utilized the wide range of tools that Google offers for business – for example, Hamilton Beach, which has been able to free up IT resources and focus on its core business.
Finally, we took the pulse of the conference by surveying attendees on their attitude toward Software as a Service (SaaS) or, as it's also known, cloud computing. Our survey reached about 70% of the conference attendees, and it's interesting to note that 46% reported either "actively embracing the cloud" or having "implemented one or two apps." That said, another 40% described themselves as "curious but hesitant," so it was great for us to engage with audiences who still have questions about how Google Apps can work for their business.

We were also grateful that conference participants voted us "Best Midmarket Solution – Services" the second time in a row. Thanks, MES, for another great event! We hope to see everyone in the spring.
Posted by Mike Lee, Google Apps team
Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Clarkstown Central School District designs collaborative curriculum with Google Apps

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

As in most districts, the Clarkstown Central School District curriculum is a living document. We tweak our maps each year, based on student and teacher experience, but communicating these changes to our 800 teachers has always been a logistical nightmare. Even though we have a web based mapping system, our faculty often worked from old copies printed in binders. For most teachers this was the easiest way to work and there wasn't a compelling value add from the old mapping system to change their practice. Google Apps has added this incentive by helping us create a space that is collaborative, purposeful, and always current. The result is a change that has connected our teachers to the map and each other.

Clarkstown Central School District is a central district pulling students from several communities located 20 miles north of New York City. We have 14 schools, ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade, employ roughly 1700 people, and educate nearly 10,000 students. The district has made a recent commitment to prepare our students for the technology rich future they will inherit. We decided that Google Apps would be a key tool to leverage this goal. We wanted to extend past the tech savvy and tech willing teachers, to the users who would not be your typical technology teachers. We needed buy-in from teachers and administrators to make sure a roll out of this scale would be successful.

With this in mind, we decided to use something of real value to our community - in our case, a curriculum resource portal that was created with Google – as the first step in transitioning toward a new technology platform.

We introduced Google Calendar first because it was easiest for the majority of users to understand. The big desk planners teachers are familiar with do not facilitate collaboration with colleagues and can only be used when you're literally standing in front of them. Google Calendar solved these common teacher problems.

We also created centrally controlled calendars that teachers could add to their own, making life easier. Then, we created curriculum scope and sequence calendars. This let, say, a 5th grade teacher turn on the curriculum calendars and plan lessons for the month based on where they should be in the curriculum. Clicking on a curriculum event provides and overview of the content and a link to the resource site page for that unit.

Each curriculum area for each grade level has a resource site organized by unit. The unit pages are linked to the appropriate calendar events in Google Calendar. These pages display the curriculum which is fed directly from the mapping software. The pages also organize links, documents, and other resources. Some documents are shared across multiple grades and units from Docs. When the original is changed, each linked unit updates automatically. Other sites are created to support professional development in the district.

Most importantly, teachers are now creating unit plans and other resources collaboratively using Apps; these contributions are also shared in the resource sites.

So far, the project has been a resounding success. We started with the elementary curriculum and will be expanding the project to the secondary grades this year. The initiative has "won over" our administrators and teachers. Our faculty is more connected to the curriculum than they have ever been. The work we have done has inspired many of our teachers to bring Google Apps into their teaching. In response to this enthusiasm, we are introducing our Student Apps portal this Fall.

If you'd like to hear more about how K-12 school districts like Clarkstown Central are using Google Apps to save IT resources and encourage district-wide collaboration, please join us at this upcoming webinar:

Google Apps Education Edition at Maine Township High School District
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Have questions for the Maine Township and Google Apps teams? Submit them here.

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome John Calvert, Technology Learning Facilitator and Google Certified Teacher from Clarkstown Central School District, as our guest blogger today. Calvert's post describes how his district has created a collaborative curriculum portal for teachers using Google Apps Education Edition. You can also read or download a case study about Clarkstown Central School District's full Google Apps deployment.
As in most districts, the Clarkstown Central School District curriculum is a living document. We tweak our maps each year, based on student and teacher experience, but communicating these changes to our 800 teachers has always been a logistical nightmare. Even though we have a web based mapping system, our faculty often worked from old copies printed in binders. For most teachers this was the easiest way to work and there wasn't a compelling value add from the old mapping system to change their practice. Google Apps has added this incentive by helping us create a space that is collaborative, purposeful, and always current. The result is a change that has connected our teachers to the map and each other.

Clarkstown Central School District is a central district pulling students from several communities located 20 miles north of New York City. We have 14 schools, ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade, employ roughly 1700 people, and educate nearly 10,000 students. The district has made a recent commitment to prepare our students for the technology rich future they will inherit. We decided that Google Apps would be a key tool to leverage this goal. We wanted to extend past the tech savvy and tech willing teachers, to the users who would not be your typical technology teachers. We needed buy-in from teachers and administrators to make sure a roll out of this scale would be successful.

With this in mind, we decided to use something of real value to our community - in our case, a curriculum resource portal that was created with Google – as the first step in transitioning toward a new technology platform.

We introduced Google Calendar first because it was easiest for the majority of users to understand. The big desk planners teachers are familiar with do not facilitate collaboration with colleagues and can only be used when you're literally standing in front of them. Google Calendar solved these common teacher problems.

We also created centrally controlled calendars that teachers could add to their own, making life easier. Then, we created curriculum scope and sequence calendars. This let, say, a 5th grade teacher turn on the curriculum calendars and plan lessons for the month based on where they should be in the curriculum. Clicking on a curriculum event provides and overview of the content and a link to the resource site page for that unit.

Each curriculum area for each grade level has a resource site organized by unit. The unit pages are linked to the appropriate calendar events in Google Calendar. These pages display the curriculum which is fed directly from the mapping software. The pages also organize links, documents, and other resources. Some documents are shared across multiple grades and units from Docs. When the original is changed, each linked unit updates automatically. Other sites are created to support professional development in the district.

Most importantly, teachers are now creating unit plans and other resources collaboratively using Apps; these contributions are also shared in the resource sites.

So far, the project has been a resounding success. We started with the elementary curriculum and will be expanding the project to the secondary grades this year. The initiative has "won over" our administrators and teachers. Our faculty is more connected to the curriculum than they have ever been. The work we have done has inspired many of our teachers to bring Google Apps into their teaching. In response to this enthusiasm, we are introducing our Student Apps portal this Fall.

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

Add page breaks and "go to page" in forms

Monday, September 28, 2009

We've also added another highly requested feature, logic branching. Once you've created a form with multiple pages, you can select "Go to page based on answer" to control the flow of your form based on the user's answers. For example, you can create a form asking for feedback on your product's new features.

To see both of these new features in action, fill out this feedback form.

Pagination and logic branching open up a whole new realm of possibilities. For example, you can create a product survey that asks a different set of questions based on whether someone has used the product before, a conference feedback form that branches based on the session someone attended, or a lead capture form that branches based on the customer's location. We hope you like these new Google form features.

Posted by Dan Ferrara and Jackie Tsay, Bold Practicum Interns, Google Apps team

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

Have you ever wanted to create a form that changes which questions to show next based on an answer received earlier in the form? The two features we launched today make that easy.

First, we've added one of the most requested features for forms: page breaks. Now it is easy to create a form with multiple pages by going to "Add item" and selecting "Page break."

Posted by Dan Ferrara and Jackie Tsay, Bold Practicum Interns, Google Apps team
Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Import, export, and more with the new Google Sites API

Thursday, September 24, 2009

The use cases are plentiful for businesses:

Update Google Sites from 3rd party applications – e.g. your sales team's Google Sites pages can update automatically when new leads are added to your CRM system.
Migrate files and content from workspace applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Notes to Google Sites.
Export Google Sites pages, edit them offline, and re-import the updated content.
Export your sites, including every page revision, for backup.
Easily monitor changes across your important internal and public sites, all from a single gadget.
Push new content like changes to employee policies or a new corporate logo to any site on your domain, even sites created by individual employees.

Best of all, while this API is brand new, application developers will find it rather familiar – it is, after all, a Google Data API. And like our 16 other Google Data APIs, this one comes with all the standard protocol support around authentication and querying that you'd expect. You'll find everything you need to get started on the Google Code pages, including links to documentation and sample applications.

For those of you interested in applications already built on top of this API, be sure to look at:

The open source import/export project on Google Code that lets you export entire sites as static HTML, maintaining the structure and page hierarchy.
SharePoint Move for Google Apps, a product developed by LTech for migrating data and content from Microsoft SharePoint to Google Sites.

We're looking forward to your feedback! Watch this space for updates to the API in the coming months.

Anil Sabharwal, Google Enterprise team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

One of the benefits of Google Apps is the extensibility and openness of the platform. Today we're pleased to advance that story by introducing a new API for Google Sites in Labs.
The use cases are plentiful for businesses:

Update Google Sites from 3rd party applications – e.g. your sales team's Google Sites pages can update automatically when new leads are added to your CRM system.
Migrate files and content from workspace applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Notes to Google Sites.
Export Google Sites pages, edit them offline, and re-import the updated content.
Export your sites, including every page revision, for backup.
Easily monitor changes across your important internal and public sites, all from a single gadget.
Push new content like changes to employee policies or a new corporate logo to any site on your domain, even sites created by individual employees.

The open source import/export project on Google Code that lets you export entire sites as static HTML, maintaining the structure and page hierarchy.
SharePoint Move for Google Apps, a product developed by LTech for migrating data and content from Microsoft SharePoint to Google Sites.

We're looking forward to your feedback! Watch this space for updates to the API in the coming months.

Anil Sabharwal, Google Enterprise team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Singapore's Ministry of Education and 30,000 teachers go Google

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Google Apps Edu will provide each teacher with more storage space of 7GB (the current email system only provides 110MB of disk space) and better, up-to-date features for their email as well as bring collaboration apps like Google Docs and Google Sites into the mix. The end result will be to increase productivity, share knowledge and enhance the teaching and learning environment in schools all across the nation. The rollout starts in November and should be completed by the end of the year, just in time for the new school year to start in January, 2010.

To read more about the Singapore MOE's announcement, click here. To check out Google Apps Education Edition, go to www.google.com/a/edu.

Posted by Dickson Seow, Google Singapore

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

The Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) is going Google, the first government ministry in Asia to do so. The MOE announced this week that it will be making Google Apps Education edition available to more than 30,000 teachers and staff members at over 350 schools in the country by the end of this year. The winning tender was awarded to NCS, Google's large enterprise solutions partner in Singapore, and to Google, providing the Google Apps online communications and collaboration suite to all public school teachers. We'd like to welcome all of them to the Google Apps community.

The MOE chose to move to the cloud to transform the public education sector through Web 2.0 technologies and a constant stream of product innovation and free upgrades with Google Apps. Chan Tee Miang, the MOE's CIO, also highlighted the benefits for Singapore's teachers, explaining that "this is a key project for MOE as it will facilitate collaboration and sharing among our teachers and help enhance their teaching practices."

James Kang, Assistant Chief Executive, Government Chief Information Office at the Infocomm Development Authority, said that the adoption of a cloud computing solution for MOE email and apps, "is in line with the government’s key criteria of ‘fit for purpose, value for money’ in infocomm procurement for the public sector.”

The new system is built on Google's distributed cloud computing platform with higher scalability, redundancy and flexibility to cater for unforeseen increases in usage and future upgrades without the need to re-architect the entire system infrastructure.

Google Apps Edu will provide each teacher with more storage space of 7GB (the current email system only provides 110MB of disk space) and better, up-to-date features for their email as well as bring collaboration apps like Google Docs and Google Sites into the mix. The end result will be to increase productivity, share knowledge and enhance the teaching and learning environment in schools all across the nation. The rollout starts in November and should be completed by the end of the year, just in time for the new school year to start in January, 2010.To read more about the Singapore MOE's announcement, click here. To check out Google Apps Education Edition, go to www.google.com/a/edu.
Posted by Dickson Seow, Google SingaporeGet timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Columbus State University goes mobile with Google Apps

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

We foresee that the use of Mobile Apps will add to our customer service capabilities and allow students to more easily find information that might otherwise require phone calls or lines. Our ultimate goal is to duplicate all of the services that we now provide to students through our university portal. By doing so students will literally have all of our services on hand at all times.

As you can see, delivering this information on a mobile device makes everything easier for our students and proactively addresses frequently asked questions, helping students successfully take charge ofthier own issues and needs.

Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations
Office of Information & Technology Services, Columbus State University

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations at Columbus State University's Office of Information and Technology Services, as our guest blogger today. Robert's post describes how his school has provided real-time access to student information using Google Mobile Apps.
Columbus State University, located in Columbus, Georgia, started using Google Apps Education Edition in early 2009 and has since successfully implemented Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Sites and Google Video on campus. One challenge for our university, as with many others in today’s economy, is that student enrollment continues to rise while budgets remain flat. Accordingly, it's been pretty tough for us to keep pace with the IT demand. We recently surveyed our students and learned that, no surprisingly, they strongly preferred to communicate with our school via cell phone andPDA . So we thought that we could get ahead of the curve by offering information live on these devices, allowing our students access to the latest information available and being able to avoid lines and other communications slow-downs, especially at the beginning of new terms.
To solve our problem we looked to Google for guidance on how to interface Google Mobile Apps with our Student Information System. We began our development process using the tools provided through Google’s online developer kit and even enlisted some Columbus State University students to take part in the project by taking advantage of the Android for Beginners group. Thanks to this integration, the information we are now able to provide in real-time from our Student Information System onto cell phones and PDAs includes:

Student Account Information – amount owed, refund available, holds on account

Student Scholastic Information – GPA, adviser contact and grades

Student’s Individual Schedule of Classes

Required Documents – Financial Aid, Immunization

University Activity Schedule

University Sports Schedule

Shuttle Bus Schedule

Campus Map

We've included two screen shots displaying what students can see on their mobile devices below:

Robert Diveley, Executive Director of Operations
Office of Information & Technology Services, Columbus State University

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Submit now: product ideas for Google Apps administrators

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

P.S. Want to find out about new features in Google Apps? Details on the new features dashboard, email alerts, and our RSS feed are available here.

Posted by Chris Cheng, Enterprise Support Strategist

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

Great ideas come from many places, but we believe the best ideas frequently come from you, the admins who work closely with our products. Maybe you would like to sync your LDAP directory with Google Apps,manage your users' profile information in Gmail Contacts with an API, sync your Google Apps email, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft Outlook, or connect your Blackberry Enterprise Server with Google Apps.

All of these great ideas came from our customers, and we are excited that we added these features after hearing your requests on how to improve Google Apps.

Today, we're taking it to the next level with the addition of a new Product Ideas section where Google Apps administrators can submit, comment, and vote on ideas. Our team will keep an eye on the best ideas that "bubble up" to the top, and we look forward to seeing your great ideas!

P.S. Want to find out about new features in Google Apps? Details on the new features dashboard, email alerts, and our RSS feed are available here.
Posted by Chris Cheng, Enterprise Support Strategist

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

Push mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile: the choice is yours

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

We believe that our customers should be able to access their information on the mobile device of their choice, using the applications of their choice. That's why we're excited today to announce support for push mail on iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Google Apps now offers a complete mobile sync solution for businesses.

Apps customers who love native mobile applications can now get push mail, contacts and calendar across the major corporate devices: Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and of course, Android. With the over-the-air, always-on push connections, emails and changes to calendar events and contacts are reflected very quickly on their phones. And for those who prefer the mobile web, we also offer web applications for a rich experience, like threaded conversations and search across the entire inbox.

Google Sync is free to all Google Apps customers, and can be enabled by domain administrators in the US English version of the administrative control panel. If you're already using Google Sync for contacts and calendar, push mail is automatically enabled. iPhone and Windows Mobile users can set up Google Sync in a few easy steps directly from their phones, and those already syncing Calendar and Contacts can simply enable Mail sync on their phones. Google Sync is also available for people with personal Gmail and Google Calendar accounts.

You can read more about Google Sync here, and learn about our solutions for all devices, like Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, on Google Apps mobile access page.

Posted by Raju Gulabani, Product Management Director

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Explaining top result and date biasing in Google Site Search

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Google Site Search lets you customize search results in several ways to make sure items you want featured reach the top of the results list. With top result biasing, you can target the top search results from specific sections of your website (such as your product catalog or newsletter sign up page) to make sure visitors can find the most relevant pages within your site.

These are only two of the suite of customization features that are available with Google Site Search. To learn more, visit google.com/sitesearch.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

We know that businesses want website search solutions that are easy to implement, require little maintenance, and consistently return the best search results, without requiring time-consuming manual refinements. We also know that there can be times when businesses want additional control over the search they offer on their websites. That's when two important features in Google Site Search come in handy: "top result" and "date biasing." We want to highlight those today.

Google Site Search lets you customize search results in several ways to make sure items you want featured reach the top of the results list. With top result biasing, you can target the top search results from specific sections of your website (such as your product catalog or newsletter sign up page) to make sure visitors can find the most relevant pages within your site.

Site admins can also choose to organize search results based on the age of the documents with something we call date biasing. If you want to make sure that, say, a new PDF makes it to the top of the results rather than an outdated version, you can switch on date biasing and decide the level of influence (low, medium, high or maximum) so visitors can easily find the most recent version.
These are only two of the suite of customization features that are available with Google Site Search. To learn more, visit google.com/sitesearch.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

Google Apps and Government

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

We look forward to working with governments across the country on these exciting initiatives in the months ahead.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Director, Product Management, Google Enterprise

Everyone benefits from cloud computing, though few stand to benefit more than government. The cloud helps agencies at all levels increase productivity, cut costs, keep pace with technology innovation, and become more open and transparent with their citizens.

That's why we were pleased to join other industry leaders today at NASA's Ames Research Center to hear Vivek Kundra, the CIO of the US Federal Government, announce the launch of Apps.gov. Apps.gov is an online storefront that makes it easy for federal agencies to browse and purchase cloud-based IT services from a variety of service providers, including Google. The cloud is coming of age, and we applaud the Obama Administration's efforts to ensure our government realizes its many advantages.

We also want to do our part to make it easier for government to transition to cloud computing. We recognize that government agencies have unique regulatory and compliance requirements for IT systems, and cloud computing is no exception. So we've invested a lot of time in understanding government's needs and how they relate to cloud computing. To help meet those requirements we're taking two important steps:

FISMA certification for Google Apps. In July, we announced our intent to secure certification for Google Apps to demonstrate compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA), the law defining security requirements that must be met by all US Federal government information systems. Our FISMA process is nearing completion. We will submit a Certification and Accreditation (C&A) package to the U.S. Government before the end of this year. Upon review and approval of the Google Apps C&A package, agencies will be able to deploy Google Apps knowing that it is authorized to operate under FISMA.

Dedicated Google cloud for government customers in the US. Today, we're excited to announce our intent to create a government cloud, which we expect to become operational in 2010. Offering the same services and features as our existing commercial cloud (such as Google Apps), this dedicated environment within existing Google facilities in the US will serve the unique needs of US federal, state, and local governments. It is similar to a "Community Cloud" as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology. The government cloud will allow Google to manage and meet additional government policy requirements beyond FISMA.

We look forward to working with governments across the country on these exciting initiatives in the months ahead.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Director, Product Management, Google Enterprise

JohnsonDiversey: migrating 12,000+ users from Lotus Notes/ Domino to Google Apps in 48 hours

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

one employee told us "this is the first project that IT did for the users rather than to the users"
our help desk volume has substantially dropped from our legacy steady state call volume and most of the questions are "how-to"
our department has more time to work on strategic initiatives

You can watch a bit more about our success with Google Apps here:

Moving 12,000 people over to any new solution can be daunting – but it can also be painless. We found that out the easy way. We would be happy to share our experiences with you. Join us for a webinar:

Migrating 12,000+ users from Lotus Notes/ Domino to Google Apps in 48 hours
Thursday, September 17, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT

We'll share our story and be happy to answer your questions.

Brent Hoag, Director, IT, JohnsonDiversey

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Editor’s note: Brent Hoag is Senior Director, IT for JohnsonDiversey, formed when Johnson Wax Professional acquired DiverseyLever. Its focus is on providing products to commercial businesses for food safety, housekeeping, and industrial cleaning. Throughout its history, the company has been dedicated to leadership in environmental issues, health, and safety. You can read more about the company's work in these areas in the post we shared a few days back.

Please join Brent and members of the Google Enterprise team for a live webcast this Thursday, September 17, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT.

When we first decided to switch to Google Apps from Lotus Notes/Domino, we planned on using a typical IT deployment process. As a global company, JohnsonDiversey (JDI) conducts "go-lives" in its IT environment almost weekly, and therefore we are all old hands at managing rollouts to achieve a smooth technical transition and minimize business disruption.

Given that Google Apps would impact all of our 12,000 global users spread across 168 locations and 70 countries, we made two assumptions. First, we thought a phased migration would be best. We planned to migrate employee data and continue to support our two legacy local email clients at the same time. Second, we’d staff a command center to handle the flood of calls from employees trying to learn the new system.

Both assumptions proved totally wrong.

As we delved deeper into our migration planning and learned from our early adopters, we realized that we would be better off using a big bang approach. One major reason is that getting everyone onto a single system faster reduces the largest pain of having co-existence of two systems for any amount of time.

Google Apps is helping JDI, as a global company, communicate and collaborate better from a single platform. Under our old Lotus Notes/Domino system, even simple tasks like booking meetings were difficult, because employees could not easily see the details of someone's availability, an agenda or other participants. People’s inboxes were also filling up when they were traveling. With Google Apps, we realized we would solve many problems at once (read Part I of our story here).

What did we actually end up doing? We provided Apps to early adopters who became business champions – and ultimately helped others if they ran into issues. We decided to support only the web interface and provided early access prior to go-live to mitigate login issues. We also provided tools for self-service migration and put up a Google Site providing a centralized point of information. We offered global deployment support for the first two days after go-live.

Since deploying, we've received some nice feedback and results:

one employee told us "this is the first project that IT did for the users rather than to the users"
our help desk volume has substantially dropped from our legacy steady state call volume and most of the questions are "how-to"
our department has more time to work on strategic initiatives

You can watch a bit more about our success with Google Apps here:

Brent Hoag, Director, IT, JohnsonDiversey

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Google at SMB Nation Fall Conference

Monday, September 14, 2009

Program managers from Google will speak about opportunities for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. They'll also be listening to feedback from the community on areas for further improvement to the program. Google's partners often play a critical role in helping customers get the most out of Google Apps, and building a strong partner network will be key to keeping up with the accelerating adoption of Google Apps.

Learn more and register at smbnation.com, and be sure to find members of the Google team when you're there.

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Partner team

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

As part of our continued outreach to find leading solution providers and MSPs for our Google Apps Authorized Reseller program, the Google Apps Partner team will head to Las Vegas on October 2, 3, and 4 for "SMB Nation Fall 2009." This conference, focused on technologies for small and medium businesses, is designed for consultants, channel partners and VARs, and offers the community a chance to engage in conversations around hosted, cloud-based solutions. It's targeted at both technical and business audiences, with an emphasis on managed services.

Data portability and Google Apps

Monday, September 14, 2009

This principle not only applies to individual users, but also to businesses, schools and other organizations that choose Google Apps to provide better tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. It should be easy to bring legacy data into the cloud, share data between Google Apps and other IT infrastructure, and get data out of the cloud if it ever makes sense to stop using our service. I invite you to read more about Google Apps data portability on the Data Liberation site.

And while we're on the topic of data portability, stay tuned here for information about moving content to and from Google Sites. We're looking forward to sharing more about this with you soon.

Posted by Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager

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

Earlier this morning, you may have seen Google's Data Liberation announcement, which stemmed from our core belief that it ought to be easy for users to move their data into or away from Google's cloud.
This principle not only applies to individual users, but also to businesses, schools and other organizations that choose Google Apps to provide better tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. It should be easy to bring legacy data into the cloud, share data between Google Apps and other IT infrastructure, and get data out of the cloud if it ever makes sense to stop using our service. I invite you to read more about Google Apps data portability on the Data Liberation site.
And while we're on the topic of data portability, stay tuned here for information about moving content to and from Google Sites. We're looking forward to sharing more about this with you soon.

Posted by Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager

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JohnsonDiversey goes greener with Google Apps

Friday, September 11, 2009

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Editor’s note: John Matthews is Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Director, Office of the President, for JohnsonDiversey. The company is a global provider of commercial cleaning, sanitation and hygiene solutions and serves customers in the lodging, food service, retail, health care, and food and beverage sectors. One of four companies founded by the Johnson Family, JohnsonDiversey is located in Located in Racine, Wisconsin and has a long-standing history of dedication to environmental, health, and safety leadership.

Our CEO, Ed Lonergan, has challenged all employees to live by strong sustainability principles in everything they do. Last spring, we migrated over 11,000 global employees to Google Apps from Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft Outlook, moving us 73 tons closer to our goal of achieving an 89,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2013. When we achieve our 89,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions, it will place us back at where we were in 2003, even as we continue to grow our business and add additional resources.

In addition, optimizing our IT infrastructure by moving to Google Apps has allowed us to decommission eight servers and avoid buying four more. As we reduce this reliance on hardware, we also gain a better and easier messaging and collaboration platform.

Google’s innovation in data center design and maintenance means that Google achieves more energy efficiency than our company could on its own – and Google’s commitment to carbon neutrality also reinforces our goals as a member of the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Savers program. The alternate IT solution would have increased our server count by 12, more than doubling our server count. This would have raised our CO₂ emissions by 111 metric tons.

Beyond helping JohnsonDiversey achieve sustainability goals, Google Apps also helps us better communicate and collaborate. Our employees and contractors speak more than 26 languages across approximately 170 locations in 70 countries. Now, we all have the ability to literally work off the same page – wherever we are – with tools like Google Docs and Google Sites.

We also avoided significant capital outlays in upgrading from our on-premise Lotus Notes/Domino solution while improving our internal service levels with Google's commitment to be up and running 99.9% of the time.

Environmental stewardship is not only the right thing to do. It also makes good business sense. Our choice of Google Apps is a case in point. It's helped us reduce costs and advance our IT efficiency. If your enterprise is striving to reduce its environmental footprint and streamline IT infrastructure, hear how we did it at a livewebcast featuring our IT team.

You can learn more about our company and our use of Google Apps here:

Our IT team will host a live webcast next week on Thursday, September 17, 2009, 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT on how Google Apps is helping us meet both our sustainability and business goals.

We'll also share perspectives from our IT team on the deployment in a blog post we'll publish next week (update: now published).

John Matthews, SVP, Corporate Affairs
Director, Office of the President, JohnsonDiversey

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

The movement continues: "Going Google" at school & with Postini

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

More than 5 million students in 145 countries around the world have gone Google at school with our Google Apps Education Edition. To celebrate this milestone, Google's "EDU" team has created a new site that highlights many of the schools that have gone Google, as well as tips for students and educators.

Schools as well as businesses of all sizes have also chosen to protect their on-premise email systems with our hosted email security and archiving services – more than 3 billion email messages are protected by Postini each day. Postini helps your organization keep email secure, spam-free and centrally archived, without the need for hardware or software installations and upgrades. If you're still dealing with tuning your spam appliance and searching your backup tape drives, now is a good time to go Google with Postini.

We've loved hearing your feedback and encourage you to continue the conversation with us via Twitter (hashtag #gonegoogle) as well as through our Spread the Word site. The billboards may be complete (you can check out the recap video here), but we're not finished yet. Look for more "gone Google" initiatives in the US and abroad in the next few months – and don't forget to sign up for free Gone Google goodies!

Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps Team

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

In the past month, many of you told us how you've "gone Google" with Google Apps in your workplace . We're excited that the #goneGoogle movement continues with the millions of students who have switched to Google Apps in schools, as well as growing adoption of our Postini email security and archiving services.
More than 5 million students in 145 countries around the world have gone Google at school with our Google Apps Education Edition. To celebrate this milestone, Google's "EDU" team has created a new site that highlights many of the schools that have gone Google, as well as tips for students and educators.
Schools as well as businesses of all sizes have also chosen to protect their on-premise email systems with our hosted email security and archiving services – more than 3 billion email messages are protected by Postini each day. Postini helps your organization keep email secure, spam-free and centrally archived, without the need for hardware or software installations and upgrades. If you're still dealing with tuning your spam appliance and searching your backup tape drives, now is a good time to go Google with Postini.
We've loved hearing your feedback and encourage you to continue the conversation with us via Twitter (hashtag #gonegoogle) as well as through our Spread the Word site. The billboards may be complete (you can check out the recap video here), but we're not finished yet. Look for more "gone Google" initiatives in the US and abroad in the next few months – and don't forget to sign up for free Gone Google goodies!
Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps Team

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

Google Earth Pro and Google Maps API Premier increase imagery coverage

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Brazil: Santa Maria, Joinville, Santos, Montes Claros, Petrolina, Araguaina, Parnaiba, Belem

Europe, Middle East, & Africa
France: Manche, Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire, Marne, Haute-Marne, Meurthe-er-Mosselle, Lozere, Herault, Pau

Lithuania: Vilnius

Poland: Krakow, Lodz, Auschwitz

Slovakia: Bratlsavia

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo

Serbia: Belgrade

Moldova: Chisinau

Russia: Perm, Chita, Avacha

Libya: Benghazi

Syria: Aleppo

Iran: Mashad

Turkey: Antalya

Pakistan: Lahore

Guinea-Bissau: Bissau

Guinea: Conakry

Liberia: Monrovia

Kenya: Mombasa

Swaziland: Mbabane

Asia & Oceania
China: Nanchang, Yumen, Altay, Taizhou, Huaian, Chuzhou, Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Leting, Baotou

New Zealand: Christchurch, Wellington, Bay of Plenty, Waipa

Antarctica: McMurdo Station

New 2.5m base imagery for: Mexico, Argentina, and India

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team

This month, Google Earth Pro and Google Maps API Premier customers will see new aerial and satellite imagery updates across the world and through time.

Let's say you want to do Real Estate research in Portage, Michigan (image below) and you have Google Earth Pro 5.0 installed. You can use the historical imagery feature to research imagery dating back to the 1950's. For example, Engineering firms doing land surveys near McMurdo Station now have imagery updates on this point in Antarctica. This allows them to complete better land assessments.

Below is a list of all the imagery updates to Google Earth Pro and Google Maps API. To find out where the new aerial and satellite imagery might help your spatial business, here is a KML outlining all the areas receiving new data.

Americas
United States: Alburqurque, Beaumont (Texas), part of the Mississippi River, Jefferson County (FL), Cass County (MO), Hamilton County (IA), Western Michigan, Portage (MI), Clinton County (MI), Eaton County (MI), Ingham County (MI), Greenville (SC), Baltimore (MD), Charles County (MD), Calvert County (MD), Dorchester County (MD), Carroll County (MD), Frederick County (MD).

Canada: Surrey (BC)

Peru: Talara

Argentina: Salta, Santiago del Estero, Villa Mercedes, Bahia Blanca

Brazil: Santa Maria, Joinville, Santos, Montes Claros, Petrolina, Araguaina, Parnaiba, Belem

Europe, Middle East, & Africa
France: Manche, Mayenne, Maine-et-Loire, Marne, Haute-Marne, Meurthe-er-Mosselle, Lozere, Herault, Pau

Lithuania: Vilnius

Poland: Krakow, Lodz, Auschwitz

Slovakia: Bratlsavia

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Sarajevo

Serbia: Belgrade

Moldova: Chisinau

Russia: Perm, Chita, Avacha

Libya: Benghazi

Syria: Aleppo

Iran: Mashad

Turkey: Antalya

Pakistan: Lahore

Guinea-Bissau: Bissau

Guinea: Conakry

Liberia: Monrovia

Kenya: Mombasa

Swaziland: Mbabane
Asia & Oceania
China: Nanchang, Yumen, Altay, Taizhou, Huaian, Chuzhou, Xingtai, Shijiazhuang, Leting, Baotou

New Zealand: Christchurch, Wellington, Bay of Plenty, Waipa

Antarctica: McMurdo Station

New 2.5m base imagery for: Mexico, Argentina, and India

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team

Today's Gmail problem

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Around 12:45 PM PDT, a majority of Gmail users began having trouble accessing their accounts. During this interruption, users were still able to connect to their accounts via IMAP and POP. At approximately 2:15 PM PDT, the issue was resolved and access was restored.

We use Google Apps here at Google, and our email accounts were among those that were impacted. I understand how disruptive this service interruption was for our users and customers, and I'm very sorry for the inconvenience.

The team is investigating the root cause so we can prevent this kind of situation in the future, and we will share a detailed incident report with our customers. The full incident report will be available on the Google Apps Status Dashboard within 48 hours.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Product Management Director, Google Enterprise

UPDATE (7:46 pm): We've shared more information on today's issue on the Gmail blog, here. We'll also be proactively crediting affected Premier and EDU customers with three days of service, and posting a full incident report on the Google Apps Status Dashboard within 48 hours. Thank you again for your patience and understanding.

Waving hello to Google Apps

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

To learn more about Google Wave check out wave.google.com, and to sign up for Google Apps so you're ready when Google Wave rolls into businesses in the future, visit google.com/a.

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach and Stephanie Hannon, Google Enterprise and Wave teams

Google Wave has been generating lots of interest among Google Apps users since we unveiled it in May at Google I/O, our annual developer conference. Today we're pleased to announce that we'll be opening up access to Google Wave for some schools and businesses as part of the preview this fall. And while we won't be able to open it up to all Google Apps users just yet, we hope to bring Google Wave to all Google Apps users next year. If you're a Google Apps administrator and you're interested in testing Google Wave, you can sign up here.

Over the last couple of months, we've been very busy developing the product, opening the protocol and learning from the thousands of developers who are using and contributing to Google Wave. While the product, platform and protocols are still being developed, we're extending access to some of the highly collaborative people and communities we hope to benefit in the future – businesses and schools. In turn, we look forward to learning from these Google Apps users, so we can continue to tweak and develop the product as we gain insight from their experiences.

A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where individuals communicate and work together in a multimedia environment – the wave itself. You can check out the video below (it's long – lots to see!) and it's easy to imagine its utility for groups within a business or academic environment. Whether there's a report to write, an event to plan, research to do or communications to conduct, we're building Google Wave so people can be more productive and collaborate more effectively in a real time environment. Users can insert text, photos, gadgets, maps, web feeds and edit instantaneously. Organizations can extend Google Wave using APIs to tightly integrate with existing tools and workflows. It's communication and collaboration, conversation and document, in one unified, cloud-based space.

Official Blog

How Google tackles IT security – and what you can learn from it

Cloud adoption and getting voted best mid-market solution at the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit

Clarkstown Central School District designs collaborative curriculum with Google Apps

Add page breaks and "go to page" in forms

Import, export, and more with the new Google Sites API

Singapore's Ministry of Education and 30,000 teachers go Google

Columbus State University goes mobile with Google Apps

Submit now: product ideas for Google Apps administrators

Push mail for iPhone and Windows Mobile: the choice is yours

Explaining top result and date biasing in Google Site Search

Google Apps and Government

JohnsonDiversey: migrating 12,000+ users from Lotus Notes/ Domino to Google Apps in 48 hours

Google at SMB Nation Fall Conference

Data portability and Google Apps

JohnsonDiversey goes greener with Google Apps

The movement continues: "Going Google" at school & with Postini

Google Earth Pro and Google Maps API Premier increase imagery coverage

Today's Gmail problem

Waving hello to Google Apps

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