Google Apps solution provider Announcements

Webinar: Google Apps H1 2010: Innovation in Review

2010-06-18T09:33:00.000-07:00

Following the popularity of our 2009 Innovation Year in Review webinar last year (recording available @ http://reseller.googleapps.com/learn-to-sell/webinar-archives#TOC-Google-Apps-Innovation:-Year-in-Rev), we've decided to put together a similar webinar showcasing the quick pace of innovation in Google Apps over the first half of 2010.

You'll learn about the more than 50 new features we've launched in Google Apps in the past 6 months alone, including new features in Google Docs, new security and administrative controls, and the Google Apps Marketplace offering over 100 apps that integrate directly with Google Apps.

A recording will be available afterwards in our resource site webinar archives.

New & improved Google Apps reseller resource site

2010-04-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

You'll notice a fresh new look to our resource site, which has also now been moved from apps.gepportal.com to reseller.googleapps.com.

The name change was made to create a more descriptive and memorable URL, consistent with our equally useful developer.googleapps.com and deployment.googleapps.com sites. As for the new look, the goal was to make navigation easier and surface previously low traffic pages that offer useful information. Changes were made primarily to organization and marketing content. There are redirects in place so links in the forum and bookmarks to the old site will be taken to the appropriate page on the new site.

Take the time to tour the site if you haven't yet done so, it should help boost the productivity of your Google Apps business.

Some key changes:

simplified left navigation bar to focus on the most relevant content and make information easier to find
addition of current news boxes on home page to highlight site updates or announcements, webinars and events
addition of 'My program tools' section in left navigation bar so resellers have quick links to reseller console functionality
revamped marketing section with a new structure and additional content including,
- updated Google Apps logos and icons
- updated Google Apps datasheets and case studies
- a guide for writing case studies
- a guide for hosting and participating in events and webinars
- tips for creating a Google-related website or newsletter
- info on Google products that can help resellers connect with customers (i.e. Local Business Center)

Enjoy the site and let us know what's missing that would help you find, sell, deploy, and support your customers.

Webinar: Migrating to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange

2010-03-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

Last week we announced that it's now a lot easier for your Microsoft Exchange customers to switch to Google Apps with the new Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange tool. This server-side tool will help you migrate your customers' email, calendar and contact data in just 4 steps. To get up to speed on the functionality and learn about best practices, join us next week for a webinar hosted by the Product Manager:

Google Apps Migration for Microsoft® Exchange
Tuesday, March 30
10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET
Register

For more information, and to learn how other partners are using the tool, read our post on the Google Enterprise blog.

New complementary integrated apps in the Google Apps Marketplace

2010-03-09T23:58:00.000-08:00

Exciting news tonight as we launched the new Google Apps Marketplace with important implications for customers, developers, and our reseller partners.

Resellers can help customers easily discover, purchase, deploy, and take advantage right away of a number of new third party cloud applications which are integrated in specific ways to allow ease of installation, management, and end user access. We anticipate our Google Apps Authorized Resellers will be able to leverage these initial and future complementary applications to expand the solutions they provide to Google Apps customers.

Secondly, solution providers providing Google Apps related custom application development can consider productizing their own integrated offerings for other partners and customers to discover, purchase, and install through the marketplace. To this end, we were joined in this launch by 50 participating developers, including our Google Apps Authorized Resellers Dito, LTech, SADA Systems, Cloud Sherpas, and Sheepdog.

New webinar series on feature updates

2010-03-03T01:42:00.000-08:00

We're starting a new monthly webinar series covering the most recent Google Apps feature updates.

The webinars are target primarily for partners who sell & deploy Google Apps. The content will cover newly released features with details on how to use the features in customer deployments.

You can register for the first session (repeated for global timezones) here:

March 3, 2010 2pm Pacific - Register
March 4, 2010 7am Pacific - Register

Google Apps on ConnectWise TV

2010-02-22T22:08:00.001-08:00

ConnectWise CEO Arnie Bellini came by Google recently and we filmed a discussion between Arnie, Aric Bandy from Agosto (a Google Apps Authorized Reseller), and Jeff Ragusa. Arnie and Aric have unique and compelling views on how cloud computing and Google Apps can be leveraged by IT service providers to resist commoditization and increase stickiness.

The result is a session being streamed this Wednesday February 24th at 11am ET and you can register here.

The session was produced for the ConnectWise user community, many of whom are asking themselves the degree to which they want to build out a cloud of their own vs leverage Google's cloud infrastructure.

Meet Enterprise developers at Google I/O!

2010-01-28T12:29:00.000-08:00

We're expecting thousands of web, mobile and enterprise developers at this year's Google I/O, our third annual developer conference. We'll be featuring a wide range of Google developer technologies, including Android, Google Web Toolkit, and App Engine, with an emphasis on Enterprise and Google Apps. Google I/O will be on May 19-20, 2010 at Moscone West in San Francisco.

To learn more about Google I/O and to sign up, visit code.google.com/io.

Upload Any File + Standard vs Premier

2010-01-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

As more companies move their business to the cloud, they need ways to manage, share, and access their data easily and securely. To help with this, we're rolling out a new feature over the next couple of weeks to enable Google Apps users to upload and securely share any file type to Google Docs. All Google Apps editions offer 1 GB of storage per user, and each user can upload files up to 250 MB in size.

Google Apps Premier Edition users can also use the Google Documents List Data API to upload files to Google Docs in batch, or integrate 3rd party applications to migrate and sync files to Google Docs from multiple machines:

Memeo Connect for Google Apps is a new desktop application that offers an easy way to access, migrate, and synchronize files to Google Docs across multiple computers. (PC and Mac)
Syncplicity offers businesses automated back-up and file management with Google Docs. (PC)
Manymoon is an online project management platform that makes it simple to organize and share tasks and documents with coworkers and partners, including uploading files to Google Docs.

This is one more feature that distinguishes the Standard from the Premier Edition of Google Apps. Join our webinar January 26th when our internal sales team and one of our long-time resellers will review the differentiating features between Standard and Premier Editions, and share their own tips on how to sell Premier. One of our product managers will also be on the webinar to provide more details on the Upload Any File feature described above, so you won't want to miss out! Register today.

Standard vs Premier + Upload Any File
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET
Register

See more details on uploading any file to Google Docs in the Google Enterprise blog post.

Google I/O Holiday pre-sale: sign up today!

2009-12-08T19:21:00.000-08:00

The Google Enterprise team is pleased to extend an invitation to sign up for Google I/O -- taking place on May 19-20 in San Francisco, CA -- at a special reduced price. Please sign up here. We look forward to seeing you at I/O!

December Webinars: Google Docs & Sites

2009-11-30T22:42:00.001-08:00

This month we will be holding two webinars to help your clients expand their usage of Google Apps, and achieve business goals:

Get more out of Google Docs
Thursday, December 3
10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET
Register

Get more out of Google Sites
Tuesday, December 15
10:00 a.m. PT, 1:00 p.m. ET
Register

We hope you'll join us!

October Webinars: Google Apps Security & How to Demo

2009-10-16T13:33:00.001-07:00

Join us this month for two new Master Seller Webinars. Learn how to demo next week, then, at the end of the month, get all your questions answered around the security of Google Apps.

How to Demo Google Apps- Register
Learn the art of demoing from Google Sales Engineer Giraldo Hierro. Giraldo works daily with enterprise customers to demonstrate and sell Google Apps. He'll share tips and tricks on how to demo, and even show off his own demoing skills.

Security from the Ground Up - Register
Google Enterprise Director of Security, Eran Feigenbaum, will walk you through how Google builds security into Apps from the ground up. Learn why data is safer in a Google data center, get prepared to handle tough questions around security, and ask your own! Starting now, we'll be taking questions using Google Moderator: http://shortlinks.gepportal.com/appssecurityquestions

How Google tackles IT security

2009-09-29T21:05:00.000-07:00

We've got a great collection of Google security folks coming together for a live webinar this coming Thursday, Oct 1st at 11am PDT.

Learn more about it here:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-google-tackles-it-security-and-what.html

Please check this out if you can - this is an important collection of topics and its a popular one amongst solution providers and prospective clients.

Live Webinar: Configuring Postini Services

2009-09-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Integration and management of Postini services with Google Apps has been a challenge for many of our resellers. However, these services, Google Message Security (GMS) and Google Message Discovery (GMD), are powerful features that can help you win new Google Apps customers and provide a compelling upsell.

This Wednesday Horizon Info services, an authorized reseller specializing in Google Postini Services, will join us in a live webinar to provide a guide to proper GMS activation, setup and configuration, and tips to help you upsell customers with GMD.

Postini Administration with Horizon Info Services
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
10:00 am PDT, 1:00 pm EDT
Register

Join us to get an overview on GMS and GMD, tips to avoid common configurations errors, and how to upsell customers.

Premier customers can now be transferred immediately to a reseller account

2009-09-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

Effective immediately Premier customers will now be refunded for the remainder of their 12 month term when they transfer under a reseller's account.

Many resellers have Premier customers who aren't currently under their reseller account. Most commonly this is due to the reseller qualification process requirement to deploy an initial Premier account before their reseller account is created. Previous to today, resellers wouldn't be able to transfer these clients until their 12 month renewal date UNLESS the customer was willing to forfeit the remainder of their paid term and start a new 12 month term

We're happy to say that we're now able to remove this requirement to choose between waiting until the next renewal date or choosing to forfeit paid service. The customer still needs to start a new 12 month term with their reseller, but now they'll be refunded for unused service on their previous term.

More information on how to transfer a Premier customer to a reseller account is in our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142336
including a note for customers on where to find the necessary transfer token and when to expect their refund:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33321

We hope you'll take advantage of this opportunity to bring all of your Premier clients under your reseller account management.

Millions 'go Google' - join us on Twitter

2009-08-21T15:37:00.000-07:00

We recently launched our biggest corporate marketing campaign of the year to increase awareness of Google Apps and leverage momentum as more and more businesses 'go Google.' We're asking customers to tell us why they've switched from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes to Google Apps, and the response has been strong. We're using various media channels to spread the word and want to get our partners in on the action.

To learn more about the campaign and how you can participate on Twitter, join our live webinar this Thursday.

#goneGoogle Marketing Campaign
Thursday, August 27, 2009
10:00 am PDT, 1:00 pm EDT
Register

Get a sneak peak of what we've done...

Billboards in four major US cities share some of the typical IT frustrations that might make people want to switch.

We also developed two resource centers that share customer stories and address specific benefits around switching from Microsoft Exchange (google.com/apps/exchange) and Louts Notes (google.com/apps/notes). We're doing various types of online advertising to promote these so you may see our 'gone Google' banners around.

Don't know much about Twitter? Just want to learn more about this new campaign and how to align your marketing message? Don't forget to register for our webinar this Thursday.

Live Webinar: How to Pitch Google Apps

2009-08-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

This Thursday Tom Mills who runs our mid-market sales team for North America will walk you through how he pitches Google Apps to customers. This webinar should not be missed!

How to Pitch Google Apps
Thursday, August 13, 2009
11:00 am PDT, 2:00 pm EDT
Register

Tom will take you step-by-step through the updated Google Apps Overview presentation available in the Learn to Sell section of the Solution Providers site. He'll provide talking points for each slide, tips on how to present the information, and share his experiences selling to customers. Tom is a dynamic speaker and is sure to provide invaluable information that will help each of you sell more effectively.

For those of you who are not available at this time, we will be posting the recorded webinar in the Webinar Archive section of the Solution Providers site. You can also find presentations and recordings from past webinars here.

Google Apps + OpenID = identity hub for SaaS

2009-07-28T10:18:00.000-07:00

Today we announced that the Google OpenID Federated Login API has been extended to Google Apps accounts. This means that Apps users can now securely sign in to third party websites using their Google Apps user account, without sharing their credentials with third parties.

Additionally, Google apps can now become an identity hub for multiple SaaS providers. Partners such as Ping Identity and Manymoon.com have been among the early adopters of the Google OpenID Federated Login API, and we're excited about the opportunity this provides to others.

To learn more, read our post on the Google Code Blog, or join the discussions in the Google Federated Login API Group.

The OpenID Federated Login Service is available for all Google Apps editions. However, it is disabled by default for the Premier and Education editions, and it requires the domain administrator to manually enable it from the Control Panel. Learn how to enable it for an individual domain.

Live Webinar: Resellers Share Their Experiences

2009-07-27T22:17:00.000-07:00

This Wednesday Sheepdog and Dito, two of our early Google Apps Authorized Resellers, will join us live to share their experiences with the reseller program. Learn about the challenges they've faced, how the program has positively impacted their businesses, and best practices for acquiring new customers.

Live Webinar: Resellers Share Their Experiences
Wednesday, July 29
10 am PDT, 1 pm EDT
Register

New! Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes

2009-07-14T14:27:00.000-07:00

Switching to Google Apps from Lotus Notes just got easier. Today we released a new tool, Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes, that migrates mail, calendar and contacts quickly and easily. The tool is a native Notes application and its many features make it a simple and complete way to quickly switch your customers to Google Apps.

Google partner CapGemini used the tool to migrate Valeo, an automotive supplier with 30,000 employees. As CapGemini IT Project Lead Philippe Bonnemains says, "We used it for Valeo and for several other enterprise customers. Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes is clearly a great solution for Notes-based companies that want to quickly and efficiently provide users with continuity of mail archives, contacts and calendars, while moving to Google Apps."

More and more customers like Fairchild Semiconductor, Hamilton Beach, JohnsonDiversey and Valeo are migrating their users from Lotus Notes to Google Apps. To learn more about our new migration tool and how to position Google Apps to Lotus Notes users, join our Master Seller Webinar this Thursday.

Position Apps to Lotus Notes Users
Thursday, July 16, 2009
10:00 am PDT, 1:00 pm EDT
Register

Until then, you can learn more about the tool in our Lotus Notes resource center and see how it works in this short video:

New! Google Apps is Out of Beta

2009-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

This year we've focused on making it as easy as possible for large enterprises to switch to Google by launching new features and removing key barriers to adoption. Today, we're taking this one step further. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk are now out of beta, alleviating doubt that Apps is a mature product suite.

We're also continuing to implement procedures that offer our Apps customers even greater reliability. These include live replication of data to other locations for near-instant disaster recovery, and special handling of business users' data in our data center operations.

Finally, in the coming weeks we'll be launching email delegation and retention to help companies manage email and comply with industry regulations. Both features are in testing and will be rolled out to Premier Edition customers as soon as they're ready.

All of these new features together highlight that now is the time to switch to Google Apps. To make it easier for enterprise IT managers to access tools and learn more about switching, we've built out resource centers for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. Take a look to see how we're positioning Apps to these two key audiences. For more details on the new launches, read our post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog.

Advertising with AdWords

2009-06-24T18:50:00.000-07:00

Join us next Wednesday to learn how to create a successful lead generation campaign with AdWords. We'll go over keyword selection, landing page development, local targeting, conversion tracking and more.

Next Master Seller Webinar: Advertising with AdWords
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
10:00 am PDT, 1:00 pm EDT
Register

We will also be repeating last week's webinar on the recent Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook and Google Apps Connector for BES announcements. This final webinar is being held to accommodate resellers in the Asia and Asia Pacific time zone.

Leverage New Features to Position Apps against Exchange
Thursday, July 2, 2009
12:00 pm WST and SST, 9:00 pm PDT
Register

New! Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps

2009-06-09T11:10:00.000-07:00

Today we're excited to announce that it's even easier to make the switch to Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. This new feature lets customers use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions.

Many businesses are interested in adopting Google Apps but they've been unable to make the transition because of some employees that do not want to give up the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface. Now with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, businesses can move forward deploying Google Apps, even if some users want to keep using Outlook. The plug-in enables employees to switch from Outlook to the Gmail interface at their own pace giving them their choice of interface, and IT departments their choice of email infrastructure.

Key features include:

- Email, calendar and contacts synchronization. For email, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which is much faster than IMAP or other methods.
- Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook's calendar or Google Calendar.
- A simple, two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Three key service providers - NuVox, Netfirms and IKANO - have already begun offering Google Apps Sync. NuVox, a leading telecom provider in the Southeast and Midwest, sees "an incredible response to Google Apps from [our] customer base," says CEO Jim Akerhielm. "We’re excited that Google Apps Sync helps our customers stop running Exchange and spend more time focusing on their core business." Netfirms, which powers 1.2m websites in the U.S. and Canada, is launching Google Apps to their customers in concert with Google Apps Sync. George Mitsopoulos, V.P. of DNA Mail (an IKANO company) says, "Google Apps Sync gives our customers even more options while minimizing our deployment effort. It's 'install, launch and you're ready to go."

To help you leverage this feature, and the recently launched Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server, to sell Google Apps more effectively, we're holding webinars next week to accommodate our partners in various time zones. This will be the first in a series of Master Seller Webinars aimed at making our partners more successful. For those of you that can't attend, all Master Seller Webinars will be archived on the Solution Providers site so you can access them anytime.

We hope you will be able to join us next week to get live overviews and sales tips from our Product and Marketing Managers.

Webinar Details for North America
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
10:00 am PDT, 1:00 pm EDT
Register

Webinar Details for Europe, Middle East and Africa
Thursday, June 18, 2009
3:00 pm BST, 4:00 pm CET
Register

Webinar Details for Asia and Asia Pacific
TBD - please check the Solution Providers site over the next few weeks for an update

Until then you can review the Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook sales training presentation in the Marketing section of the Solution Providers site. This is the presentation that we will walk you through during the webinar at which time you can also ask questions. To see a demo of how the plug-in works, watch this 3 minute video.

Reflections on the Enterprise Track at Google I/O

2009-06-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

The Enterprise team has just posted some reflections on the Enterprise Track at Google I/O on the Google Code Blog, so please take a moment to read up on all the great Enterprise sessions, announcements and events at Google I/O. We hope you enjoyed the conference as much as we did, and we're looking forward to seeing you there next year!

New Google Apps Script - Limited test available

2009-06-03T10:25:00.000-07:00

We're excited to announce a limited test of a new feature which lets people add customization and automation to Google Apps, starting with spreadsheets in Google Docs. We call this feature Google Apps Script.

Google Apps Script provides the ability to automate a variety of spreadsheet actions, such as reading and changing values in cells and ranges, changing formats and formulas, and creating custom functions. It also reaches outside of spreadsheets to allow you to send email or create calendar entries.

You can check out the Google Apps Script overview and watch our example of sending email from Google Spreadsheets. Also, you can get involved in Google Apps Script now by applying to join this limited test phase.

Attract more customers & access usage data through your local business listing on Google

2009-06-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

For many of our partners, local visibility is key to attracting new customers and this is an area where Google can help. When users search on Google.com or Google Maps, we want them to be able to find you and access the right information. Now it's even easier for partners to ensure this happens with a dashboard feature that is launching in Local Business Center, also known as LBC.

The LBC is a free tool that allows business owners to control their listings and easily access usage data beyond what can be tracked with their website analytics. Once you claim your listing in the LBC and go through a quick verification process you will be able to view the following data:

Impressions: The number of times your business listing appeared as a result on a Google.com search or Google Maps search in a given period.

Actions: The number of times people interacted with your listing; for example, the number of times they clicked through to your website or requested driving directions to the business.

Top search queries: Which queries led customers to your business listing; for example, are they finding the listing for a cafe by searching for "tea" or "coffee"?

Zip codes where driving directions come from: Which zip codes customers are coming from when they request directions to your location.

To learn more, read our post on the Official Google Blog or watch the video below. To get started, just log in to the Local Business Center at www.google.com/lbc.