Google Enterprise Blog

Finding a home for new technology with Google Apps

2012-05-24T11:12:00.000-07:00

Posted by Mike Mercurio, CEO, SDAR

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Mike Mercurio, CEO the San Diego Association of REALTORS®, California’s largest local branch of REALTORS®. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

People have been buying and selling property for centuries, often with the help of a professional who understands the complexities of real estate transactions. The San Diego Association of REALTORS® (SDAR) was created more than 100 years ago to give these professionals the opportunity to connect and discuss issues on a local level.

Our goal as an association is to give our 12,000 members the education and tools they need to be successful. It’s no secret that the real estate market has been challenging recently, so we are constantly looking for ways to help our members reduce their costs, streamline their operations, and find better ways to communicate with their buyers and sellers. We’ve been using Google Apps at our association main office and 5 service centers and have found the tools to be particularly useful in the real estate industry, so we decided to announce that we will be offering Google Apps to our members at our annual REALTOR® Expo and Conference.

We believe that Google Apps will transform the way our members do business. With Google Sites, they’re able to create websites for buyers with new listings and open houses, information on neighborhoods and schools, as well as directions and maps to each property. They can also create sites for properties on the market. Instead of calling or emailing clients, our REALTORS® can just update their sites, so buyers and sellers always have one place to go.

The most important aspect for members, however, has been the mobility of Google Apps. Since email, documents, and sites now live in the cloud, they can access this information from anywhere with an Internet connection -- at a property, from the office, or from home. Speed is of the essence in this business, and since REALTORS® are always on the go, being able to see new emails and respond right away is incredibly helpful.

With the uncertainty of the economy, we’re very happy to have found a way to significantly help our members’ businesses.

Reintroducing the platform formerly known as Google Earth Builder

2012-05-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Google Maps Engine Product Manager

In September 2011 we launched Google Earth Builder, a product that allows customers to use Google's cloud computing infrastructure to store, manage and share their own geospatial data and maps.

Google Earth Builder enables secure access to geospatial data it hosts through our geospatial apps like Google Earth and our geospatial APIs like the Google Maps API. Customers have used the platform in a variety of ways, including third parties using it to power their applications, data providers using it to commercially distribute their geospatial data, and customers creating their own 3D globes with private mapping data.

We didn’t think “Earth Builder” reflected the true capabilities of the product or vision that we have for easily accessible geospatial data. So, today we're renaming Google Earth Builder to be called Google Maps Engine. Today we’re also announcing the launch of our Google Maps Engine grants program for nonprofits.

We hope that Google Maps Engine will power the next generation of world class mapping applications, and we are excited about all the new innovations that we’re working on bringing to the platform soon.

Google Apps for Business helps Pratt Industries save time and money, while it saves the environment

2012-05-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Juan Merelo, technical services manager at Pratt Industries, America’s 6th largest recycled paper and packaging company headquartered in Conyers, Georgia. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Pratt Industries, we’re all about recycling, and we take pride in playing such a big role in maintaining a healthy environment. Every day, we collect thousands of pounds of paper from cities, schools and supermarkets across the country to create recycled packaging. More than 3,500 employees in 70 locations nationwide work together to make this happen, and we rely on technology to keep our operation organized and running smoothly.

In 2009, we ran into some problems when our Microsoft® Exchange server started failing. Since email is a critical communication channel for our business, we had to find a quick solution. We wanted a stable cloud-based network that would help us run our business more efficiently. The 99.9% uptime and cost savings associated with Google Apps made it a clear choice. And it’s a good thing we decided to switch because shortly after we signed up for Google Apps, our Microsoft® server unexpectedly crashed and we were forced to migrate all our employees immediately. In less than three days, we were able to set up nearly 2,000 Google Apps accounts, a task we thought would take weeks.

Google Docs has also saved us time and money – and helps us get things done more quickly. When parts of Alabama were hit by tornadoes, one of our mills went offline. To get the facility back up, we needed an IT person on the ground. I had to drive several hours and spend valuable time to fix the network. After the tornado, we used Google Docs to sketch out plans for restoring our systems. Now, if a facility goes down, we can easily share step-by-step instructions and photos with on-site employees to rebuild the network. And because we use Google Docs to share these instructions, they can access the plans on any device with an Internet connection.

More recently, we had to change network circuits at 60 of our plant facilities. Previously, we would fly an engineer to each location to gather critical data for the changeover. Now we’re able to coordinate the project remotely with shared spreadsheets in Google Docs. We provided on-site contractors with secure access to our spreadsheets, so they could collect and organize data at our facilities. Google Docs saved us two months of work and close to $60,000 in engineering costs, and we collected more accurate data because it was input directly at the project site.

Google Apps has given us new ways to make our business significantly more efficient. I’m constantly amazed at the ways our employees are using the products, and I’m looking forward to seeing even more innovative uses.

Find facts and do research inside Google Documents

2012-05-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

Posted by Sarveshwar Duddu, Software Engineer

Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog.

Today we’re introducing the research pane—a new feature that brings the web’s wealth of information to you as you’re writing documents.

The research pane taps into Google Search directly from Google documents, so whether you want to add a cool destination to your itinerary for an upcoming trip to India or you're looking for the perfect presidential quote for a political science paper, you don’t even have to open a new tab.

You can access the research pane from the Tools menu by right clicking on a selected word that you want to learn more about, or by pressing Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Cmd+Alt+R on Mac. From the research pane, you can search for whatever info you need to help you write your document. With just a couple clicks you can look up maps, quotes, images, and much more.

If you find something you like, you can add it by clicking the insert button or, for images, by dragging them directly into your document. If appropriate we’ll automatically add a footnote citation so there’s a record of where you found the info.

Hopefully bringing knowledge from the web to Google documents will make your writing process just a little bit more efficient.

Google Apps brings Brazos Bookstore into the 21st Century

2012-05-14T10:58:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Jeremy Ellis, General Manager, Brazos Bookstore

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Jeremy Ellis, General Manager of Brazos Bookstore, a neighborhood institution based in Houston, Texas.

Brazos Bookstore has been part of the Houston literary community since 1974. In addition to selling a diverse collection of books, we pride ourselves in connecting our community with authors from our area and around the globe. When the store’s ownership changed in 2006 and the possibility of shutting down became known, the community of Brazos fans petitioned to keep our doors open. Thanks to them, we’ve been able to continue our long-standing tradition where we host author events, readings and exhibitions from writers such as Walter Cronkite, Julia Child, Kofi Annan, and P. J. O’Rourke, to name a few.

When I joined the staff in September 2011, Brazos was still operating in many ways as it did in the 70s and 80s. Employees would schedule the author series on a single paper calendar, and only one of our computers had email set up. All of our software was outdated, and the programs that were available ended up causing more roadblocks than value.

We needed a system that could better manage our day-to-day operations. Since I was already familiar with Google from personal use, moving the bookstore to Google Apps for Business was a natural transition. Today, all seven of our employees are able to access their email and calendars from any computer in the store, at home, and on their smartphones. This accessibility not only eases communication between the staff, but also keeps everyone up to speed on events, shipments and other activities at the shop.

Scheduling author visits on Google Calendar is easy, instant, and live, and it’s saved us from double-booking authors. I’m now able to easily collaborate with our buyer when we’re planning in-store events, which has streamlined the process for ordering books and helps me track book sales from author readings.

Google Apps has given us the organizational tools we need to continue serving Houston’s literary and arts culture. Our vision over the past forty years hasn’t changed, and now we have the technology to support our store for the future.

People Making Good Sees the Good in Google Apps

2012-05-10T13:34:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Nicole Ravlin, Co-founder of People Making Good

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Nicole Ravlin, Co-founder of People Making Good, a public relations company based in Burlington, Vermont.

People Making Good is a public relations and social media marketing firm focused on promoting healthy, socially responsible brands. In six years we’ve grown to ten employees and have a wide range of clients across the country and around the globe.

Over the past several years, we’ve been limited by our IT solutions, particularly since our clients are in multiple time zones and our staff travels frequently. Important tasks like scheduling meetings or tracking product launches often were made more difficult than they needed to be. About 18 months ago, our IT consultants recommended we try Google Apps for Business to help simplify our work processes. Not only has it kept us organized as a company, it’s also helped us stay in line with our core values, one of which is to be as paperless as possible.

Google Calendar has completely transformed the way we schedule meetings with clients, book trade shows, and schedule launch events. For one client we set up a shared calendar to manage events in multiple cities for the launch of a new product – everything from tracking industry events to meetings with retailers and press. Our client could see their schedule come together in real time, and it automatically synced with their mobile device. They knew exactly where to be and when, no matter what time zone they were in.

With Google Docs, we’re able to work with clients all over the world. Before, we’d email back and forth, and critical information got buried in people’s inboxes or lost for good. Now, we share documents directly with our clients and quickly work through things like media lists, press releases and blog posts. We often make comments and chat directly in a doc so we can avoid the hassle of multiple phone calls and emails.

Google Apps has helped us streamline our processes, even while we’re on the go. This gives us more time to continue our quest to help socially responsible companies tell their stories.

Turn on your cloud databases, Google Cloud SQL has a new pricing plan

2012-05-10T10:00:00.002-07:00

Posted by Joe Faith, Product Manager

Google Cloud SQL frees you from the chores of managing, maintaining and administering relational databases. It powers your App Engine applications with a familiar relational database (MySQL) in a fully-managed cloud environment.

Since we launched preview last October, Cloud SQL has improved performance and added features like scheduled backups, multihoming to increase availability and to improve application performance, and more powerful instances. Many businesses and developers have also started using Cloud SQL to administer their databases in the cloud.

For example, Daffodil, a global software firm, wanted to build and scale cloud applications with an easy-to-use database management system. After trying different solutions, they migrated to Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL last year. After the migration, the engineers at Daffodil saved 100 hours of engineering work, allowing them to focus on their app and worry less about infrastructure.

Today, we’re announcing a two-tier pricing plan to Cloud SQL that will be enabled on June 12th:

If you’re a business building lightweight applications or just want to try out the service, the flexible pricing option is for you. You pay for what you use.
If you’re a business building heavy-traffic applications, we offer pricing packages, which are more economical and help you predict costs in advance.

We hope the new Cloud SQL pricing plans help you build App Engine applications tailored to your business’s needs. Post your questions in our user forums or comments on our Enterprise Google+ page.

An improved view for insurers with iv3 Solutions and Google Maps

2012-05-09T12:33:00.000-07:00

Posted by David Newall, EVP, Sales and Data Solutions at iv3 Solutions

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is David Newall, EVP, Sales and Data Solutions, at iv3 Solutions. The company’s PropertyIntel PING product supports the underwriting efforts of iv3’s property and casualty insurance clients.

Gathering information about a property can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating task for both the insurer and the homeowner. We’d have to send out inspectors or have a long phone call to gather detailed information about a property. We noticed that Google Maps makes it easy for people to find directions or see a 360-degree view of a vacation spot, and we wanted to apply this to our business.

At iv3 Solutions, we built a real-time online report called PropertyIntel PING. This report uses the Google Maps API for Business and Street View. By combining Google Maps technology with our own address mapping and property information, we’re able to give our clients an immediate and detailed view of the property. This saves time and reduces frustrating phone calls with the property owner and the insurer. The Google Maps API also allows us to gather critical property data without having to store and maintain all of the basemap data on our servers -- and we can even add our own property data to provide more accurate results to our clients. Because of this technology and its integration with Google Street View, insurers can show their customers a customized “mash up” of rich photography, custom GIS data, aerial views and more. In the end, insurance companies are able to develop stronger relationships with their customers because they’re spending less time worrying about the technical details.

With PropertyIntel PING, we’re helping our clients save time, increase profit, and improve customer service, using the power and ease of Google Maps API for Business. Find out more about iv3 Solutions and how you can integrate Google Maps into software.

The City of Columbia is going Google

2012-05-03T10:00:00.000-07:00

Posted by Mike Matthes, City Manager of Columbia, Missouri

Editors note:Earlier this week we announced the City of St.Louis is going Google. Today we welcome another guest blogger from Missouri, Mike Matthes, to tell us how he recently moved Columbia to Google Apps for Government.

I grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri. Until last year, I worked for the City of Des Moines in Iowa for 15 years. When I got the opportunity to move back to my home state and became the City Manager of Columbia, Missouri, I jumped at the chance. Columbia is a boomtown with outstanding quality of life that emphasizes the value of public services for the citizens. I find great joy in serving the public, partnering with our city employees, and supporting them as they work with the community.

After I moved to Columbia, I realized the city was challenged by an antiquated email system that couldn’t keep up with the latest technology trends and our employees’ needs. When my iPad acted as nothing more than a paperweight, I knew we needed a change.

Columbia is fortunate to have an open-minded City Council and IT Department, so we started looking for a new email solution last fall. When I worked for Des Moines, I became familiar with Google Apps for Government. We chose the Google email and communication platform for 2,000 Des Moines employees because it could help the city save budget while enabling our employees to be more productive. When I looked at Google Apps again, I was struck by the tremendous product enhancements made in just a year since I last reviewed its offering.

We quickly decided to move all 1,188 Columbia employees to Google Apps for Government after evaluating available email and communication solutions. With the help of Google Apps reseller Onix Networking, all city employees were flawlessly transitioned to Google Apps in April 2012.

The only comments I received were gratitude from our employees for finally being able to communicate and collaborate smoothly. Email and calendar just work, and other advanced collaboration features in Google Apps bring much more efficiency to our workplace. Eighty percent of our employees are mobile, such as police, fire and public works staff. They have been starving for mobile productivity for years. Now they can easily check email, documents, and sites from the field.

Although most reasonable people dread an annual budget process, I’m actually looking forward to it this year because all 18 of our departments will be using a Google Site to collaborate and share information easily while preparing for the budget. This site also integrates a Google calendar that marks budget due dates with a countdown clock for all departments.

For Columbia, going Google is a force multiplier. With resources saved and productivity enhanced, our city employees are able to better focus on their core mission of serving citizens. Being a part of modernization efforts of both Columbia and Des Moines makes my job as a public servant meaningful.

Sperry Van Ness goes Google

2012-05-03T08:56:00.000-07:00

Posted by Kevin Maggiacomo, CEO of Sperry Van Ness

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Kevin Maggiacomo, CEO of Sperry Van Ness, one of the largest commercial real estate advisory firms in the world. They employ over 1,400 advisors and staff in more than 150 markets. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

As CEO of Sperry Van Ness, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve the work our 1,400-strong workforce does and how we do it. Implementing Google Apps across the entire organization allowed us to bring efficiency to an industry that isn’t traditionally known for being collaborative or efficient. Google Apps helped us solve workflow bottlenecks and process inefficiencies to move us beyond best practices to next practices. It has been a huge win for us.

There’s an old saying related to technology that “usability drives adoptability.” Getting everyone transitioned onto a single platform can be a challenge for any organization, but the learning curve for Google Apps was almost non-existent. Since all our tools -- Docs, Sites, Calendar, Gmail and more -- are all easy to access, they smoothly and seamlessly became part of our operating culture. Our entire organization went from implementation to total adoption in less than 30 days.

Creating a culture of teamwork and collaboration has been a key driver of our business model for years – it was just more difficult and costly prior to using Google Apps. Aside from email, chat, and conferencing, Google Sites allowed us to quickly replace our intranet. Additionally, Google Docs gives us an easy and secure way to collaborate on documents in real-time throughout the entire sales process.

In addition to the efficiency and productivity gains, the cost savings was a driver in our decision to use Google Apps. By moving our platform to the cloud, we dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of our IT infrastructure in favor of a system that’s faster and more robust. The frosting on the Google Apps cake is that we’ve been able to eliminate dependency on Microsoft products, allowing us to grow and scale faster. The discussions we used to have about platform scalability and synchronization have faded away, allowing us to spend more time on our business.

With great confidence, I can say that implementing Google Apps can resolve many of the workflow management, collaboration, and process automation issues that companies still struggle with -- it did so for Sperry Van Ness.

Google Maps API for Business brings NexTraq to the next level

2012-05-02T12:37:00.000-07:00

Posted by Nicole Locklear, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Nicole Locklear, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq. NexTraq is a GPS fleet tracking company headquartered in Atlanta that helps business owners across the US and Canada track the movement, behavior and activity of their vehicles.

NexTraq, a GPS fleet tracking company, helps customers manage their fleets with reporting, alerts, dispatching and routing tools. Several years ago, our company noticed a simple problem: it took too long to train our customers how to use our products. After looking at several other mapping possibilities, we realized that we should give our customers something they already used in their daily lives: Google Maps. Our customers already used Google Maps to get directions, view landmarks with Street View and Satellite View and avoid bad traffic. This made the decision to move to Google Maps API for Business easy.

By using Google Maps, we were able to free up internal resources -- such as developers and engineers -- because of the outstanding support that Google provides during implementation. Even though we deployed Google Maps on a large scale, the implementation was seamless. Our customers love Google Maps for Business because it brings Google Maps features directly to the business setting. For example, they can look at their route for the day, pinpoint heavy traffic, and reroute their vehicles accordingly. Not only are they saving time, but, as gas prices rise, they’re cutting fuel costs as well. Being able to see the street view of any place a vehicle is located gives customers an added layer of comfort. If an employee can’t find a service stop, a dispatcher can see a 360-degree view of where the employee is standing and direct them based on landmarks and other surroundings.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we went with a solution that we knew our customers already knew and loved. Google Maps API for Business was the best move we could have made for our customers.

Google BigQuery brings Big Data analytics to all businesses

2012-05-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Posted by Ju-Kay Kwek, Product Manager, BigQuery

Cross-posted on the Google Developers Blog.

BigQuery enables businesses and developers to gain real-time business insights from massive amounts of data without any upfront hardware or software investments. Imagine a big pharmaceutical company optimizing daily marketing spend using worldwide sales and advertisement data. Or think of a small online retailer that makes product recommendations based on user clicks. Today, we are making BigQuery publicly available, an important milestone in our effort to bring Big Data analytics to all businesses via the cloud.

Since announcing BigQuery in limited preview last November, many businesses and developers have started using it for real-time Big Data analytics in the cloud. Claritics, a social and mobile analytics company, built a web application for game developers to gain real-time insights into user behavior. Crystalloids, an Amsterdam-based analytics firm, built a cloud-based application to help a resort network analyze customer reservations, optimize marketing and maximize revenue. This just scratches the surface of use cases for BigQuery.

BigQuery is accessible via a simple UI or REST interface. It lets you take advantage of Google’s massive compute power, store as much data as needed and pay only for what you use. Your data is protected with multiple layers of security, replicated across multiple data centers and can be easily exported.

Developers and businesses can sign up for BigQuery online and query up to 100 GB of data per month for free. See our introductory pricing plan for storing and querying datasets of up to 2 TB. If you need more than that, contact a sales representative.

We hope you'll be able to gain real-time business insights using BigQuery. Share your BigQuery use cases and feedback in our user forums or on our Enterprise G+ page.

Google Apps for Business helps keep business flowing at Pure Energy

2012-05-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

Posted by Zachary Curry, Manager of Information Systems at Pure Energy Services Ltd.

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Zachary Curry, Manager of Information Systems at Pure Energy Services Ltd., a publicly traded oilfield services company headquartered in Calgary. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since 2001, Pure Energy has provided equipment and services for oil- and gas-producing companies in Canada and the U.S. In recent years we’ve grown nearly 20% per year, and today Pure Energy employs over 1,500 people based in our corporate offices and at more than 20 field locations. With 90% of our staff working outside of our corporate office, we needed a system that could better manage our expansion, easily accommodate new users and provide access to our staff in the field.

Using Google Apps helped transform some of our internal processes, allowing us to work more efficiently. Our business requires a lot of safety and task documentation, and each employee in the field must complete training for hundreds of tasks. Even though we’ve implemented multiple systems to help manage these tasks, there were still operational gaps and paper-based processes. Google Docs helped us simplify the tedious and time consuming task of managing these processes and tasks. Now that we’re moving the majority of our documentation to Docs, our station managers can more easily provide up-to-date information to their field staff and our corporate executives in shared files. In certain business units, we’ve also started to use Google Forms to track job training completion for each employee, making it easy for station managers to see exactly which employees can complete certain jobs at a glance.

Google Apps Scripts has helped us streamline our equipment utilization tracking processes. In the past, our corporate office had to compile 20 individual spreadsheets sent in from our field locations that was then manually inputted into a single spreadsheet. By the time the main corporate spreadsheet was updated, the information was usually out of date and therefore largely irrelevant for decision making purposes. Using Apps Scripts, we now get real-time updates of our equipment utilization through automatic email notifications to our managers at corporate office, saving us time in completing this important operational task.

With a growing company, particularly one that’s as geographically dispersed as ours, it’s important to have a dependable and easy-to-use Information System in place. Google Apps has helped us streamline numerous internal processes all while keeping us connected and collaborating efficiently.

The Gateway to the West is moving into the cloud

2012-04-30T14:25:00.000-07:00

Posted by Francis G. Slay, Mayor of St. Louis, Missouri

Editors note: Today, we welcome Mayor Francis G. Slay of the City of St. Louis, the latest U.S. city to move to Google Apps for Government.

Email keeps City employees and departments connected, and it's how our residents and businesses get in touch with their City government. Our current email system – old and unreliable - hasn’t worked very well for a while. Employees have had trouble accessing email and attachments, and they experienced email outages and delays. When City employees aren’t at their desks, it’s been difficult for them to access the email server from mobile devices or from computers outside of the network. All of these challenges hampered our ability to collaborate among each other and respond to citizens efficiently – or to hear from them at all.

With an email system that held us back, we wanted to find a new system. After evaluating several competitive bids, the City of St. Louis selected cloud-based Google Apps for Government because it best suits our needs for a reliable, secure, and cost-effective email system. Our employees are not only able to access email reliably at their desks, but will be able to stay connected, anytime, anywhere. This will likely make them more productive; it will certainly make them happier. Because Google is a familiar and trusted brand (and many employees currently use Gmail for their personal email), I’m confident that this will be a smooth transition.

We look forward to working closely with Google and Daston Corporation, a Google Apps Premier Reseller, to complete the migration in the next few months. We are proud that the Gateway to the West is now moving to the cloud.

Johnston Press set to transform its business, with a little help from Google Apps

2012-04-30T09:48:00.001-07:00

Posted by Ashley Highfield, CEO, Johnston Press

Editors note: Johnston Press, one of the UK’s leading local newspaper publishers, has just announced a bold plan to transform its sales operations. Today’s guest blogger, CEO Ashley Highfield, has been discussing what’s in store.

Johnston Press is a major publisher of quality local newspapers and local Internet sites in the UK. It owns 230 local newspapers - most of which hold the number one position in their respective markets across the UK and Ireland. At JP we base our publishing philosophy on local service to local communities and we pride ourselves in delivering unique content across a variety of channels, always with the view that “content is king”.

Today, we’ve announced that Johnston Press is embarking on a new plan to transform the advertising sales operation - introducing new solutions and ways of working.

One of the major pillars of this plan is Google Apps for Business - which will be adopted by our employees as their core email system, allowing them to work together in new ways. Google Apps will allow our employees to access their information at any time, from anywhere and will enable them to work more efficiently as a team, no matter where they are.

We will also equip our 1,500-strong sales team with the Salesforce.com customer relationship management system (CRM), which will be integrated with Google Apps for Business. More than 800 non-office-based sales staff will be given iPads to allow them to work remotely and stay in touch when on the road - significantly improving their sales effectiveness at customers’ premises.

This initiative will help drive innovation by making it incredibly easy for JP’s sales executives to communicate, collaborate, and share business information. I see the move as part of the creation of a new social enterprise that places our regional newspapers at the hearts of their communities.

Sompo Japan Goes Google

2012-04-25T22:49:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Akihito Fujii, Google Apps Team, Japan

Google Apps has customers all over the world from Spain to Canada, and today we’re bringing you news from Japan. Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. announced that they’re moving all 30,000 employees to Google Apps by May 2013, becoming the largest Google Apps customer in Japan to date. Sompo is the largest property and casualty insurance company in Japan, operating 700 offices across 28 countries. Through a network of 45,000 agencies, they help a large base of customers with damage insurance, life insurance, and asset management.

Using Google Apps, Sompo will make strengthening its internal communication the centerpiece of their strategy, which will be critical for their planned merger with Nippon Koa Insurance in early 2014. Additionally, Google Apps will make it easier for employees to work remotely, stay connected to overseas offices, and seamlessly communicate using mobile devices.

Google Apps keeps music companies humming

2012-04-25T13:41:00.000-07:00

Posted by: Barbara Yang, Google Apps Team

Music is a huge part of our culture at Google, and I’m really excited that the music festival season is just getting started. If you were at Coachella (which we livestreamed on YouTube this year) or have plans to go to go to another festival, you're probably just as excited.

Musicians, record labels, and music companies are using technology to do some amazing things, like producing on-stage holograms or experimenting with new online distribution models. It’s common for artists to launch their careers on YouTube, broadcast a performance on Google+ Hangouts, or connect with their fans using social media. But beyond the tech-coolness we hear a lot about, the music community is also taking advantage of technology behind the scenes - or rather, in the cloud - to develop their businesses.

I’m proud to say that some of today’s musical entrepreneurs are using Google Apps for Business. Whether it’s having the freedom to run a new indie record label, the flexibility to manage up-and-coming music artists on tour, or the ability to collaborate across the globe, Google Apps helps these teams focus on what they love the most - the music. We want to share three stories about awesome music companies using Google Apps to grow and evolve:

Music Clout is a startup formed by a group of guys with a die-hard passion for music. The idea is simple: create an online community that connects independent artists with music industry contacts and opportunities. They launched their company with Google Apps to make it easier to work together internally and with their team of contractors. Since their web development team works from Turkey, the combination of chat in Gmail and Hangouts allows them to instantly discuss website programming and other technicalities, while saving the team from high phone bills.

GHouse, a Boston-based record label, works with musicians from various genres, including electronic, reggae, rock, and country. Beginning as a side project by a college music student, it’s evolved into a full-time business. Initially, the team relied on a remote server and legacy software that were always stalling or crashing on them. They switched to Google Apps so that they could easily work together anytime, anywhere online, and on any device with Internet connectivity. With Google Docs, the team can easily share music tour dates and track all of their profits from the shows.

Founded in 2007, Fly South Music Group is an artist management firm out of Orlando, FL with satellite offices in Nashville and Los Angeles. The company set up Google Apps because it wanted a common platform for company email, calendars and documents that could be shared between all their clients, families, labels, tour managers and promotion coordinators. Today, it’s become essential to their workflow from scheduling to budget management with access to information from anywhere. This accessibility provides a whole new layer of transparency that keeps everyone in sync, especially while traveling around the world.

Google Apps has given these companies the built-in collaboration they need to communicate better, work smarter, and stay focused on bringing new talent and fresh ideas to the music industry.

Introducing Google Drive, the newest member of Google Apps

2012-04-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

Posted by Scott Johnston, Product Manager

Today, we’re introducing Google Drive—a place where you can create, share, collaborate, and keep all of your work. Whether you’re drawing up floor plans with a client, creating a presentation with classmates or planning next year’s budget with colleagues, Drive makes it easy to work together. You can upload and access all of your files, including videos, photos, Google Docs, PDFs and beyond.

With Google Drive, you can:

Create and collaborate. Google Docs is built right into Google Drive, so you can work with others in real time on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Once you choose to share content with others, you can add and reply to comments on anything (PDF, image, video file, etc.) and receive notifications when other people comment on shared items. As a business user, you can share files or folders with specific people, your entire team, or even customers and partners outside your company, controlling who can view or make edits.

Store everything safely and access it anywhere (especially while on the go). All your stuff is just... there. You can access your stuff from anywhere—on the web, in your home, at the office, while running errands and from all of your devices. You can install Drive on your Mac or PC and can download the Drive app to your Android phone or tablet. We’re also working hard on a Drive app for your iOS devices. And regardless of platform, blind users can access Drive with a screen reader.

Search everything. Search by keyword and filter by file type, owner, activity and many more. Drive can even recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. Let’s say you upload a scanned image of an old newspaper clipping. You can search for a word from the text of the actual news article. We also use image recognition so that if you drag and drop photos of the Grand Canyon into Drive for an upcoming ad campaign, you can later search for [grand canyon] and photos of its gorges should pop up. This technology is still in its early stages, and we expect it to get better over time. Open more than 30 file types right in your browser—including HD video, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop—even if you don’t have the corresponding program installed on your computer.

We know you rely on your files to get work done every day. Drive uses the same infrastructure as other Google Apps services, meaning it also has the same admin tools, security and reliability, including:

Centralized management: New tools available in the Apps control panel for administrators to add or remove storage for individuals or teams of users.

Security: Encryption on data transfer between your browser and our servers, and optional 2-step verification that prevents unauthorized account access by having users sign in with a secure code from their mobile phone.

Data Replication: Simultaneous data replication in multiple data centers, so that in the unlikely event that one data center is unavailable, your files will still be safe and accessible.

Uptime: 99.9% uptime guarantee so you can be confident that your files will be available whenever you need them.

Support: 24/7 support for assistance when you need it.

Each Apps user gets 5GB of storage included and administrators can centrally purchase and manage more. When a user reaches their limit, administrators on Google Apps for Business accounts can buy storage as it’s needed. Start with an additional 20GB for $4 per month and add as much as 16TB. (Just as before, Google Docs don’t count against your storage quota.)

Starting today, Google Apps administrators will see new controls for Drive in the control panel. Users at organizations on the Rapid Release track will be able to opt-in to Drive at drive.google.com/start.

Drive is built to work seamlessly with your overall Google experience. Drive is also an open platform, so we’re working with many third-party developers so you can do things sign documents with DocuSign and HelloFax, design flowcharts with Lucidchart and manage projects and tasks with Smartsheet directly from Drive. To install these apps, visit the Chrome Web Store—and look out for even more useful apps in the future.

This is just the beginning for Google Drive; there’s a lot more to come. Contact our sales team or a Google Apps reseller if you are interested in signing up for Google Apps and Drive.

Note: At launch it is not possible for organizations using Google Apps for Education or Google Apps for Government to centrally purchase and manage additional storage.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and...Re-think

2012-04-23T11:35:00.001-07:00

Posted by: Chris Farinacci, Senior Director, Google Enterprise

There are about 9,000 community curbside recycling programs and 3,000 community composting programs in the United States. I’ve been recycling since I moved to California in the 90's, and in the U.S. we’re lucky that many communities have recycling and composting services. But there’s still more to be done – we only recycle or compost 33% of the 243 million tons of trash generated each year.

I’m encouraged to hear about some of the cool ways that people and organizations are coming together to re-think how we can recycle, reduce, and reuse. In honor of Earth Day, we’d like to share the stories of three organizations that take recycling to the next level, using Google products to help.

Andrew Sell started out as a personal hunter/gatherer of “upcycled” products. There are a lot of companies that manufacture recycled products by recovering difficult-to-recycle materials from landfills and turning them into useful items, and the market continues to grow. Recognizing a need to connect the growing number of manufacturers with consumers, Andrew created an e-commerce website, Hipcycle, almost a year ago in Ocean Township, New Jersey with the budget of a typical startup.

Andrew, or Chief Hipcycler, chose to manage his new company with Google Apps due to low costs, ease of set up, and the ability to provide custom email addresses @hipcycle.com to employees, contractors and bloggers. Hipcycle also uses Google Docs to track order statistics and share them with manufacturers, Google Calendar to keep the social media team aligned on topics and timing, and Google+ Hangouts to communicate directly with customers. Google Analytics provides data on site traffic and activity.

Not far away in Brooklyn, New York, Eva Radke identified another opportunity to eliminate needless waste. Having spent 15 years working in film, Eva saw two trends: a growing amount of waste and a general desire for environmental responsibility in the industry. After film shoots, large, awkward items like furniture are brought to landfills and Eva became passionate about finding a better way to use the waste.

In 2008 Eva’s passion became a full-time non-profit organization that collects waste from the film industry and sells or donates the goods to students and partner charities. For example, a women’s shelter receives bedsheets and towels from Film Biz, allowing them to free up their non-profit dollars to spend on education and therapy for its residents. Eva says she doesn’t know where she’d be without Google Apps. Since day one, she’s been using Gmail to stay up-to-date while traveling and Calendar to schedule everything from set clean-outs to school trips to donation drop-offs. Google Docs allows her team to edit documents together and they rarely need to use paper, which helps them stay even more green.

As the name would indicate, Cell Again buys and sells used mobile phones. With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices - and trend of consumers purchasing new phones every couple of years - there’s a seemingly endless quantity of second-hand cell phones. Tucker Nielson wanted to keep these phones out of landfills so he started CellAgain with just a few employees in Salt Lake City. The company has been so successful that there are now eight stores and 87 employees, which he expects to double this year.

With rapid company expansion plus growing franchise and wholesale operations, Tucker says that Google Apps has been his savior in terms of staying organized. Tucker set up Google Apps for CellAgain.com on his own and uses Gmail to stay connected to his management team from his own cell phone. He also hosts nearly everything in Google Docs, including company manuals, shift schedules, timesheets, job descriptions and more. And Google AdWords helps CellAgain make sure that consumers looking for a refurbished cell phone can find their local franchise or kiosk.

Each of these companies help keep environmental impact low and Google is working to do its part as well. We’re a carbon neutral company, and Google Apps (and all the products in our cloud) have a "net zero" impact on the environment.

Happy Earth Day.

Celestica embraces Google Apps to improve global collaboration

2012-04-16T08:39:00.003-07:00

Posted by Mary Gendron, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, at Celestica

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Mary Gendron, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer, at Celestica, a Toronto-based innovative supply chain solutions company that provides end-to-end product lifecycle solutions from design and manufacturing through to delivery and after-market support.

Our talented global team is dedicated to delivering innovative supply chain solutions to our customers – helping them to stand out in their markets. This requires our employees to work together effectively and increase the sharing of knowledge and ideas across functions and geographies.

After piloting Google Apps, we quickly realized it would enable our global workforce to work more collaboratively, and as a result, we have recently decided to move 19,000 of our employees to Google Apps. Now my team can meet spontaneously using the video chat feature in Gmail or draft our team strategy simultaneously in a Google Doc. That type of collaboration allows us to build on everyone’s ideas to develop better solutions. Also, by sharing a document where all team members have the opportunity to contribute, everyone is invested in the project because we did it together.

Because we’re no longer tied to different time zones or other people’s schedules, we can work together where we want, when we want, and we can all edit a document together in real time. With Google Apps, the stress of compiling edits in time for a meeting or ensuring you are presenting the final version of a deck are gone. Recently, I was working on a strategy document with my team. I could close my laptop in the evening and know that, when I woke up, those in a different time zone or who preferred to work at night would have added their comments and input directly in the document. Overall, we’re accomplishing more together and faster than before.

We’re in the early stages, but I believe Google Apps will help us achieve our objectives faster, more efficiently and with greater success.

Golf Town tees off collaboration with help from Google Apps

2012-04-11T11:56:00.004-07:00

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is John Hur, Director of Information Technology at Golf Town, a destination for everything golf headquartered in Ontario, Canada. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Golf Town, we’re all about the game. From footwear and apparel to clubs, bags and balls, we supply everything golfers need to play their best. Since we opened our doors in 1999, we’ve grown to over 60 stores and over 1000 employees across the U.S. and Canada.

We’ve grown quickly, adding up to seven stores a year, and it became increasingly difficult to keep our employees connected to each other and the company. We needed to give our team a better way to communicate and collaborate across multiple stores so things didn’t start to slip through the cracks. In 2009 we started to look at moving our email, documents and calendar to a better platform. We looked at Microsoft® Exchange and Google Apps, and found that Google Apps was more affordable and provided us with the best set of tools to improve communication and collaboration.

Now that we’ve switched to Google Apps, we’re able to see each other’s availability through Google Calendar and keep each other in sync with group calendars. For example, The marketing team has implemented a calendar that shows which advertisements are running at each store location and their duration. The calendar is shared with floor managers so they can be prepared to answer customer questions and honor any promotions.

Docs also helps regional managers streamline important daily processes. Each day, our regional managers compile sales reports from all of their individual store managers. Instead of compiling attachments sent from each store manager, regional managers can use one Google document to collect information quickly and easily. Plus, since Google Apps is web-based, employees can access this information from their Android mobile devices. This saves hours of time and energy each week, and it’s just one of many processes that are simpler and easier with Google Docs.

For us, Google Apps has been a hole in one. My IT team no longer needs to focus on supporting e-mail because everything is accessible via the web and Gmail is so intuitive. In fact, our support requests for email have gone down by over 95 percent. And, employees are happy because they can get to their information from anywhere and easily collaborate with their co-workers. Google Apps provides the tools that help our growing business run more efficiently. We’re excited to have Google help us prepare for our next 60 stores.

Edmonton is the first major Canadian city to pick Google Apps

2012-04-10T09:08:00.000-07:00

Posted by by Michael Lock, VP Google Enterprise

Earlier in 2012, I became a United States citizen, more than 14 years after moving to the U.S. from my native Canada. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll continue to root for Team Canada when it comes to hockey and Canada will always have a special place in my heart. That’s why I’m particularly proud that the City of Edmonton announced today its plans to move 9,000 city employees to Google Apps. In keeping with its reputation as a forward-thinking local government, Edmonton will become the first major Canadian city to go Google.

Edmonton, the capital city of the province of Alberta, is the northernmost North American city with a metropolitan population over one million. Its decision to move to Google Apps for email, calendar and other collaboration tools supports Edmonton’s strategic plan, which calls for “finding new ways to become even more collaborative, open, responsive and innovative.”

Google Apps will provide a unified communications platform for all municipal employees, bringing email to roughly 3,000 “deskless” city employees for the first time while providing additional tools to help all employees work together. As a result, the City of Edmonton’s employees will have a more inclusive, collaborative work environment while giving the city more value for its technology investments.

While Edmonton may be the first city in Canada to go Google, it’s in great company with other city governments in North America─like Pittsburgh, Orlando and Zapopan, Mexico─that have already made the move. And personally, I’m grateful to Edmonton for giving me a good reason to visit Canada later this year to check on their progress!

Admiral Pest Control switches to Google Apps to eliminate communication bugs

2012-04-05T09:10:00.002-07:00

Posted by: Jeff Jones, Vice President, Admiral Pest Control

Editor’s Note: Today’s guest blogger is Jeff Jones, Vice President of Admiral Pest Control, a pest control and extermination business with two locations in Los Angeles and Orange County, California.

Admiral Pest Control is a fourth generation family-owned business. The company was started by my grandfather in 1947, and with every generation there have been new ideas on how to run more efficiently. We handle everything from termite inspections, to pigeon control for residences and businesses throughout the Long Beach area. With a team of 40 people, we’re big enough to accommodate the needs of our clients, but small enough to have a personal relationship with them too.

For many years, we had a Microsoft Exchange server and when it came time to upgrade, we realized we needed a change. The price to upgrade was costly and we had experienced frequent outages. So, we decided to switch to Google Apps for Business which offered a far more reliable and cost-effective way for our employees to communicate from their desks or the field.

Our staff spends a lot of time at customer locations and can now easily check their email and schedules from their mobile phones. They can see where their next customer visit is or whether there’s been a cancellation without making a trip back to the office.

We’ve also improved how we communicate with our customers using Google Forms. We embedded a form on our website where customers can fill in their contact information and describe the problem they’re experiencing. Incoming inquiries are centralized in a single spreadsheet that gets updated in real time as a form is submitted. We’re able to better manage requests and reply quickly, and our customers appreciate that we make it so easy to contact us. Customers can also provide feedback on our services through a separate form on the website.

Google Apps has helped us to better communicate as a team and better communicate with our customers at a price that fits our family business. We’re excited to have Google take us into the next 65 years.

Visualize U.S. demographics using Google Maps API for Business

2012-04-04T15:00:00.001-07:00

Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API

In April 2010, 89 million U.S. households returned a census form in which they answered ten basic questions. Once collected, aggregated, and published, the 2010 U.S. census provided rich insights into the makeup and distribution of the U.S. population. However the resulting demographics, which cover all 50 states, over 3,000 counties, over 70,000 census tracts, and over 200,000 block groups, are extremely challenging to obtain and visualize on a map.

Today we are making U.S. demographics visualization accessible and easy for our Google Maps API for Business customers with the launch of the new Demographics Layer in Maps API v3. The Demographics Layer enables Google Maps API for Business developers to add visualization of U.S. demographics provided by Nielsen to their Maps API applications.

Developers can select from 34 statistics to display on the map at state, county, census tract or block group granularity, including:

population
age
race
marital status
housing status

Data is available for 2010 and 2011, in addition to projected data for 2015 and 2016.

Google Maps API for Business applications using the Demographics Layer can control how the data is styled, such as defining color thresholds or gradients, and also define style rules based on expressions across statistics that are evaluated in real time. For example, by defining a gradient style based on the expression “population / area” you can visualize population density on the map.

The Demographics Layer is now available to all Google Maps API for Business customers for use in internal applications. For more information on how to add the Demographics Layer to your applications please see the documentation. If you are not an existing Google Maps API for Business customer and are interested in using the Demographics Layer, please contact the sales team by filling in this form.

We hope the Demographics Layer provides your business with the intelligence you need to put your own data into context, and empowers you to make smarter business decisions going forward.

Build better maps with Analytics for Google Maps API for Business

2012-04-04T09:30:00.001-07:00

Posted by Daniel Schramm, Associate Product Manager Intern, Google Maps API

Every day people rely on maps to help them make purchasing decisions. Location matters for everything from choosing a restaurant for dinner, to picking the perfect home. It’s important to understand how users view and interact with this information so you can create a map experience tailored specifically to your customers’ needs. Today we make this possible with the release of Analytics for Google Maps API for Business:

Just as Google Analytics shows you how visitors interact with your website, Analytics for Google Maps API for Business provides detailed information on how customers interact with maps on your website. Do customers have to pan and zoom to find what they need? How often is 45 degree imagery used? Should you consider using a different map type? Now this information is at your fingertips.

Analytics for Google Maps API for Business delivers reports for map interactions, services, the Places, and Street View. Make changes to your map and immediately see how these enhance user behavior, allowing you to quickly customize your map to the needs of your customers.

Analytics for Google Maps is a feature included with your license of Google Maps API for Business. You can enable Analytics for Google Maps API for Business for your maps with the click of a button in the Google Enterprise Support Portal. All information recorded is anonymized and aggregated to protect the privacy of users.

For more information on how to enable and access Analytics for Maps API for Business, please see the Maps API for Business Developer Guide. If you need further assistance, or have ideas for additional features you would love to see in Analytics for Maps API for Business, please contact the Google Enterprise Support team.