Google Enterprise Blog

Today's the day: signups open for free Google Message Security for K-12 schools

2009-07-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

Last week we announced we will begin globally offering email security free to current and new eligible K-12 Google Apps Education users that opt-in by July 2010 – and starting today eligible schools can learn how to opt-in to enable Google Message Security for their domain.

Google Message Security – powered by Postini – provides the capability for administrators to limit messages based on who they are from, where they are going, or the content they contain. Message rules can be applied to groups of users, allowing customization for different user sets (like younger students, older students, and teachers).

To further celebrate our support of K12, we launched the Google Apps Education Community site for educators and students to share and learn more about Google Apps, as well as the Google Apps Education resource center with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans – and we're committed to providing even more educational resources in the future, as the Google Apps Education community grows.

If you know of a K-12 school or educator who might benefit from this opportunity, please share this post with them. Many thanks for your ongoing support of Google Apps in education.

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education team

Building blocks: connecting Google Apps for Education with Blackboard

2009-07-16T12:02:00.000-07:00

We view Google Apps for Education as both a product and a platform. That's why we work hard to open up lots of integration points, letting our tools interact with other systems used by our Education customers.

For example, we've supported work that has integrated Google Apps into environments such as Moodle. We also share a large number of APIs to allow integration into our user management system, and many of our individual apps like Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Because we care so much about integration, we were excited to discover that Northwestern University has been working to integrate Google Apps Education Edition with Blackboard, one of the predominant providers of educational technology. Northwestern was one of the first schools to deploy Google Apps in 2007; it joined our Higher Education Customer Advisory Board as a founding member later that year.

This week at the BB World conference, Northwestern is unveiling a Blackboard Building Block called "Bboogle" that they have built and are releasing to the community as open source. Building Block includes single sign-on, automated account provisioning, and automated sharing of Google Documents and Calendars through Blackboard course sites.

According to Jonathan Smith, Software Architect at Northwestern, "I initiated our Google integration project because we were approached by a faculty member in anthropology who had been using Google Apps in his classes. In the past we had used wikis in history classes to allow students to work directly with primary source materials, and it occurred to me that Google Apps could support a much higher level of student and faculty collaboration. By integrating the applications into Blackboard we could make that kind of collaborative learning experience available to more of our students than ever before."

These images show the process of creating a link to a Google document....

...and the resulting link in the BlackBoard course site:

We love to see customers and partners innovating and integrating with our products. The power of Google Apps comes not only from Google's applications, but the ability to integrate them with other environments our customers use. Incorporating Google Docs and Sites into systems likeMoodle and Blackboard make it easier for student and professors to collaborate seamlessly.

Thanks to the team at Northwestern for this integration, and for opening it up for others to use. It's still early days, and Northwestern is still polishing the code, but check it out and let us know what you think.

Posted by Gabe Cohen, Product Manager, Google Apps team

Google Calendar Labs and our first Gmail Labs graduate

2009-07-14T11:45:00.001-07:00

Over the last year, Gmail Labs has let Apps early adopters try out a range of experimental instantly translating emails in other languages to undoing send on a potentially regrettable email, Gmail Labs provides a home for features that aren't quite ready for prime time, and gives the Gmail team an opportunity to get users' feedback on different features, quickly iterate on feature designs, and see what's popular with users. One feature that's been popular with users is about to graduate from Gmail Labs today: Tasks.

Using Tasks no longer requires enabling from the Labs tab. Now, just click "Tasks" under "Contacts" in the left nav of your Gmail account. To learn about the latest updates to Tasks, check out the Gmail team's announcement.

Given the success and popularity of Gmail Labs, we're now making Labs available in Google Calendar. Google Calendar Labs will not only make it possible for us to release experimental Calendar features early and often to users, but the new Calendar API will also let Google Apps enterprise customers extend calendaring capabilities in highly specialized and custom ways that meet the needs of their business and employees.

For Apps domains that have the "Turn on new features" option checked in the Google Apps Control panel, users can see the new Labs page in "Settings" upon logging into Google Calendar. Today's launch of Calendar Labs includes six new features, and as with Gmail, there is a feedback link to discuss these features and suggest new ones.

Both Tasks and Google Calendar Labs will be rolling out to Google Apps domains throughout the course of the day, so if you don't notice these features now, you should see them later today.

Posted by Ken Norton, Calendar Product Manager, Google Apps team

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Switching to Google Apps from Lotus Notes just got easier

2009-07-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

What do Fairchild Semiconductor, Hamilton Beach, JohnsonDiversey and Valeo have in common? Together they migrated nearly 50,000 Lotus Notes users to Google Apps.

Today we're making it easier for Lotus Notes users to switch to Google Apps. We're releasing 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 key features include:

Easy deployment Centrally administered server side migration process. No user intervention needed
No downtime Users can continue to use Notes even during the migration process. After they're migrated, Gmail will open Notes links in Lotus Notes
Global efficiency Migrate multiple offices simultaneously or separately. Assign administration controls at the organization and the office level as needed
Trackable reports Centralized event logging to manage & monitor migration across any number of Domino servers and sites

See it in action in this short video:

These features and more make Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes a simple and complete way to quickly switch your users to Google Apps. JohnsonDiversey used the tool in its recent migration of 10,000 employees, and the video below captures CIO Brent Hoag's satisfaction with the deployment process.

Google partner CapGemini relied on the tool to migrate Valeo, a 30,000-employee automotive supplier. 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."

If you'd like help with the migration process, or with overall project planning, deployment and training, several Google partners are ready to provide products and services to address your specific needs. If you're thinking about migrating your Domino applications to the cloud, this migration whitepaper will help guide your analysis.

If you're considering switching your users from Lotus Notes to Google Apps, talk to our sales team or sign up for a trial now. Or, if you're already a Google Apps Premier or Education Edition customer and want to migrate today, you can can learn more or download the migration tool here.

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Enterprise

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Google Earth Enterprise gets historical, two-dimensional, and nautical with version 3.2

2009-07-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

We're constantly adding useful and interactive functionality to our enterprise products, and Google Earth Enterprise is no exception. Today we're announcing the latest release of Google Earth Enterprise: version 3.2. Google Earth Enterprise allows customers to build private globes on their secure networks using the same technology that powers the public Google Earth. Version 3.2 delivers new features that allow government agencies and other organizations to apply the recent advances in the public version of Google Earth, such as historical imagery and underwater terrain, to their own data and operations.

Version 3.2 gives Google Earth Enterprise users the option of using a browser to view and interact with their private globes using the Google Earth API. This delivers the same fast, familiar, 3-D navigation that users get from Google Earth – but within a web browser rather than the standard client.

Another new addition is historical imagery in Google Earth Enterprise, making it easy for employees to view how a place or region has changed over time. Many of our customers have archives of imagery of a property or point of interest taken over a series of days, years – even decades. The 3.2 release allows customers to time-stamp the imagery, tracking changes over time to provide a handy historical reference.

With the new release, customers also have the option to build Mercator imagery tiles for any 2-D maps they create with Google Earth Enterprise. Mercator is a commonly used conformal projection for viewing tiles in the browser. The new release allows customers to easily overlay their tiles on top of Google's basemap for a 2-dimensional mashup of their own internal data and Google's. (Thanks again to Gerardus Mercator and his great work on the Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate in 1569!)

We've also added support for Enterprise users to process their own sub-surface terrain data, also known as bathymetry – something we shared in the public Google Ocean launch in February 2009. Using the Earth API or latest Google Earth Enterprise client, you can now navigate below sea level to visualize that data in your organization's globe too.

Customers who want to access Google Earth Enterprise 3.2 can email enterprise-operations@google.com for upgrade information. Not using GEE yet? See what Google Earth Enterprise has to offer.

Posted by Dylan Lorimer, Product Manager, Google Earth Enterprise

Help customers find their way with new Google Maps gadget

2009-07-07T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, I looked up directions to the hotel in Sacramento that I had booked for the Fourth of July weekend. As I had never been to that part of the state before, I was puzzled by the limited directions offered by their website - I had no idea whether I was approaching from the North, South, East or West or where the major highways were. What I needed were step-by-step directions from my exact starting point to the hotel that I could easily print and go.

With the new directions gadget from Google Maps, any business can offer just that. This simple gadget allows webmasters to add customized Google Maps directions to their business locations. With the directions gadget, you no longer need to type and update multiple sets of text directions. Let's face it: customers are only looking for directions from their specific location.

Google has made this process easy for you. The gadget allows you to pre-fill the "To" field with one or multiple addresses, a generic zip code or even a specific set of latitude-longitude coordinates. Customers are able to print their directions with a single click. And if they would prefer not to drive, the gadget also provides walking and public transit directions.

Take a look at how Legoland California, Emeril Lagasse, and Harvard University are using the gadget. And then test and create your own directions gadget here. For the many locations outside of the US, the gadget is available in 23 different languages.

If you're interested in learning more, head over to the Google Lat Long blog for a more detailed walk-through of the gadget's features.

Posted by Julie Zhou, Product Marketing Manager, Google Maps team

Google Apps Standard Edition: still free

2009-07-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

We've heard some questions about why the link to Google Apps Standard Edition disappeared from the Enterprise Apps home page, so we wanted to share the answer. As we explored a few design changes to the page, the link to Standard Edition was inadvertently dropped, although the free version of Apps was, as always, available here. We've put the link back where it belongs so that it's easy to find.

We have no intention of eliminating Standard Edition, and we apologize for any confusion.

In other news, we've taken Google Apps out of beta today. You can read more about that here.

Posted by Ellen Leanse, Google Enterprise team

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Paving the road to Apps adoption in large enterprises

2009-07-07T08:00:00.000-07:00

Google Apps has always been a compelling offering for small and medium sized companies, and they've accounted for much of our growth to 1.75 million businesses. Large enterprises can also get great results with Apps, as Fairchild Semiconductor and the dozens of other big companies that have Gone Google have discovered. Still, we appreciate that there have been some boulders along the road to adoption for the largest businesses in the world.

Since the beginning of the year, we've focused on making it as easy as possible for those large enterprises to switch to Google, and offline access, BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook support, and enterprise contact management were the dynamite that cleared the road to Apps.

Today we're paving the road. We're taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite.

We're also launching a tool that will be particularly useful to administrative support staff to screen and send email on behalf of others – a feature called email delegation. And to help customers comply with regulations that may exist specific to their industry, we're adding email retention so that IT administrators can set up policies to determine when email will be purged. Both retention and delegation are in testing with customers, and will start rolling out to all Premier edition domains over the next weeks.

Finally, we're continuing to implement additional procedures to ensure that our business customers enjoy even greater reliability: live replication of data to other locations for near-instant disaster recovery, and special handling of business users' data in our data center operations.

While we believe these features will be most useful to big companies, we hope they'll also help today's small business grow into tomorrow's global enterprise. To complement these new features, enterprise IT managers can access tools for switching to Google Apps in our Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes resource centers.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

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Template galleries for Google Apps domains

2009-07-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

Since we launched the public template gallery last year for Google Docs, people who use Google Apps have been asking if they could have their own template galleries to share templates (everything from branded presentation designs to document letterhead to spreadsheet templates) with their co-workers.

Today, we've enabled these template galleries for Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers. Anyone in your domain can submit templates created in Google Docs to your organization's own gallery. These templates will not be visible outside of your company domain. Templates can be any of the four document types in Docs (documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and even forms). Other people you work with can preview, use (making a copy of that template as a new document in their own account), and rate your templates.

Just like in the public template gallery, you'll be able to sort and narrow the templates by usage, rating, and document type. Administrators can also create categories of templates for the domain (for example: by function, region, or department) to keep templates organized.

Within Google, the most popular templates have been technical design documents and Google-branded presentation layouts. Teachers might share templates with other teachers in their school or district. For example, a teacher might submit a "Getting to Know You" form to send to students when school starts next year, and other teachers could use the template and customize it for their own classroom. Non-profits could create grant proposal templates that would give their employees a common starting point for proposals.

To submit a template, follow these steps:

Go to Google Docs from within your Google Apps account
Click New > From template to view your company's private gallery
On the upper right-hand side, click the "Submit a template" link

A few final notes: This feature is available in Google Apps Premier Edition and Education Edition only, and is available in all languages supported by Google Apps. Admins can configure the templates gallery service from within the Apps control panel (Control panel > Service settings > Docs > Templates).

Posted by Valerie Blechar, Software Engineer, Google Apps team

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Drag and drop, and organize your labels in Gmail

2009-07-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

Organizing email can be a challenge, especially in the workplace where it's not uncommon to get hundreds of messages a day. In Gmail, labels are key to organizing, archiving and filtering messages, so we've made a number of improvements to make labels more accessible and easier to organize.

New location

Labels are now located above the chat list in Gmail, grouped with default labels like Inbox and Drafts for quicker access (no more scrolling for those of us who keep a large chat list).

Hide and show

If you have labels that you don't regularly click on, you can hide them so they only appear when you click the "more" link. That way, your left nav is only filled with labels you consider to be a priority. Show, hide or delete labels by clicking the down-arrow to the left of a label.

To make changes to multiple labels at a time, go to the "Labels" tab under "Settings" where you can edit labels in bulk.

Drag and drop

We've added drag and drop capabilities that let you do a few things:

Hide and show labels by dragging and dropping them in and out of "more"
Instead of using the "Move to" button, drag messages into a label to label and archive in one step.
Instead of using the "Label" button, drag a label onto selected messages.

These updates are available across all editions of Google Apps.

For more details on this launch, check out the Gmail Team's announcement.

Posted by Joyce Sohn, Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps team

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Improvements to Google Apps contacts

2009-07-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

Today, we're happy to announce updates to contacts in Google Apps: new features that many of our enterprise customers have been asking for.

For starters, we've launched a new API that, when combined with the existing shared contacts API, gives administrators the ability to maintain an updated and detailed global address list in Google Apps.

We've also updated the Contacts interface throughout the Google Apps suite – particularly in Gmail – making it easier for employees to find and start collaborating with all other users on their company domain.

Global address list management

These GData APIs let administrators maintain and manage their company's global address list in Google Apps.

User profiles API

Administrators can retrieve and update profile information for all users on a company domain, giving companies the option to provide rich user information to make it easier for employees to find and contact each other.

Shared contacts API

This API (launched in December of 2008) lets administrators perform all of the above, but for users who do not have accounts provisioned in Google Apps, ensuring that all users (not just those with a Google Apps account) are accounted for in the company's global address list.

These APIs are available exclusively to Google Apps Premier Edition customers.

Enhancements to Contacts

Until today, the only entries that would appear in Contacts in Gmail were those that the user had either explicitly added or had previously emailed. Starting today, when you search for a name, you'll see relevant results from your company's entire global address list, not just people you've emailed with in the past.

We've also made some improvements to the Contacts interface. When administrators add user details (job title, office location, department, cost center, etc.) through the APIs above to the company's global address list, the additional information provided will also display, making it easier for users to get in touch with each other. This also ensures that you get the most updated contact for everyone in your company.

Posted by Florian Niemann, Engineer, Google Apps team

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Q2 2009 Spam Trends

2009-07-01T08:05:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: The spam data cited in this post is drawn from the network of Google email security and archiving services, powered by Postini, which provide email security to more than 50,000 organizations, including businesses of all sizes, government agencies, and educational institutions. To learn more about what the Gmail team is doing to keep spam out of your inboxes, check out this post.

Our "Spam Trend" update last quarter summarized the rise in both levels and types of spam, with new players and techniques entering the market. This quarter, proliferation continues, with an unpredictable pattern of drops and spikes as 2009 moves along. Overall, spam is measurably up: Q2'09 average spam levels are 53% higher than in Q1'09 and 6% higher than in Q2'08.

After last November's McColo ISP takedown, when spam volumes dropped by 70%, spammers worked overtime to fill the void. They succeeded: Within four months, spam levels rose back to pre-McColo levels. This upward trend continued through June 4, when another large ISP spam source, 3FN, was reported to have been dismantled. Spam volume immediately dropped 30% – not as extreme as McColo, but still significant. Although this created a sudden dip in spam levels, it also created an open invitation for opportunistic spammers to once again seize a market opportunity.

Over the coming months, we anticipate watching new players once again drive spam levels back up. Since June 4, spammers have already made up a significant amount of ground, climbing 14% from the initial drop.

Here's what the trend looked like, as tracked through Postini filters, over the past six months:

"Unpredictability" summarizes the overall trend as Q2'09 winds down and spammers test both new and "retro" techniques. For example, on June 18 we tracked a new attack that unleashed 50% of a typical day's spam volume in just two hours' time. This attack used a simple "newsletter" template – somewhat "old school" by today's spam standard – with malevolent links and images inserted into the content. Google's Postini filters detected more than 11,000 variants of this spam during those two hours. Because this spam enabled spoofing of the recipient domain (meaning the "from" field was falsified), distribution lists were especially hard-hit by this attack.

Resurgence of image spam

One of the other trends we're watching closely is the sudden popularity of "image spam" – a form of spam that rose to prominence in 2007, before most anti-spam filters learned how to block it. It's simple stuff: basic email with advertising content, usually containing a related image. They can also include malicious links or content – and either way, the large file size of an image spam can place a heavy load on an email network.

An image spam email might look something like this:

Evidence of the resurgence in image spam can be seen in the graph below, which shows that the actual size of spam messages, measured in bytes, is back on the rise:

There are a couple of possible explanations for the resurgence in image spam, despite the fact that most spam filters out there have adapted to the technique. One theory is that this wave is designed to test the defenses of the different spam filters out there, so that spammers can do statistical analysis on what subject lines and content have the highest probability of success.

Another is that there may be some new players entering the spam game, following the McColo and 3FN takedowns, and these new players are opening with some well-tested techniques. Either way, we're watching this trend and will share insights as we gain them in the weeks and months ahead.

Spike in payload viruses

June was also an active month for viruses sent as email attachments, otherwise known as "payload viruses." Volumes rose to their highest level in almost two years as spammers returned to yet another tried-and-true technique to expand their botnets.

As you can see in the chart below, June's activity is almost as high as the two-month payload virus surge seen in Q3'07. Fortunately, Google's Postini zero-hour heuristics detected this uprise early and kept payload attacks in the cloud and away from users' email networks.

Everything old might be new again

In summary, Q2'09 saw continued unpredictability and the resurgence of old-style spam attacks. Are spammers finally running out of original ideas? And if so, like Hollywood, are we now starting to see spam "remakes," based on originals of a few years ago? And what are spammers looking to accomplish as they unleash these remakes? Only time will tell.

For more information on how Google email security services, powered by Postini, can help your organization provide better spam protection and take a load off your network by halting spam in the cloud, visit www.google.com/postini.

Posted by Amanda Kleha, Google message security and archiving team

Updates to Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

2009-06-30T12:09:00.000-07:00

When we announced Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook a few weeks ago, we committed to improving it over time to make the Outlook experience on Apps as similar to the experience on Exchange as possible. We first focused on making mail, contacts, and calendar work really well, because those are the features that the more than one hundred companies who tested Apps Sync before launch asked for. Today we wanted to share a couple of updates on our progress in improving compatibility.

We worked closely with Microsoft to address two issues that we shared recently, and we appreciate their help. The Windows Desktop Search feature now works, so you can choose between the native Outlook search, which has been available since launch, and Windows Desktop Search to find information in Outlook. We've also worked with them to add support for accessing Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in.

We also added an option to allow users to enable or disable autoarchive during installation, improved the two-way synchronization of notes in contacts, and improved our installation to make it more clear where data in other Outlook accounts is located. To access these additional features and fixes, current users are being updated automatically to the latest version, and it's available immediately to new users here. As always, you can find more detailed information about Apps Sync in our help center, and we're going to continue to add more advanced features in the coming months.

Since the release of this tool, many businesses have asked us for more information about switching from Microsoft Exchange, so we've pulled together a Google Apps resource site that centralizes information for businesses coming from an Exchange environment. It has information about Google Apps, answers to your due diligence questions, customer feedback from those who have switched before you, and more.

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

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Apps Status Dashboard goes global in 24 new languages

2009-06-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

We launched the Google Apps Status Dashboard in February as a tool to help us communicate better about the performance status of our Apps products. We've received a lot of positive feedback from customers, and we've been working to make the Dashboard even more useful.

Today we're taking the next step and making the Dashboard available in 24 new languages. Take a look at the status of our Apps in Español or in 日本語. Our announcements on the Dashboard will be available in all supported languages, and the language you see will correspond with your settings and preferences. There may be times when we'll give you a link to additional details in English or a smaller subset of languages in the interest of communicating as quickly as we can, but you'll always find an announcement about the current status of our Apps products in the language you select.

The Dashboard is now available in the following languages: English, Czech, Danish, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukranian, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

We encourage you to check out the Dashboard and keep it handy for the next time you want to check on the performance of our Apps.

Posted by Matt Drake, Software Engineer

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Guest post: "Boise State takes the cake with Google Apps"

2009-06-23T10:14:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Brian Bolt from Boise State University's Office of Information Technology as our guest blogger today. Boise State University recently selected Google Apps Education Edition to address messaging and collaboration needs for more than 20,000 students, staff, and faculty users, realizing drastic cost savings and reducing countless IT hours.

To hear more about how schools like Boise State are using Google Apps, Google is hosting a series of free education-focused webinars starting on Thursday, June 25 with a discussion led by Arizona State University on Thursday, June 25. We hope you'll join us!

In early 2007, we at Boise State University learned of Arizona State University's deployment of Google Apps Education Edition to their student population. At that time, we were at a crossroads between upgrading email for employees and students and pressure to change the email application that was in place since 1996. We recognized ASU's move to Google Apps for students as a shift in application delivery to supported end-users – the move to the "cloud" of Internet-delivered services and support.

By choosing Google Apps for Education, Boise State could redirect resources and personnel away from an ever increasing drain on budget dollars and support time, to other critical education-focused applications and still have a leading edge communication and collaboration platform.

Boise State administrators and faculty were visionary in agreeing with the movement of email, calendaring and document collaboration to Google. Collaboration between students, between students and faculty and between staff are all now easily facilitated. It was as big a change as the integration between email and calendaring in the late 1990s. The early 2000 mantra of "anywhere, anytime on the web" was finally a reality.

The rationale for deploying Google Apps for Education to Boise State students was predicated on the University's strategic vision of "Charting the Course," which defines a road map for Boise State University's goal to become a Metropolitan Research University of Distinction. Taking our directive from the University's Vision Statement, we contacted Google to begin the process of providing Google Apps for Education to the campus.

We started with the task of moving all student accounts to Google Apps in 2007. This equated to the migration of more than 20,000 accounts. The student account move was smooth and adopted with minimal support. The students were very adaptive to change. The major hurdles of a mail system migration were not seen by the end user group, as we linked authentication and account creation to the University identity management system.

Soon after we successfully implemented the student mail system, we contemplated the possibility of moving faculty and staff to Google Apps. The prospect of migrating faculty and staff from an enterprise messaging system to Google Apps was altogether different from displacing the simple mail system our students used. We accepted the idea that a transition would be more difficult than the student move, but we believed that once the tools were in place, and people acclimated to the functions and features of Gmail and Calendaring, the University would be in a better position to communicate and collaborate.

Security was the initial hurdle put in front of the move by most of the colleges and departments. We began an education campaign to explain that not only was Google a leader and innovator in the application area, they excelled at security and privacy in the services they provided to their educational partners. Google has offices of information security personnel compared to the handful at Boise State.

Now that the migration of our 3,000 faculty and staff is complete, we have a new realization: deploying Google Apps and reallocating resources is just the beginning. We have new tools to explore and share; collaboration was the unexpected silver lining of the Google Apps suite. Having Google Apps as a keystone technology establishes the foundation from which we can support the University's strategic vision of Charting the Course and its commitment to academic excellence, public engagement, vibrant culture and exceptional research.

After our migration was done, we hosted a celebratory lunch for those involved in the project. All of the dishes were delicious, but the highlight was the cake, courtesy of Tonya, our in-house pastry chef. Yes, it is entirely edible, and it tasted amazing too!

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team

Google Apps for Education webinar with Arizona State University

2009-06-17T14:37:00.000-07:00

We're passionate about learning here at Google and always revel in the innovations that educators drive when they work with Google Apps. To share some of the latest innovations we've seen in this arena, we're hosting a free, live educational webinar to show the power of Google Apps Education Edition. In this session you'll hear directly from Arizona State University, the first school to deploy Google Apps Education Edition. Learn about their 2006 decision to go with Google Apps, the results they've seen so far, and their future plans for working and teaching with Google Apps. Details follow:

Google Apps for Education
Thursday, June 25, 2009
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT

We hope you'll join us to learn how Google Apps can help institutions like ASU save money and IT resources, all while making it easier for teachers to innovate and for students to learn and work together.

Read today's news about Google in education, and what schools are learning as they start using Google Apps.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education marketing team

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What's different with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

2009-06-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

We built Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook to make it as easy as possible for people who love Microsoft Outlook to continue to use it when their company switches to Google Apps. In developing the feature, we focused on allowing Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. But we also recognized that many people add plug-ins to Outlook for additional features. For that reason, we worked to ensure that as many plug-ins as possible continue to work, like salesforce.com and WebEX.

Unfortunately, some plug-ins don't yet work with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, and we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the more common ones:

Microsoft Office Outlook Connector
Acrobat PDF Maker Toolbar
Outlook Change Notifier

If you would like to continue to use these plug-ins, uninstall Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, and the uninstaller will re-enable the plug-ins.

We'd also like to highlight another known issue that may be of interest. Programs that interact directly with the Outlook data file, including Windows Desktop Search and PGP.com's encryption plugin, don't currently work well with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Windows Desktop Search will not properly index Google Apps Sync data files, so in order to stop indexing from running indefinitely, the Google Apps Sync installer disables it. We recommend using the default Outlook search.

If you want to re-enable Windows Desktop Search for your Outlook data files, you can uninstall Google Apps Sync. If you are using Google Apps Sync version 1.0.22.1945 or lower, you must first install the latest version and then uninstall Google Apps Sync to re-enable indexing.

You can find more information about what's different in our help center. We're working with Microsoft and other partners to help fix these issues and support additional Outlook features like multiple calendars. We'll keep you posted on our progress.

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Innovation in Education

2009-06-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

With Google Apps, education can now easily move beyond the walls of a classroom. These days we see more and more teachers using Google Apps to engage students across the country, and even around the globe, in a new way of collaborative learning.

Recently, one New York school used Google Sites to hold an event bringing students, teachers, parents, and other guests from around the world together for a conversation about the future of education. The event, "Dot To Dot," was held live at IS 339, a public middle school in the Bronx, and was broadcast live through streaming video on its site.

All 67 of the school's teachers and hundreds of its students presented projects using videos, blogs, Google Docs and Google Sites. The event was a showcase of student voices, addressing topics ranging from the environment and how we affect our ecosystem, students' vision of freedom, and international human rights and genocide.

Since IS 339 started using Google Apps in 2007, it has fostered an environment of creative expression, responsibility, and collaboration among its students and teachers. IS 339 uses Google Apps for innovative educational practices such as student-run businesses, "good behavior" currency credits that can be used at the school store (also run on Google Apps), and group projects using Google Docs and Sites. Administration has also benefited from the efficiency that Google's web apps have helped accelerate.

Student progress and grading is now a collaborative process using Google Forms and Spreadsheets so that students can have a community of teachers supporting them. The results speak for themselves. In the past five years, IS 339 has moved off of New York State's failing schools list, and its students have moved from 9% to 60% on grade level in math, and from 12% to 40% on grade level in literacy.

When you combine Google Apps and inspirational educators, the results speak for themselves: ease of collaboration and innovation. Kudos to IS339 and the growing community of educators expanding what's possible in learning with the power of Google Apps.

Posted by Ashley Chandler, User Operations for Google Docs and Google Sites

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Serena Software on switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps

2009-06-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Ron Brister, Senior Manager of Global IT Operations, and Arron Privatsky, System Administrator, of Serena Software as our guest bloggers today. Serena Software, a leading provider of software to accelerate application development, helps IT departments keep pace with the demands of the businesses they support. Serena’s tools automate software development processes and help business users create powerful mashups – without requiring any coding. Serena is a privately owned company with 29 offices in 14 countries and 800 employees. Founded more than 25 years ago, Serena has more than 15,000 customers including 96 of the Fortune 100.

Serena Software recently selected Google Apps Premier Edition for its messaging and collaboration needs, saving more than $750,000 and countless IT hours. Members of Serena Software will be on hand next Thursday, June 18, to talk about that experience in a live webcast. Register here.

My name is Ron Brister, and I’m Senior Manager of Global IT Operations at Serena Software. I'm here with Arron Privatsky, System Administrator for Serena. Serena is a leading provider of software to accelerate application development. Because we are software experts, it’s no surprise that we are always looking for the best solutions.

For us, it was becoming increasingly clear that our messaging infrastructure was lacking. Inbox storage space was a constant complaint. Server maintenance was extremely time-consuming, and backups were inconsistent. Then we found that – calculating additional licenses of Microsoft Exchange, client access licenses for users, disaster recovery software, and additional disk storage space to increase mailbox quotas to 1.5GB – staying with our existing provider would have cost us upwards of $1 million. That was a nearly impossible number to justify with executives.

We thought about replacing our on-premise solution, but to tell the truth, we were skeptical. I, personally, had been a Microsoft admin for 15 years, and Microsoft technologies were ingrained in my thought processes. But Google Apps provided many pluses: Gmail, Google’s Postini messaging security software and 25 GB of mailbox space, as well as greater uptime and 24/7 phone support.

Apps also offered reliable mobile access and included other Google productivity and collaboration applications, such as Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations – all at $50 per user per year. The cost savings would amount to a whopping $750,000 per year. All this added up to the ability to save the company money and to transition to a more advanced, flexible infrastructure.

Once we selected Google Apps, we decided on a “Big Bang” migration. Employees would switch over on their own, migrating their old emails to Gmail if they chose to, or simply starting with a clean inbox. We did not support local email clients, opting to support only the Gmail web interface through Mozilla Firefox to best accommodate the company's mixed Linux, Mac and PC environment.

We also enlisted four small groups of early adopters who would try the Google solution first, and then assist IT and support their peers during the full-scale migration. We used a lot of Google’s existing support documents to help us during the migration.

The overall move to Google Apps took all of six hours. We waited for the phones to ring, but all we heard was silence – in fact, we sat there playing meebo for quite a while – and still, nothing happened. We cut the cord all in one stroke to avoid the hassle of living in two environments at once. We made the switch globally, all in one day – and, due to the advantages of this cloud computing solution, we’ve never looked back.

I expect that what I am saying is probably setting off a lot of questions in your head. We welcome you to join us for a live webcast to learn more:

Thursday, June 18, 2009
1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m PDT / 5:00 p.m. GMT

We'll give you more details and take questions on our recent switch to Google Apps. We hope that you'll join us.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

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Google Apps deployment just got easier

2009-06-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

For many businesses, switching to a new email and calendar platform can seem like a daunting task. What about the technical issues? What about getting users on board? Well, for businesses that want to quickly take advantage of all the benefits and innovations of Google Apps, we have great news.

Today, we're announcing the launch of our new Google Apps Deployment for Enterprise site, which we built using Google Sites. On the site, we've gathered several resources to help businesses make the move to Google Apps faster and easier. Businesses with many employees and complex IT environments, in particular, will find these time-saving resources useful in managing the transition to Google Apps.

The site's resources are grouped into two categories: deployment planning and user adoption. The planning resources help IT administrators, project planners, and others become familiar with all the Google Apps features and tools available, determine a deployment strategy, and track deployment activities.

We also describe our Google Guides Program, a peer-to-peer technical support methodology, which can make your deployment easier. Whether you choose to handle deployment entirely in-house or enlist the aid of a Google Solutions Provider, we think you'll find these planning resources essential for understanding the deployment process and ensuring a successful outcome.

At Google, we believe that better communication leads to better results, so we've also designed a host of user adoption resources to make it easier for businesses to communicate to their users. For example, our communications and quick-start templates can be quickly customized based on both the platform from which users are migrating (Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes) and the features being enabled, and our eLearning videos can help users get up to speed at their own pace.

Here's a look at our current set of resources:

But this is just the beginning. We'll continue to add new resources to the site and enhance the material that's already there. We developed many of the site's resources by working closely with some of our Enterprise customers, and we want to continue in that spirit of cooperation. We'd especially like to hear about your best practices and new approaches to making a Google Apps deployment faster and easier.

So check out our new deployment site and send your feedback and ideas to deployment-site-feedback@googleapps.com.

Posted by Matt Ceglia, Technical Writer, Google Enterprise

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Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar

2009-06-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Over the last year, we've had a razor sharp focus on making it as easy as possible for businesses to deploy Google Apps. In the last few months you've seen some of the results, from offline Gmail to user directory synchronization to full Blackberry® interoperability.

Today we're excited remove another key barrier to enterprise adoption of Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions.

Many business users prefer Gmail's interface and features to products they've used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we've developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail's web interface to access their information when they're not on their work computer.

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.

Watch it work in this 3 minute video:

Here's what the IT execs at Genentech and Avago have to say about using this capability:

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.'"

If your business hasn't started using Google Apps yet, you can learn more about Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. If you already use Google Apps Premier or Education Edition, go ahead and give the plug-in a try.

Posted by Eric Orth, Software Engineer, Google Apps team

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Google Apps will be (literally) in the cloud June 24th

2009-06-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

We're usually very serious when we describe our take on cloud computing, but on Wednesday, June 24, we'll be letting our hair down and having fun with computing in the cloud. We've teamed up with Virgin America to launch the Day in the Cloud Challenge – the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground.

If you fly for business or for pleasure, you've probably noticed that more and more airlines are rolling out in-flight WiFi, allowing you easy access internet-based applications like Google Apps. Imagine instant messaging with your colleagues and friends, co-editing a proposal, or responding to personal and work email in-flight.

Many of us have used Google Apps onboard airplanes, and we started asking ourselves: what better way to demonstrate the value of cloud computing than by using Google Apps from 35,000 feet – far from our homes and offices and, literally, in the cloud. The idea for the "Day in the Cloud" was born.

Whether you're flying that day or not, we invite you to take an hour out of your busy day to play. Visit www.dayinthecloud.com to learn more.

Posted by Vivian Leung, Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps

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Working with Google: Business tips to help you engage customers, monetize your site and work more efficiently

2009-06-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

On this blog, we usually focus on helping you make the most of the products we've designed specifically with IT departments in mind. But Google has lots of other tools that other parts of your organization (such as the sales and marketing teams) might find useful.

So, in this post, we thought we'd go through a quick summary of the wide range of Google products that can help you do business. We've grouped these tips into three buckets: methods to optimize your website, details about how your company info can get listed on Google properties and finally, ways to improve your business operations.

OPTIMIZE YOUR WEBSITE

Tip 1: Help customers find you with Google Maps

Pinpoint your business by embedding a Street View image on your website to show customers your storefront, office, building, parking facilities or anything else at the street level, or provide interactive door-to-door driving directions with a simple gadget. For a complete store locator solution, check out Google Maps API Premier

Tip 2: Engage users when they visit your site

Awaken and strengthen the community that visits your website by enriching it with social features. You can choose from a gallery of gadgets to add commenting, ratings and reviews, opinion polls, and more to your site. Learn more

Tip 3: Help visitors find what they're looking for

Add a customized Google-powered search box so that your visitors can easily find what they're looking for on your site. You can choose to show targeted ads alongside search results and earn revenue while helping visitors find what they're looking for with AdSense for Search, or you can purchase Google Site Search to offer your visitors an ad-free search experience.

Tip 4: Earn revenue from ads targeted to your content
Google AdSense enables website publishers of all sizes to display targeted ads alongside their online content and earn money. Sign up for AdSense and get access to Google's vast network of advertisers. If you're already selling ads directly to advertisers, learn how you can better manage your online sales and ad inventory with one of Google's ad serving solutions.

Tip 5: Measure website conversions on your website using Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool to track how visitors interact with your website. You can set up "Goals" in Analytics to track how many visitors complete a desired action, such as submitting a contact form or making a purchase. This lets you see your website's ROI and optimize your marketing efforts. Check out this post for a tutorial on how set up Goals for your site.

Tip 6: Increase your conversion rates with Website Optimizer

Every web page has room for improvement when it comes to conversions. Testing a few simple changes with Google Website Optimizer can radically increase your site's conversion rate. Try it now.

GET LISTED ON GOOGLE PROPERTIES

Tip 7: Put your business on Google Maps

People search for businesses on Google Maps and Google.com every day. Make sure your business is easy to find and your listing information is up-to-date by visiting the Local Business Center at www.google.com/lbc. It's free, and with the new dashboard feature, you can see how popular your business is on Google, where people drive from to get to you, and how they search to find you. Check out this video to learn more.

Tip 8: Submit all of your content

Google can also help you reach out to the world by distributing your content on Google Web Search, Product Search, iGoogle, and more. Learn how Google’s free products can make your online investments go further with increased distribution, traffic and monetization.

IMPROVE YOUR BUSINESS OPERATIONS

Tip 9: Simplify your IT environment, encourage innovation and cut costs

Managing email and other messaging software with multiple servers can be a headache. By switching to Google Apps, you can enjoy 99.9% uptime and take advantage of Google's data center infrastructure to ensure your information is secure. With your systems online, new features are automatically incorporated and collaboration can be done at a fraction of the cost of existing setups. Learn more

Tip 10: Archive corporate email in a central and searchable repository

Many businesses rely on backup tapes or .pst files to serve as their email archive. Searching through these sources can be time consuming and resource intensive. To minimize your IT operating burden and protect your business from costly e-discovery projects, you can archive email on-line in a central and searchable location with Google Message Discovery. Learn more

Tip 11: View and style mapping data with Google Earth Pro

If your business has GIS (Geographic Information System) data then use Google Earth Pro to view this map data with built-in GIS data import tools. You can also share styled map data quickly with colleagues and clients with Google Earth as a backdrop, leveraging Google’s comprehensive mapping data to make quick, location specific decisions. Learn more

Tip 12: Easily locate ALL of your internal documents using the Google Search Appliance 6.0
Your company’s internal search system can be just as good as Google’s – and just as easy to use. The Google Search Appliance (GSA) provides universal search for business, indexing all company content in a customizable way. The Google Search Appliance can search intranets, web servers, portals, file shares, databases, content management systems, and real-time data in business applications – and serve it up to employees in integrated, easy-to-navigate results. The new version of the GSA – GSA 6.0 – which just premiered yesterday, can now search billions of documents and provides rich customization features. Learn more

Posted by Debbie Leight, Google Apps team

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Introducing Google Search Appliance 6.0: The Story Behind (GSA)n

2009-06-02T07:54:00.000-07:00

Today we're announcing the launch of the latest version of the Google Search Appliance, GSA 6.0. We've packed it full of so many new features that it's difficult to even count them. Check out the videos linked below to see some highlights, and I'll tell you how we got to this point -- the origins of (GSA)n.

As you might know, last August, we launched "10 million docs in a box ". Building on the premise of scale with simplicity, we (the engineering team) challenged ourselves to see how much further we could go, while still keeping the architecture extremely simple. After many late-night sessions spent diagramming on the whiteboards and chugging cappuccinos, we had a breakthrough.

The end result was a new architecture: (GSA)ⁿ. When we tested it out, the product manager was pretty excited about all the new features and search power. He was used to hearing about the millions of docs we could handle – but this time we were going to push it to a new realm: billions.

The idea was simple; build technology to connect as many appliances as you'd like, whether in one location or separated across departments or even across continents - and still provide a unified set of results to the end-user – the employee searching for an elusive document or piece of information. This would not only give our customers unparalleled ability to scale, but enable them to integrate all the data in their organizations. Information doesn’t do you much good if you can’t find it! That was our guiding principle.

One of our beta customers, MTCSC Inc., really needs the geographic integration. When we caught up with them, MTCSC was in the midst of deploying over 50 GSAs all over the world for a federal customer, connecting to over 2,500 data sources and consisting of data on websites, file shares, databases, and SharePoint servers. The new GSA 6.0 architecture is now helping them integrate information from the varied data centers to provide users with a single, unified set of results.

So imagine there is a database that might “live” in Egypt, some documents in a data center in Sydney, and a fileshare whose homebase is Los Angeles. The new GSA 6.0 integration can handle searching through all those data stores and give the employee who is looking a simple page of search results – one that looks as easy to use as Google.com – even though the backend search is really complicated.

And, since we were feeling ambitious, we added a Ranking Framework (where administrators can easily feed in server logs and other enterprise-specific information to improve relevance of search results), multiple new biasing options, and an administrative API to provide more control for automation of common tasks. We also added support for both early binding and late binding, providing organizations with flexible security policies to meet their needs.

The bottom line: safer, higher-quality, more customizable enterprise search with (GSA)ⁿ.

This morning, both Google and our customers, including MTCSC, spoke at an event on all the new developments leading to (GSA)ⁿand the 6.0 version. We talked so much about searching a billion documents, we decided to try something we’ve never seen done before: set up and showcase the actual infrastructure required to search a billion docs, and you can see it here. It is surprisingly small and simple, and pretty cool to know that we can now take the amount of content in the entire Google.com index in the year 2000 (when Google.com was searching though just a billion docs), and pack it into a server rack built that could fit in the corner of my living room. And I have a normal-sized living room.

Posted by Shamim Alpha, Enterprise Search Engineer

Learn more about the Google Search Appliance 6.0 at google.com/gsa

New for local business owners: the Google Maps LBC dashboard

2009-06-02T07:30:00.000-07:00

If your enterprise maintains one or more physical locations, you may already know that roughly 80% of consumers use search to find local businesses. But unless those customers are also visiting your website directly, you may not know much about how those customers are finding you, or where they're coming from when they visit one of your locations.

That's because your site is just a part of your entire web presence. Users of Google Maps and Google Search, for example, may also be interacting with your local listing on Google. And while there are plenty of great tools out there (like Google Analytics) to measure traffic to your site, there isn't any way to measure how customers are interacting with other elements of your web presence like your listing.

That is, until today. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) tool that will open up exactly that kind of data to business owners.

This is the first time this kind of data has ever been made available to business owners, and we think you'll find it highly useful.

If you're interested in learning more, head over to the Official Google Blog for a more detailed overview or the Lat Long blog for a walk-through of the dashboard's features. And be sure press the play button, below, to see things in action.

Posted by Amer Shahnawaz, Software Engineer, Local Business Center