Showing posts with label partners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label partners. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Google Reseller Program sets new standards of excellence for partners
Resellers are one of the key drivers of customer adoption of Google Apps, Earth, Maps, and Enterprise Search. Over the last few years, the Google Reseller Program has grown to include over 3,000 resellers across 70 countries. We are excited to see our partners share our commitment to customer success. We will continue investing in our Reseller Program to ensure that all of our partners have the support and technical expertise they need to enable successful customer deployments.
Beginning today, we will start to recognize high-performing partners as Premier Resellers. Authorized Resellers remain a core focus for our Reseller program, and we will continue to invest in resources, tools and training to help Authorized Resellers succeed. For Authorized Resellers to become Premier Resellers, we have an objective set of eligibility criteria based on revenue, technical expertise and customer success. We are committed to working with each of our resellers to help them meet these specific qualifications.
We're also introducing additional categorizations to help customers identify resellers who focus on specific Google products and specific size companies.
As our reseller partners continue to help customers succeed, we hope these new standards will help them strengthen their business by providing clear benchmarks for them to strive for and meet. Current and prospective Google Resellers can learn more about the different categories and about becoming a Premier Reseller, including eligibility criteria and benefits, by visiting our Google Reseller Program website.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Directski.com goes Google
Posted by Ronan Hughes, CTO at Directski.com
Editor's Note: Next up, we’d like to welcome Ronan Hughes, Chief Technical Officer at Directski.com, a web based travel company based in Dublin. Directski.com migrated to Google Apps six months ago with the help of Google Apps Authorized Reseller, Baker Security & Networks. Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google Cloud Calculator.
Directski.com have been in business for over ten years, with a mission to make ski holidays more affordable for all. As a 100% web based company, Directski.com doesn’t have glossy brochures, expensive middlemen, high street shops or call centers. We’ve developed a market leading website that has been designed specifically for the sale of ski holidays. We have 30 full time employees and large numbers of seasonal staff that provide ski packages to over 200 European ski destinations.
Effective use of technology has been a key driver and cornerstone of our success. For example, we have used open source products to provide us with scalable, flexible and secure IT systems that have allowed us to grow rapidly but in a cost effective and pragmatic manner. We are always thinking about how technology can simplify and enhance our business processes so that we continually live up to our mission of helping our customers to “ski for less.”
Recently we examined how cloud computing could help us keep this advantage over our competitors. One product that quickly caught our attention was Google Apps and we implemented it across our organisation. The migration to Google Apps was seamless and our employees love it. It’s a huge improvement on our old system and it simply takes care of itself. Our employees find it very intuitive and the combination of Gmail, video sharing, chat and Google Docs allows for great team collaboration across our 5 offices.
Google Apps has numerous advantages for us; it has helped us control our costs, allowing us to focus on the core IT projects that will will add value for our customers, and, in turn, for our business. It is easy to use and offers cutting-edge functionality. Required training is minimal which is very important to us given the large number of seasonal staff we employ. Being a fast-paced, nimble travel company, accessibility is of paramount importance to our team and Google Apps provides this for us.
We’re so impressed with our migration to Google Apps that we’ve put together a quick video to tell you more! We would recommend Google Apps to any faced paced, innovative company.
Effective use of technology has been a key driver and cornerstone of our success. For example, we have used open source products to provide us with scalable, flexible and secure IT systems that have allowed us to grow rapidly but in a cost effective and pragmatic manner. We are always thinking about how technology can simplify and enhance our business processes so that we continually live up to our mission of helping our customers to “ski for less.”
Recently we examined how cloud computing could help us keep this advantage over our competitors. One product that quickly caught our attention was Google Apps and we implemented it across our organisation. The migration to Google Apps was seamless and our employees love it. It’s a huge improvement on our old system and it simply takes care of itself. Our employees find it very intuitive and the combination of Gmail, video sharing, chat and Google Docs allows for great team collaboration across our 5 offices.
Google Apps has numerous advantages for us; it has helped us control our costs, allowing us to focus on the core IT projects that will will add value for our customers, and, in turn, for our business. It is easy to use and offers cutting-edge functionality. Required training is minimal which is very important to us given the large number of seasonal staff we employ. Being a fast-paced, nimble travel company, accessibility is of paramount importance to our team and Google Apps provides this for us.
We’re so impressed with our migration to Google Apps that we’ve put together a quick video to tell you more! We would recommend Google Apps to any faced paced, innovative company.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Celebrating small businesses and integrated, easy-to-use web tools
In honor of National Small Business Week, we’d like to take time this week to share ways that Google Apps and the Google Apps Marketplace can help small businesses work more productively and efficiently.
Today, we’re highlighting a few of the Small Business Web apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, and how our customers run their businesses on them every day. Google shares the Small Business Web’s dedication to providing tools that have enterprise-grade functionality, as well as align with small businesses’ priorities.
Apps that work together
Particularly for companies without a dedicated IT team or person, the list of necessary business tools can quickly become unmanageable. Web apps that provide deep integrations with Google Apps and with each other are especially useful for growing businesses that don’t have time to manage multiple, distinct applications.
Particularly for companies without a dedicated IT team or person, the list of necessary business tools can quickly become unmanageable. Web apps that provide deep integrations with Google Apps and with each other are especially useful for growing businesses that don’t have time to manage multiple, distinct applications.
Olark lets customers live chat with website visitors directly from the Gmail interface through Google Talk, and provides easy access to chat transcripts. Peter Macaulay of KitchenwareDirect.com.au says, “The ability to live chat with customers without leaving the Google Apps interface is a huge productivity advantage. The simple and elegant implementation meant we were up and running in a matter of minutes. Staff members are easily able to set their availability for chat, enabling them to easily multi-task.”
WORKetc is another app that makes Gmail into the front end workspace, but for CRM, project management, and customer support. It let’s you easily share emails related to particular projects with relevant team members without forwarding or copying other email addresses. D. Hogan of Varis Energy says, “Any emails that need to be shared with my team get tagged in the WORKetc gadget that is built right into Gmail. This immediately lets everyone else who is assigned to a project or lead have access to the new information from the received email.”
Access all the time
As compared to larger businesses, small businesses are even less suited to managing servers, and tend to have many employees on the road or in non-office locations. Accessing their data and documents from anywhere, on any Internet-connected device is a core benefit of using web-based tools like Google Docs. OfficeDrop digitizes paper documents to make them text-searchable in Google Docs. Greg Skidmore of Belpointe Asset Management says, “Each month we send a box of paper files to OfficeDrop and have them scanned directly into Google Docs. If I have a document that I need scanned right away, I use OfficeDrop’s scanning software, ScanDrop, and upload it immediately.”
As compared to larger businesses, small businesses are even less suited to managing servers, and tend to have many employees on the road or in non-office locations. Accessing their data and documents from anywhere, on any Internet-connected device is a core benefit of using web-based tools like Google Docs. OfficeDrop digitizes paper documents to make them text-searchable in Google Docs. Greg Skidmore of Belpointe Asset Management says, “Each month we send a box of paper files to OfficeDrop and have them scanned directly into Google Docs. If I have a document that I need scanned right away, I use OfficeDrop’s scanning software, ScanDrop, and upload it immediately.”
Easy to Use
Small business owners and employees often wear a lot of hats and they’ve asked for solutions that are easy to learn and use. Michael Bower of Michael Bower Digital says, “I always need to know where my money is, without wasting time organizing my paperwork. As my business grew, I was losing control of my cashflow. Both Google Apps and FreshBooks have just enough features to keep my workflow and invoicing organized, allowing me to focus on my work.”
Small business owners and employees often wear a lot of hats and they’ve asked for solutions that are easy to learn and use. Michael Bower of Michael Bower Digital says, “I always need to know where my money is, without wasting time organizing my paperwork. As my business grew, I was losing control of my cashflow. Both Google Apps and FreshBooks have just enough features to keep my workflow and invoicing organized, allowing me to focus on my work.”
These are just a few examples of the many Small Business Web app vendors in the Google Apps Marketplace who provide the functionality and integrations a small business needs. Over 30 Google Apps Marketplace apps have already joined the Small Business Web and declared their commitment to helping small businesses focus on what they do best. They include:
We celebrate National Small Business Week to recognize the importance of small businesses for promoting a healthy economy, and we’re excited to help them continue to grow and succeed through the smart use of technology.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Broadway Malyan improves accessibility and lowers costs by going Google
Editor’s note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps. Today we’ll hear from Ali Ball, CIO of Broadway Malyan. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator.
Broadway Malyan is an award-winning international practice of architects, urbanists and designers with a highly dispersed workforce. Headquartered in the U.K, we have over 500 employees working across 13 offices throughout the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The practice also has project offices in Baku and Edinburgh, and associated offices across Europe. In September 2010 we made the decision to switch to Google Apps with the support of Cloudreach, a UK-based Google Apps Authorized reseller and Cloud solutions system integrator. They have extensive experience in migrating businesses to Google Apps, and place a particular emphasis on managing business change and application development.
Our main motivation for moving to the cloud was to simplify our IT infrastructure and improve accessibility. After consultation from Cloudreach, we felt that Google Apps would provide exactly what we needed in terms of a greatly simplified service for our global user base and the accessibility that our mobile users require. We had recently upgraded to Microsoft Exchange 2010, however there were some major operational costs involved in running that platform. Despite those recent upgrade costs, there was still a significant financial advantage in moving directly to Google Apps.
From a day-to-day perspective, we were able to introduce our users to a new way of working through the real time collaboration in Google Docs. This method of working helps us significantly when building proposals or customer presentations. Giving users the ability to collaborate on documents and presentations online, and also use the chat and video features has not only increased our efficiency, but it has also saved us money by reducing the amount of travel required.
With Google Apps, the average user’s inbox storage has increased significantly from 1Gb to 25Gb meaning they never have to delete an email again. Plus, with Gmail’s built-in search feature they can find an email or chat message in an instant.
We have also implemented a mixture of Google Groups and Google Sites as a direct replacement for public folders, which will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
We’ve already saved a significant amount of money by moving to Google Apps, but I estimate savings will continue to increase in the future since we’ll no longer have to carry out upgrades to server-based applications, or spend management time on it. For example we no longer have to buy care packs for all of our Microsoft Exchange servers, or worry about purchasing new disks for the storage arrays when we reach capacity. To accomplish what we have with Google Apps using traditional hosted solutions would be almost impossible, and certainly cost-prohibitive. We’ve also made ourselves less dependent on office infrastructure. Everything now runs smoothly, with no intervention from us.
Posted by Ali Ball, Broadway Malyan
Broadway Malyan is an award-winning international practice of architects, urbanists and designers with a highly dispersed workforce. Headquartered in the U.K, we have over 500 employees working across 13 offices throughout the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The practice also has project offices in Baku and Edinburgh, and associated offices across Europe. In September 2010 we made the decision to switch to Google Apps with the support of Cloudreach, a UK-based Google Apps Authorized reseller and Cloud solutions system integrator. They have extensive experience in migrating businesses to Google Apps, and place a particular emphasis on managing business change and application development.
Our main motivation for moving to the cloud was to simplify our IT infrastructure and improve accessibility. After consultation from Cloudreach, we felt that Google Apps would provide exactly what we needed in terms of a greatly simplified service for our global user base and the accessibility that our mobile users require. We had recently upgraded to Microsoft Exchange 2010, however there were some major operational costs involved in running that platform. Despite those recent upgrade costs, there was still a significant financial advantage in moving directly to Google Apps.
From a day-to-day perspective, we were able to introduce our users to a new way of working through the real time collaboration in Google Docs. This method of working helps us significantly when building proposals or customer presentations. Giving users the ability to collaborate on documents and presentations online, and also use the chat and video features has not only increased our efficiency, but it has also saved us money by reducing the amount of travel required.
With Google Apps, the average user’s inbox storage has increased significantly from 1Gb to 25Gb meaning they never have to delete an email again. Plus, with Gmail’s built-in search feature they can find an email or chat message in an instant.
We have also implemented a mixture of Google Groups and Google Sites as a direct replacement for public folders, which will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
We’ve already saved a significant amount of money by moving to Google Apps, but I estimate savings will continue to increase in the future since we’ll no longer have to carry out upgrades to server-based applications, or spend management time on it. For example we no longer have to buy care packs for all of our Microsoft Exchange servers, or worry about purchasing new disks for the storage arrays when we reach capacity. To accomplish what we have with Google Apps using traditional hosted solutions would be almost impossible, and certainly cost-prohibitive. We’ve also made ourselves less dependent on office infrastructure. Everything now runs smoothly, with no intervention from us.
Posted by Ali Ball, Broadway Malyan
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Expanding the Google Apps Reporting API for resellers
Cross-posted on the Google Apps Developer Blog
The Google Apps Reporting API lets administrators programmatically get information about their Google Apps environment, and today we're expanding access to the API for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. Resellers can use the API to gain a better understanding of how their customers are using Google Apps, so they can better personalize the service they provide to their customers.
Specifically, resellers can retrieve the following usage reports with the API:
The Google Apps Reporting API lets administrators programmatically get information about their Google Apps environment, and today we're expanding access to the API for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. Resellers can use the API to gain a better understanding of how their customers are using Google Apps, so they can better personalize the service they provide to their customers.
Specifically, resellers can retrieve the following usage reports with the API:
- Accounts – Contains a list of the customer’s end-user accounts on a particular day.
- Activity – Identifies the number of customer end-user accounts as well as the number of active and idle accounts over several different time periods.
- Disk Space – Shows the amount of disk space used by a customer’s mailboxes.
- Email Clients – Identifies how the customer’s end-users access their accounts on a day-by-day basis.
- Summary – Contains the customer’s total number of accounts, total mailbox storage usage and total mailbox quota.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Ireland's Belle and Rollo goes Google
Editor’s note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps. Today we’ll hear from Michael Wejchert, IT manager of Belle and Rollo, which was founded by his wife Carla Wejchert. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator.
Belle and Rollo is an Ireland-based online children's lifestyle store offering a unique and eclectic range of items for children and families. It opened in Autumn 2010 and uses Google Apps as the heart of its communication infrastructure.
When we embarked on the path to open our store in January 2010, I was in the position of creating a business from the ground up and making critical decisions for solutions that would help us run an effective and efficient business.
I had come from a business with over 2,000 users on a Microsoft Exchange® system and was familiar with the various issues of cost, maintenance and reliability that affected our day to day communications systems. As a small start-up business, I strongly wanted to avoid the problems I had previously witnessed. We needed to have rock solid reliability but did not want to have the added complexity of running our own email hardware and the added expense of maintenance costs.
From my personal experience using Gmail and Google Docs I felt that a cloud solution would be very suitable for our needs. We needed to have accounts covering email, calendar and contacts that were accessible from anywhere, especially when working from mobile devices. Increasing the number of users quickly is also important for us as our business grows. I researched Google Apps further and contacted Baker Security & Networks - a Google Apps Authorized Reseller - who talked me through the various functionality features which lead to our decision to use Google Apps. They also recommended Irish mobile network 3 who supplied us with Android handsets to allow us to be fully connected to Google Apps when we were away from the office.
After more than six months running Google Apps, I continue to be impressed. As I spend the majority of my time on the road, the Android integration with Google services has been invaluable. Syncing multiple accounts for email, contacts and calendars has allowed me to respond to suppliers immediately and process customer queries and action orders efficiently. Once back in the office (or home) everything is in place and just as easy to access due to the Cloud.
Google Docs has given us a central hub for data creation and storage, with flexible and secure sharing settings. We have recently started to use it to streamline our invoicing process - we can generate invoices from any PC and then store them in the Cloud with Google Docs - removing the problem of being tied to a specific person, location or computer. As we work from various places - office, home office, on the road - it’s very helpful to have a central data store for the company. We have found the collaborative nature of Google Docs a very natural way of working over distance.
I am looking forward to seeing our company grow, safe in the knowledge that our Google Apps system will grow hand in hand with us, and without any of the usual technology growing pains!
Belle and Rollo is an Ireland-based online children's lifestyle store offering a unique and eclectic range of items for children and families. It opened in Autumn 2010 and uses Google Apps as the heart of its communication infrastructure.
When we embarked on the path to open our store in January 2010, I was in the position of creating a business from the ground up and making critical decisions for solutions that would help us run an effective and efficient business.
I had come from a business with over 2,000 users on a Microsoft Exchange® system and was familiar with the various issues of cost, maintenance and reliability that affected our day to day communications systems. As a small start-up business, I strongly wanted to avoid the problems I had previously witnessed. We needed to have rock solid reliability but did not want to have the added complexity of running our own email hardware and the added expense of maintenance costs.
From my personal experience using Gmail and Google Docs I felt that a cloud solution would be very suitable for our needs. We needed to have accounts covering email, calendar and contacts that were accessible from anywhere, especially when working from mobile devices. Increasing the number of users quickly is also important for us as our business grows. I researched Google Apps further and contacted Baker Security & Networks - a Google Apps Authorized Reseller - who talked me through the various functionality features which lead to our decision to use Google Apps. They also recommended Irish mobile network 3 who supplied us with Android handsets to allow us to be fully connected to Google Apps when we were away from the office.
After more than six months running Google Apps, I continue to be impressed. As I spend the majority of my time on the road, the Android integration with Google services has been invaluable. Syncing multiple accounts for email, contacts and calendars has allowed me to respond to suppliers immediately and process customer queries and action orders efficiently. Once back in the office (or home) everything is in place and just as easy to access due to the Cloud.
Google Docs has given us a central hub for data creation and storage, with flexible and secure sharing settings. We have recently started to use it to streamline our invoicing process - we can generate invoices from any PC and then store them in the Cloud with Google Docs - removing the problem of being tied to a specific person, location or computer. As we work from various places - office, home office, on the road - it’s very helpful to have a central data store for the company. We have found the collaborative nature of Google Docs a very natural way of working over distance.
I am looking forward to seeing our company grow, safe in the knowledge that our Google Apps system will grow hand in hand with us, and without any of the usual technology growing pains!
Friday, September 10, 2010
You Can Be Lost in Data Without A Map
Editor's note: From time to time, Google likes to highlight partners and customers who have developed interesting and unique applications using our products. Peter Rossiter is a founder and CEO of Integeo, a company whose product leverages Google Maps API Premier. With over thirty years experience in the IT industry, Peter has led many innovative commercial ventures and research projects.
Location-based services have quickly become pervasive in our everyday lives and maps are now widely used as a convenient and useful visual tool to present data in ways that people can easily relate to.
Business Intelligence (BI) covers a collection of techniques and tools that support an organization’s decision making process. The advent of Google Maps familiarized people with the concept of data points on a map and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.
But a tool is only useful if it’s usable. You need to focus on solving your business problems not technology. Avoiding the need for specialist programming resources is a good start followed by ensuring the BI skills of a dashboard or report designer are sufficient even if the underlying spatial analysis is quite complex.
Google Maps API Premier is a solid platform for presenting a rich background context of street and satellite data for analysis of business data. The Google API also enables us to dynamically geocode address data and users can zoom to particular areas of interest using our enhanced Google Search facility.
There is a lot more to visualizing data on maps than just plotting points and icons. Integeo’s Map Intelligence comes out of the box with an extensible, easy to use palette of spatial analytical functions. These enable clear and immediate perception of data relationships, groupings, classifications, patterns, trends and variations that stand out when mapped. A summary of the features of Map Intelligence can be found on our website.
At the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. The dynamic map layers are generated by Map Intelligence from the “facts and dimensions” in the dashboard or spreadsheet, offering the choice to either use KML (KMZ including images, legend, etc.) or a network link that will update from the Map Intelligence server whenever the user changes their Google Earth view. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.
Please visit www.integeo.com if you would like to learn more about Integeo and see why Map Intelligence is the only BI product to rank top 10 among purpose built GIS solutions (Ovum Research 2009). We offer integrated mapping analytics incorporating Google Maps API Premier as an “off the shelf” solution for users of all the major BI platforms - currently these include (but are not restricted to) BI products from Cognos (IBM), Business Objects (SAP), Oracle, MicroStrategy, QlikView, Actuate, BIRT, Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting Services.
Posted By Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Team
Location-based services have quickly become pervasive in our everyday lives and maps are now widely used as a convenient and useful visual tool to present data in ways that people can easily relate to.
Business Intelligence (BI) covers a collection of techniques and tools that support an organization’s decision making process. The advent of Google Maps familiarized people with the concept of data points on a map and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.
But a tool is only useful if it’s usable. You need to focus on solving your business problems not technology. Avoiding the need for specialist programming resources is a good start followed by ensuring the BI skills of a dashboard or report designer are sufficient even if the underlying spatial analysis is quite complex.
Google Maps API Premier is a solid platform for presenting a rich background context of street and satellite data for analysis of business data. The Google API also enables us to dynamically geocode address data and users can zoom to particular areas of interest using our enhanced Google Search facility.
There is a lot more to visualizing data on maps than just plotting points and icons. Integeo’s Map Intelligence comes out of the box with an extensible, easy to use palette of spatial analytical functions. These enable clear and immediate perception of data relationships, groupings, classifications, patterns, trends and variations that stand out when mapped. A summary of the features of Map Intelligence can be found on our website.
At the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. The dynamic map layers are generated by Map Intelligence from the “facts and dimensions” in the dashboard or spreadsheet, offering the choice to either use KML (KMZ including images, legend, etc.) or a network link that will update from the Map Intelligence server whenever the user changes their Google Earth view. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.
Please visit www.integeo.com if you would like to learn more about Integeo and see why Map Intelligence is the only BI product to rank top 10 among purpose built GIS solutions (Ovum Research 2009). We offer integrated mapping analytics incorporating Google Maps API Premier as an “off the shelf” solution for users of all the major BI platforms - currently these include (but are not restricted to) BI products from Cognos (IBM), Business Objects (SAP), Oracle, MicroStrategy, QlikView, Actuate, BIRT, Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting Services.
Posted By Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Team
Monday, April 5, 2010
Dito's Journey as a Google Apps Reseller: screaming "Yeeeehaa" the whole way
Editor's Note: Today’s guest blogger is Jim McNelis, co-founder of Dito, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and vendor in the Google Apps Marketplace.
Did you know that a little over 100 years ago, before the electrical grid existed, businesses had their own power plants to generate electricity?
As Nicolas Carr points out in his book, The Big Switch, factories used to produce their own electricity and manage those huge generators themselves, rather than outsource to a power company. So not only did companies need to be an expert at manufacturing thing-a-ma-jigs, they also needed to understand and manage their own power plant.
Well, my friends, the cloud is the electrical grid and your in-house server is your power plant.
The cloud has become a viable alternative to expensive, on-site hardware that needs constant tender love and care to stay current. Stop staffing IT to keep your systems from breaking. Instead, enable your IT staff to work on new and innovative initiatives that will drive your business forward by freeing them from the chains of the on-site server.
I've been excited about Google Apps since the day I discovered the service. I was an early Gmail beta tester, and, like many, have been faithful to the awesome service since 2004. When I saw there was such thing as Gmail for your business, I thought to myself, "This is innovative. This is going to change things." Three years later and Google Apps is changing things. It's a lot of fun to participate in a paradigm shift as a reseller, rather than standing by and watching it happen.
My brother Dan and I started Dito in 2007 in order to help small and medium businesses transition to the cloud. Even back then, before the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program existed, we were providing services around Google Apps. When we were invited to take part in the reseller pilot program, accepting the offer was a logical progression for our business.
Joining the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program has been a great experience for Dito all around. We've received extensive training, guidance and support from a variety of highly skilled and knowledgeable Google folks. Today, with a growing team of subject matter and Six Sigma experts, Google Apps trainers, and developers, we're able to perform to the high standard of service that our customers have come to expect. And the team is as passionate about Google Apps as I am. As users ourselves, we "dogfood" all new Google Apps features, growing our knowledge of the product and improving our own business processes.
Almost everyday, Dito helps a new customer move from a legacy system into Google Apps. Why are most of them moving? Businesses are moving to Google Apps Premier Edition for many different reasons, but there are a few that resonate across the board: cost, usability, and innovation. Put simply, businesses want to cut current costs while providing employees with a service that is easy to use and is constantly improving. Google Apps fits that bill.
When people ask where we see Dito in the future, I like to use the analogy that we are strapped to a rocket ship (Google Apps) that is taking off into the stratosphere, and we are screaming "yeeehaa" the whole way. We are just really excited about what we do. Dito is committed to providing the best services and solutions for businesses and organizations using Google Apps for years to come. We will continue to evolve with Google Apps and develop custom solutions, like Dito Directory that is available in the new Google Apps Marketplace, that fit the needs of the Google Apps user base.
Find reseller case studies and learn more about the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program.
Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Channel team
Monday, March 15, 2010
Innovent Solutions: "test driving" eCommerce potential
Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Jason Hellman, Information Access and Search Practice Leader at Innovent Solutions, a Google Enterprise Partner that works with Google search and analytics technologies. For the past eleven years, Jason has implemented eCommerce search, Enterprise search, and Business Intelligence solutions at major Internet Retailer Top 100 and Fortune 500 companies.
When Google announced Google Commerce Search we were excited to learn about the technology and the business challenges it could help solve. The promise of Google's outstanding relevance being tailored to the unique needs of eCommerce search was an intriguing prospect and we wanted to be very involved.
Google Commerce Search delivers features such as parametric search, product promotions, and customization which extend the powerful backbone of their high-availability, highly-scalable infrastructure. All of this allows the eRetailer to focus on merchandising and quality of search instead of issues such as infrastructure and peak loads. It's exciting technology and very powerful.
One of the biggest challenges we typically face is the ability to provide a demonstration of technology that is tailored to the specific interests and culture of our clients. The issue is fairly simple: how do I build a compelling proof of concept quickly that will be received enthusiastically by my customer?
It’s a challenge in any situation, but it’s even more difficult for eCommerce search. Search results are interwoven within the site design, and customers often want to see how search technology will help improve their existing product thumbnails page. Creating a demonstration usually means rewiring a sample page with enough technology to demonstrate the desired features. Submission forms, pagination, browser history, and the various search features themselves must be hand-crafted. Simply put, it can be a tedious and time-consuming task.
To help commerce site managers and developers understand the capabilities of Google Commerce Search, and see the features that are often important, we developed a reference application using Google Web Toolkit (GWT). By including the GWT-generated JavaScript within a sample page, and adding a few "div" tags to surround elements to replace, it is possible to take a static HTML page and turn it into a robust AJAX application, deriving results from Google Commerce Search.
A few tweaks to a style sheet and the results will appear identical to the original source page. It's that simple: add some JavaScript, wrap some elements with "div" tags, and tinker with a few CSS settings.
We can then present the Google Commerce Search results as if they were within the client's site itself, fully functional with faceted navigation, promotions, and all the power of Google's searching relevance.
The story can end here, as we now have a functioning implementation of Google Commerce Search. But a proof of concept only tells a part of the story. The rest of the story is told by interweaving features throughout your site with promotional zones, merchandising options, and strategies to make the most of your data and your shopper's experience.
If you'd like check out our open source solution for Google Commerce Search, take a look at the demo page on our website and let us know what you think.
Posted by Brent VerWeyst, Enterprise Search Partner Lead
When Google announced Google Commerce Search we were excited to learn about the technology and the business challenges it could help solve. The promise of Google's outstanding relevance being tailored to the unique needs of eCommerce search was an intriguing prospect and we wanted to be very involved.
Google Commerce Search delivers features such as parametric search, product promotions, and customization which extend the powerful backbone of their high-availability, highly-scalable infrastructure. All of this allows the eRetailer to focus on merchandising and quality of search instead of issues such as infrastructure and peak loads. It's exciting technology and very powerful.
One of the biggest challenges we typically face is the ability to provide a demonstration of technology that is tailored to the specific interests and culture of our clients. The issue is fairly simple: how do I build a compelling proof of concept quickly that will be received enthusiastically by my customer?
It’s a challenge in any situation, but it’s even more difficult for eCommerce search. Search results are interwoven within the site design, and customers often want to see how search technology will help improve their existing product thumbnails page. Creating a demonstration usually means rewiring a sample page with enough technology to demonstrate the desired features. Submission forms, pagination, browser history, and the various search features themselves must be hand-crafted. Simply put, it can be a tedious and time-consuming task.
To help commerce site managers and developers understand the capabilities of Google Commerce Search, and see the features that are often important, we developed a reference application using Google Web Toolkit (GWT). By including the GWT-generated JavaScript within a sample page, and adding a few "div" tags to surround elements to replace, it is possible to take a static HTML page and turn it into a robust AJAX application, deriving results from Google Commerce Search.
A few tweaks to a style sheet and the results will appear identical to the original source page. It's that simple: add some JavaScript, wrap some elements with "div" tags, and tinker with a few CSS settings.
We can then present the Google Commerce Search results as if they were within the client's site itself, fully functional with faceted navigation, promotions, and all the power of Google's searching relevance.
The story can end here, as we now have a functioning implementation of Google Commerce Search. But a proof of concept only tells a part of the story. The rest of the story is told by interweaving features throughout your site with promotional zones, merchandising options, and strategies to make the most of your data and your shopper's experience.
If you'd like check out our open source solution for Google Commerce Search, take a look at the demo page on our website and let us know what you think.
Jason Hellman
Information Access and Search Practice Leader, Innovent Solutions
Posted by Brent VerWeyst, Enterprise Search Partner Lead
Monday, February 22, 2010
Celebrating Google Apps Resellers – a year of customer success
When we launched the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program a year ago, a number of partners around the world were already actively helping customers of all sizes reduce IT costs and complexity while giving users the productivity tools they wanted – Gmail, Google Calendar, and more. Since then, millions of businesses have gone Google – and our resellers, too, have gained momentum. With nearly 1,000 Google Apps Authorized Resellers from more than 50 countries now building successful Google Apps practices, we celebrate our partners' progress over the last year and look forward to them continuing to drive customer success with Google Apps in the years to come.
In a recent mark of this progress, the MSPmentor 100 Report for 2010, which ranks top managed service providers worldwide, reports that already 22% of these top MSPs are now promoting Google Apps to their clients.
Our resellers represent a wide range of firms who assist businesses in adopting, leveraging, and extending Google Apps – from global systems integrators to smaller, specialized IT service providers. Acting as trusted advisors, these solution providers work to serve their clients' unique business needs and to improve user productivity via Google Apps at lower costs and with greater reliability.
In our first year, we launched some important tools to help our partners better serve customers, including our online Reseller Console for automated ordering, provisioning, and management of their Google Apps clients. Our Solution Providers resource site provides a full range of marketing, sales, and product information, while we also instituted a series of online webinars and live training sessions in Google offices around the world.
Conversations with channel firms at events hosted by Everything Channel, CompTIA, ConnectWise, and SMB Nation reinforced our belief that customer needs are well served when resellers act as the primary contact for provisioning, deployment, billing, and ongoing consulting and support.
We're especially excited about the relationships we've built with our partners over this first year. Some highlights include (in alphabetical order):
• Appirio and Genentech (large enterprise): Appirio, a cloud solution provider, migrated 15,000 Genentech users from a variety of legacy systems such as Apple Mail, Exchange 2003, Sendmail MStore, and Thunderbird. Appirio also provided a range of value-added services including integration with new systems such as Magic Meeting Marker, end user training, and on-site support.
• Cloudreach and Small World Financial Services: Cloudreach, a UK-based reseller, successfully migrated Small World Financial Services, a family of retail financial services businesses that operates worldwide, from their legacy Microsoft Exchange and Kerio environment to Google Apps. In total, 500 users across 9 countries were migrated resulting in cost savings in excess of 75% annually against their legacy software license. Here's more:
• Cloud Sherpas and Lincoln Property (mid-market): Cloud Sherpas, cloud computing systems integrator and application developer, assisted Lincoln Property with the configuration, implementation, change management and deployment support around their move to Google Apps. In addition to successfully migrating GroupWise mail and contacts data for 950 users, they implemented SherpaTools, a free app from Cloud Sherpas that provides additional IT management functions for admins and new features for employees.
• Sheepdog and Evisu (small business): Sheepdog successfully migrated Evisu off of Microsoft Exchange 2003 in less than two weeks, allowing the company to avoid its renewal deadline. They also provided comprehensive Gmail and Calendar training for all users and continue to offer support as Evisu adds new users to Google Apps.
• Spread and Renner Stores: Renner, the second largest clothing retailer in Brazil with more than 120 stores, wanted to transform the delivery of product information to store clerks. Spread, one of our leading Brazilian resellers, implemented Google Apps for 3,500 users, provided training, and delivered integration services among Google Sites, Google App Engine, and a number of premises-based legacy systems, thereby reducing the time to market for building new Renner sites by a factor of 10.
We recently kicked off our second year by hosting our first Google Apps Partner Advisory Board here at Google in Mountain View. Our partners provided valuable input on the best ways to continue to enrich our program. In 2010, we look forward to strengthening our reseller relationships and finding new ways to help our partners build sustainable, profitable cloud computing businesses.
If your firm is interested in Google Apps reselling and services, we invite you to learn more about the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program and join this growing movement.
Posted by Stephen Cho, Director, Google Apps Channels
In a recent mark of this progress, the MSPmentor 100 Report for 2010, which ranks top managed service providers worldwide, reports that already 22% of these top MSPs are now promoting Google Apps to their clients.
Our resellers represent a wide range of firms who assist businesses in adopting, leveraging, and extending Google Apps – from global systems integrators to smaller, specialized IT service providers. Acting as trusted advisors, these solution providers work to serve their clients' unique business needs and to improve user productivity via Google Apps at lower costs and with greater reliability.
In our first year, we launched some important tools to help our partners better serve customers, including our online Reseller Console for automated ordering, provisioning, and management of their Google Apps clients. Our Solution Providers resource site provides a full range of marketing, sales, and product information, while we also instituted a series of online webinars and live training sessions in Google offices around the world.
Conversations with channel firms at events hosted by Everything Channel, CompTIA, ConnectWise, and SMB Nation reinforced our belief that customer needs are well served when resellers act as the primary contact for provisioning, deployment, billing, and ongoing consulting and support.
We're especially excited about the relationships we've built with our partners over this first year. Some highlights include (in alphabetical order):
• Appirio and Genentech (large enterprise): Appirio, a cloud solution provider, migrated 15,000 Genentech users from a variety of legacy systems such as Apple Mail, Exchange 2003, Sendmail MStore, and Thunderbird. Appirio also provided a range of value-added services including integration with new systems such as Magic Meeting Marker, end user training, and on-site support.
• Cloudreach and Small World Financial Services: Cloudreach, a UK-based reseller, successfully migrated Small World Financial Services, a family of retail financial services businesses that operates worldwide, from their legacy Microsoft Exchange and Kerio environment to Google Apps. In total, 500 users across 9 countries were migrated resulting in cost savings in excess of 75% annually against their legacy software license. Here's more:
• Cloud Sherpas and Lincoln Property (mid-market): Cloud Sherpas, cloud computing systems integrator and application developer, assisted Lincoln Property with the configuration, implementation, change management and deployment support around their move to Google Apps. In addition to successfully migrating GroupWise mail and contacts data for 950 users, they implemented SherpaTools, a free app from Cloud Sherpas that provides additional IT management functions for admins and new features for employees.
• Sheepdog and Evisu (small business): Sheepdog successfully migrated Evisu off of Microsoft Exchange 2003 in less than two weeks, allowing the company to avoid its renewal deadline. They also provided comprehensive Gmail and Calendar training for all users and continue to offer support as Evisu adds new users to Google Apps.
• Spread and Renner Stores: Renner, the second largest clothing retailer in Brazil with more than 120 stores, wanted to transform the delivery of product information to store clerks. Spread, one of our leading Brazilian resellers, implemented Google Apps for 3,500 users, provided training, and delivered integration services among Google Sites, Google App Engine, and a number of premises-based legacy systems, thereby reducing the time to market for building new Renner sites by a factor of 10.
We recently kicked off our second year by hosting our first Google Apps Partner Advisory Board here at Google in Mountain View. Our partners provided valuable input on the best ways to continue to enrich our program. In 2010, we look forward to strengthening our reseller relationships and finding new ways to help our partners build sustainable, profitable cloud computing businesses.
If your firm is interested in Google Apps reselling and services, we invite you to learn more about the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program and join this growing movement.
Posted by Stephen Cho, Director, Google Apps Channels
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Calling All SaaS ISVs: Don't forget to sign up for Google I/O!
This year's Google I/O will play host to a number of sessions and events aimed specifically at helping Software as a Service companies integrate with and monetize Google Apps, including:
- Add Single Sign On to your app using OpenID
- Connect your app with Google Docs and Sites
- Learn how Google architects its own GWT applications for production
- GWT + HTML5 can do what?!
- Making Freemium work - converting free users to paying customers - VC panel
- Learn how to acquire additional customers using the Google Solutions Marketplace
- Network with Google Apps Resellers and find new channel opportunities
- Network with other ISVs in the Developer Sandbox that are already selling to Google Apps customers
We are planning several more sessions that we'll be announcing in the coming weeks that you won't want to miss. We'll also be hosting a mixer event just for the enterprise developer community that'll take place just before the After Hours party at I/O.
Google I/O is our biggest developer event of the year, and it's also the best chance you'll get to learn about the technologies that can help you build a thriving business extending Google Apps. We hope you'll register today!
Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead
Friday, December 4, 2009
Connecting Google Apps Education Edition with Blackboard
Editor's note: George Kroner is a Developer Relations Engineer for Blackboard, a company that focuses on transforming and improving the educational experience at over 5,000 institutions worldwide. Through the work of Blackboard’s community of over 1,000 educational tool developers, George sees many opportunities where Blackboard’s and Google’s open platforms can be paired together to provide better and more productive teaching and learning experiences.Thanks to George for sharing these outlooks.
Technology has the potential to transform the educational experience and to connect students, instructors, and researchers in new ways. We think it's critical for schools and institutions to expose learners to these tools and practices to impart information literacy skills required to succeed in their careers – as students and beyond.
Sharing a strong belief in the power and possibility of open platforms, Google and Blackboard have recently teamed up to combine our platforms, and we wanted to share a few powerful examples of these integrations with you here.
Enhancing collaboration in the classroom. Earlier this summer, Northwestern University took the lead on developing a way to facilitate classroom activities by letting instructors embed Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and calendars into Blackboard course sites. Individuals enrolled in Blackboard courses are automatically added as collaborators to these documents, and single sign-on capabilities allow documents to be accessed without logging in twice.
A recent student newspaper article details how these new capabilities are being used in courses ranging from foreign language to world history enabling new models of academic collaboration and assessment. What Northwestern has accomplished exemplifies one of the best recent examples of tying together the unique capabilities of Google Apps for Education and Blackboard Learn.
Now, more than ten different institutions, Google, and Blackboard meet on bi-weekly calls to regularly discuss the future of the Bboogle project. Northwestern has also made this Blackboard plugin available through an open source educational tool community called OSCELOT for other clients to download and contribute back to.
Enabling coordinated collaboration. As part of a class project at Penn State University, a team of students examined ways to improve their online learning experience by integrating Blackboard with other systems. After some analysis, their top recommendation was to develop a solution that combined events from their multiple school-related and personal calendars into a single location.
By integrating with Google Calendar, they were able to create a Blackboard plugin that combines events from Google Calendar with academic course schedules, assignment due-dates, and group meeting times from Blackboard. Their plugin was also made available as an open source project at the end of the semester. More details, including user documentation, are available through OSCELOT at this link.
Connecting researchers where they teach. The London International Development Center was formed to connect researchers from the University of London's six Bloomsbury Colleges. Its mission is to find ways to solve complex problems relating to international development by bringing together scientists from interdisciplinary backgrounds. By creating a Google Spreadsheet that integrates behind the scenes with the familiar Blackboard user experience, the LIDC provided a way for researchers to search and connect with each other by name, college, and research interest.
Facilitating new ways to communicate. Google Wave represents a new way to approach group collaboration and communication, and thus the potential for impacting education using such a tool is significant. Imagine creating a course assignment within Blackboard that triggers a contextualized Wave of thought and conversation that can react to changes in course content within the LMS and relay thoughts and comments from subject matter experts around the world back into an assessable course discussion forum or blog.
Today we invite you to join a discussion of how you think Wave should be used to enhance educational experiences. Log into Wave and click this link to post your thoughts, then see your comments show up within the discussion forum in this Blackboard course.
The examples listed above are just the beginning of what's possible when combining the power of the Blackboard and Google platforms, and we salute the institutions that are on the cutting-edge, creating these integrations.
– George Kroner, Blackboard Developer Relations Engineer
Posted by Gabe Cohen, Google Apps Education Edition team
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Collaborating with Google Apps and Socialwok
Editor's Note: Ming Yong is co-founder of Socialwok, a a feed-based group collaboration application for enterprises that integrates with Google Apps. With Socialwok, Google Apps users can create their own private social network to share Google Docs, Calendars and Spreadsheets in feeds for their domains. Ming and his team built Socialwok on Google App Engine for Java, Google Web Toolkit and Google GData APIs.
James Hollow is President of Alien-Eye, a rapidly growing creative marketing agency based in Tokyo and a Socialwok customer. Depending on the project, Alien-Eye works with a network of production partners outside the company and thus a lot of Alien-Eye projects depend on successful collaboration between different distributed small teams.
Thanks to Ming and James for sharing their story.
Ming Yong: My colleagues and I are big fans of social networking sites and of Google Apps – we use the social feed to keep connected with all our friends around the world and Google Apps as our messaging and collaboration platform. However, we wanted to be able to share information across Google Apps in a more detailed way. So we created Socialwok (http://socialwok.com) to bring enterprise feed-based sharing to the Google Apps platform.
We launched Socialwok for Google Apps in September 2009 at Techcrunch 50, where we won the Techcrunch demopit award. Since then, more than 4,000 organizations have signed up for Socialwok. We would like to share with you the story of one such organization, Alien-Eye.
Alien-Eye staff in Tokyo, using Socialwok
James Hollow: Socialwok has really helped our teams collaborate on projects. Its feed-based group collaboration format is really intuitive, and is a great way to keep track of the conversations around any project or initiative. We create feeds to keep track of all our projects. Members of the Alien-Eye team working on different aspects of the project can post status updates on what they have done, share media files and different Google Apps like Google Docs and Google Calendar.
Given the large number of projects at Alien-Eye, we have many Google Docs as well as media files. Often, it can be very difficult to stay organized and get access to the necessary information. Socialwok's consolidated enterprise keyword search is incredibly handy; all the content on our Alien-Eye social network is indexed and the results are presented split by category. Socialwok even indexes across the different Google Apps file types like Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets and Google Presentations.
We also really like the mobility Socialwok affords us. Our strategists and producers spend a large portion of their time meeting our clients and partners in downtown Tokyo. With Socialwok's mobile web version, we have an intuitive interface to pick up project threads and feedback, and make decisions on the move. You just hop into the feed, post a comment, and the system syndicates it for you using email notifications and Gmail instant messages.
This can save up to half a day on a single project timeline. Given the large number of projects that are running at Alien-Eye, we get significant productivity benefits from using Socialwok as our de facto project management system.
Socialwok also allows you to invite external collaborators to any feed. All communications on a project are then archived in a single location and can be referenced easily using keyword search or feed directory browsing. Some of our more progressive clients have already started using this functionality, with great results.
Ming Yong: While Socialwok has become Alien-Eye's hub for internal communications and communication with some collaborators, most of their clients still have email-based work flows. The Socialwok Gmail gadget integrates the Socialwok user's home feed into the Gmail interface. In addition, you can post to the project feed via keyword-based email addresses, and Socialwok will automatically post the message to the right place.
To try out Socialwok, go to http://www.socialwok.com and log in using your Google Apps or Google account info.
Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Developer Marketing team
James Hollow is President of Alien-Eye, a rapidly growing creative marketing agency based in Tokyo and a Socialwok customer. Depending on the project, Alien-Eye works with a network of production partners outside the company and thus a lot of Alien-Eye projects depend on successful collaboration between different distributed small teams.
Thanks to Ming and James for sharing their story.
Ming Yong: My colleagues and I are big fans of social networking sites and of Google Apps – we use the social feed to keep connected with all our friends around the world and Google Apps as our messaging and collaboration platform. However, we wanted to be able to share information across Google Apps in a more detailed way. So we created Socialwok (http://socialwok.com) to bring enterprise feed-based sharing to the Google Apps platform.
We launched Socialwok for Google Apps in September 2009 at Techcrunch 50, where we won the Techcrunch demopit award. Since then, more than 4,000 organizations have signed up for Socialwok. We would like to share with you the story of one such organization, Alien-Eye.
Alien-Eye staff in Tokyo, using Socialwok
James Hollow: Socialwok has really helped our teams collaborate on projects. Its feed-based group collaboration format is really intuitive, and is a great way to keep track of the conversations around any project or initiative. We create feeds to keep track of all our projects. Members of the Alien-Eye team working on different aspects of the project can post status updates on what they have done, share media files and different Google Apps like Google Docs and Google Calendar.
Given the large number of projects at Alien-Eye, we have many Google Docs as well as media files. Often, it can be very difficult to stay organized and get access to the necessary information. Socialwok's consolidated enterprise keyword search is incredibly handy; all the content on our Alien-Eye social network is indexed and the results are presented split by category. Socialwok even indexes across the different Google Apps file types like Google Docs, Google Spreadsheets and Google Presentations.
We also really like the mobility Socialwok affords us. Our strategists and producers spend a large portion of their time meeting our clients and partners in downtown Tokyo. With Socialwok's mobile web version, we have an intuitive interface to pick up project threads and feedback, and make decisions on the move. You just hop into the feed, post a comment, and the system syndicates it for you using email notifications and Gmail instant messages.
This can save up to half a day on a single project timeline. Given the large number of projects that are running at Alien-Eye, we get significant productivity benefits from using Socialwok as our de facto project management system.
Socialwok also allows you to invite external collaborators to any feed. All communications on a project are then archived in a single location and can be referenced easily using keyword search or feed directory browsing. Some of our more progressive clients have already started using this functionality, with great results.
Ming Yong: While Socialwok has become Alien-Eye's hub for internal communications and communication with some collaborators, most of their clients still have email-based work flows. The Socialwok Gmail gadget integrates the Socialwok user's home feed into the Gmail interface. In addition, you can post to the project feed via keyword-based email addresses, and Socialwok will automatically post the message to the right place.
To try out Socialwok, go to http://www.socialwok.com and log in using your Google Apps or Google account info.
Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Developer Marketing team
Monday, September 14, 2009
Google at SMB Nation Fall Conference
As part of our continued outreach to find leading solution providers and MSPs for our Google Apps Authorized Reseller program, the Google Apps Partner team will head to Las Vegas on October 2, 3, and 4 for "SMB Nation Fall 2009." This conference, focused on technologies for small and medium businesses, is designed for consultants, channel partners and VARs, and offers the community a chance to engage in conversations around hosted, cloud-based solutions. It's targeted at both technical and business audiences, with an emphasis on managed services.
Program managers from Google will speak about opportunities for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. They'll also be listening to feedback from the community on areas for further improvement to the program. Google's partners often play a critical role in helping customers get the most out of Google Apps, and building a strong partner network will be key to keeping up with the accelerating adoption of Google Apps.
Learn more and register at smbnation.com, and be sure to find members of the Google team when you're there.
Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Partner team
Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.
Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Partner team
Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Google Apps Partners: helping organizations move forward
Our ongoing partner momentum is directly benefiting the people and organizations who use Google services in the workplace. Examples and of these successful engagements can be found in our Solutions Marketplace Customer Success Stories Blog.
A recent post shows how one of our partners, LTech, helped migrate The Huffington Post to Google Apps Premier Edition in just four days. Whether you're a potential partner looking to learn more about our Apps Authorized Reseller program or a professional who wants to know more about what Google solutions deliver in the workplace, we hope you find LTech's story interesting.
For small and medium-sized businesses interested in learning more about the benefits of Google Apps and cloud computing, we invite you to join our webinar, co-hosted with Salesforce.com, on June 4.
How to Go Beyond CRM with Salesforce for Google Apps
Thursday, June 4, 2009
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT
Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Partners teamA recent post shows how one of our partners, LTech, helped migrate The Huffington Post to Google Apps Premier Edition in just four days. Whether you're a potential partner looking to learn more about our Apps Authorized Reseller program or a professional who wants to know more about what Google solutions deliver in the workplace, we hope you find LTech's story interesting.
For small and medium-sized businesses interested in learning more about the benefits of Google Apps and cloud computing, we invite you to join our webinar, co-hosted with Salesforce.com, on June 4.
How to Go Beyond CRM with Salesforce for Google Apps
Thursday, June 4, 2009
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT
The webinar is one in a four-part series on how organizations can get started with, and benefit from, cloud computing.
Partners or organizations interested in the latest plans for the Channel 2.0 Conference: visit their website for information.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Learn how enterprises are adopting the cloud at Google I/O
Google I/O is coming up on May 27 – 28, 2009 in San Francisco, California, and will feature many sessions on enterprise adoption of the cloud. Come hear how companies like Salesforce.com and ThoughtWorks partner with Google and leverage technologies like App Engine and Secure Data Connector to pioneer applications and help businesses realize the benefits and efficiencies of cloud computing.
Sessions will include:
Sessions will include:
Connecting the Clouds: Integrating Google App Engine for Java with Force.com, presented by Ron Hess of Salesforce.com and Iein Valdez of Appirio
This session will focus on connecting the Salesforce SOAP Web Services API to Google App Engine for Java, including a demonstration by Appirio of an advanced casino host application blending App Engine and Salesforce.
ThoughtWorks on App Engine for Java: An Enterprise Cumulonimbus?, presented by Martin Fowler and Rebecca Parsons of ThoughtWorks
Presenters from ThoughtWorks will discuss applications they've built for App Engine, as well as strengths and weaknesses they've encountered with the platform. The session will also include a discussion of the role of Big Table in App Engine.
Using the Google Secure Data Connector to Access Behind-the-Firewall Data from Google's Cloud, presented by Jun Yang
This session will demonstrate how enterprises can bring their own data into Google Apps using the Google Secure Data Connector. The presenter will share an example of using data stored in a behind-the-firewallSQL database in App Engine, a spreadsheet and a gadget.
This session will demonstrate how enterprises can bring their own data into Google Apps using the Google Secure Data Connector. The presenter will share an example of using data stored in a behind-the-firewallSQL database in App Engine, a spreadsheet and a gadget.
Lots of other fun and interesting things are happening at Google I/O, including the Developer Sandbox, Fireside Chats, Tech Talks, and After Hours Playground. Sound good? Registration is still open. Check it out!
Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Enterprise Partner Team
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
GPS Fleet Tracking for Google Maps API Premier
If you've ever checked out the nearest store with Trek bikes, planned a trip to a Crowne Plaza Hotel, or looked for the best local anything on Yelp, you know that many businesses use Google Maps to help people find where they're located.
Maps can be deployed within your organization to help your employees make fast, informed decisions – such as assessing the location and performance efficiency of your vehicles and other mobile assets. Tracking your assets on Google Maps became easier yesterday when FleetMatics announced that its GPS fleet tracking software is now integrated with Google Maps API Premier.
The FleetMatics solution provides real-time vehicle data, such as start/stop times and speed, to help its users efficiently dispatch to reduce vehicle mileage and downtime. With the addition of Google Maps, FleetMatics now offers the ability to visualize entire fleet locations and easily identify the closest vehicle to a given location.
View the positions and status of an entire fleet on a single screen.
FleetMatics customers can also use Google Maps to find driving directions and optimized routing information, including real-time traffic reports and nearby points of interest.
Drill into a specific vehicle's data, including start/stop times,
mileage, and routing information.
Maps can be deployed within your organization to help your employees make fast, informed decisions – such as assessing the location and performance efficiency of your vehicles and other mobile assets. Tracking your assets on Google Maps became easier yesterday when FleetMatics announced that its GPS fleet tracking software is now integrated with Google Maps API Premier.
The FleetMatics solution provides real-time vehicle data, such as start/stop times and speed, to help its users efficiently dispatch to reduce vehicle mileage and downtime. With the addition of Google Maps, FleetMatics now offers the ability to visualize entire fleet locations and easily identify the closest vehicle to a given location.
View the positions and status of an entire fleet on a single screen.FleetMatics customers can also use Google Maps to find driving directions and optimized routing information, including real-time traffic reports and nearby points of interest.
Drill into a specific vehicle's data, including start/stop times,mileage, and routing information.
According to Jamie Sene of FleetMatics, "Selecting a new mapping provider is not a trivial task. We need an engine that can handle our massive demand across the US and Europe, and we want a partner on the cutting edge of location-based technologies to mirror our own product development. After thorough research, it was clear that only Google Maps satisfied all of these requirements."
Google Maps' familiarity and speed have sparked feedback from Fleetmatic customers, leading to emails like this one: "How do you take an existing product that is miles ahead of its competition and make it even better? By adding Google Maps, of course."
Here's more information on how businesses can use Google Maps API Premier.
Posted by Colleen Horan, Google Maps API Premier Team
Learn about custom web apps running on Google's infrastructure
In early April we unveiled App Engine for Java as a preview release. With the goal of providing an end-to-end Java solution for web applications, this release includes an early look at our Java runtime, integration with Google Web Toolkit, and a Google Plugin for Eclipse.
We're excited about the potential to use these tools to build scalable applications that complement the Google Apps suite of messaging and communication services. We're eager to share what we've learned so far, and encourage you to try it out and give feedback.
To help with that, we hope you'll join us for two upcoming events focused on developers, where you'll hear about our experience and that of partners who've begun development with App Engine and Google Apps. Then, give App Engine a try and join the conversation in our developer and partner communities and let us know what you think.
Details:
We're excited about the potential to use these tools to build scalable applications that complement the Google Apps suite of messaging and communication services. We're eager to share what we've learned so far, and encourage you to try it out and give feedback.
To help with that, we hope you'll join us for two upcoming events focused on developers, where you'll hear about our experience and that of partners who've begun development with App Engine and Google Apps. Then, give App Engine a try and join the conversation in our developer and partner communities and let us know what you think.
Details:
- Partner Webinar, May 12: Building Enterprise Applications Using Google App Engine for Java. Google is pairing up with Appirio, a Google Enteprise Partner, to offer a webinar detailing these new developer capabilities. The event targets IT leads and app developers within enterprise companies and takes place at 10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 12. Register or learn more here.
- Partner Event May 14: Partner with cloud leaders Google and Salesforce.com. Google and Salesforce.com are jointly hosting an ISV-focused event on Thursday afternoon, May 14 in Sunnyvale, California to discuss building a cloud computing strategy. If you're in the area, register here for this free event to test drive the latest cloud technologies, meet Salesforce.com and Google partner representatives, and network with cloud experts, fellow entrepreneurs, and developers.
Also: Google I/O May 27-28th: The Google I/O Developer Conference is May 27–28, 2009 in San Francisco, California. Learn more about the enterprise-focused sessions and sign up.
Posted by: Maureen Bradford, Enterprise Partner Marketing Manager
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