Google just announced that its Google Apps for Business service has earned ISO 27001 certification. This certifies that Google is following the standard ISO information security management protocols and best practices “for the systems, technology, processes and data centers serving Google Apps for Business.” If you’re a startup or individual user, chances are you don’t care too much about whether a company you are working with is following any of the ISO’s over 19,000 standards. This certification, however, will likely give give larger and more highly regulated businesses (and the executives who sign off on these deals) the necessary reassurances that moving to Google’s cloud solutions is safe. → Read More
About six years ago, Google launched Apps for Your Domain, which, for the first time, wrapped its suite of emerging cloud products under one umbrella — as a service for businesses and the enterprise. Today, the service is better known as Google Apps and is, according to Google, being used by at least 4 million organizations, with some 40 million-plus end users.
Yet, as the Google Apps ecosystem has expanded, and its tools have become integral to the day-to-day operations of millions of businesses, many are looking for better ways to monitor, control and secure end-user access to apps like Google Docs, Sites, and Calendars. That’s why BetterCloud launched earlier this year — to provide a suite of complementary products that provide Google Apps with enhanced management and security tools for both IT admins and end users. To help it get off the ground, the New York City-based startup is today announcing that it has raised $2.2 million in seed funding from undisclosed angel investors. → Read More
For a company facing litigation or even strict compliance guidelines, saving and organizing online records can be a challenging task. Today, Google is debuting a new archiving, records management and e-discovery solution for Google Apps for businesses called Vault.
Google Apps Vault, which is priced at $5 per-user, per-month, allows businesses to reduce risks and costs associated with litigation, investigation, and compliance audits by providing an in-depth archiving system in the cloud. So all emails, documents and chat messages from Gmail can be accessed in one place. Businesses can define what needs to be retained for Gmail and on-the-record chat messages based on content, labels, and metadata.
Austin-based cloud apps startup Spanning, which provides a backup service for Google Apps, just launched a new version of its service (Spanning 3.0) which includes a feature I.T. admins are sure to love: a health monitor for Google Apps. The new dashboard shows the status of a company’s Google Apps system, including problems, errors, possible causes and suggested fixes. Day-by-day reports are available, too.
But Spanning’s most visible change may be the service’s updated style, courtesy of ex-Frog designer BJ Heinley.
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Google+ SVP Vic Gundotra and Google Co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about their new social network and what exactly they’re up to these days.
Among other things, Gundotra touched on the success Google+ has seen since its launch, most notably that users have uploaded 3.4 billion photos over the last 90 days — a statistic which “blew his mind”. Because of this early success, much of which was unexpected, Gundotra said, Google has been focusing on scaling the social network to make sure that it works for all of its users. → Read More
Google’s development strategy is more agile, and products are consistently updated with new features and improvements. For example, in 2010, Google implemented 130 feature releases for its Google Apps Platform. For Google Apps users, new product additions can be overwhelming to keep track of, so today Google is making it easier for customers to access the latest Google Apps features in the timeframe that makes sense for them.
Users can now choose between two feature tracks—rapid release and scheduled release. Rapid Release users will have access to new features as soon as the features have completed testing and quality assurance, and are ready to roll out. Scheduled Release users will access new features on a weekly schedule, with at least a one-week notice following the initial feature launch. These users can also preview feature releases on a test domain. → Read More
This is interesting. Verizon has just announced that it is bundling broadband with Google Apps for its small business customers.
Called Google Apps for Verizon, the package combines Google’s-cloud-based productivity suite with broadband internet access. The new offering includes 25 GB (gigabytes) of domain name e-mail storage per user; access to Gmail, Google Calendar, Sites, Docs, and Video. → Read More
A little less than a year ago, Google launched its very own app store for enterprise apps, the Google Apps Marketplace. Using a set of APIs, third-party apps could deeply integrate their products within Google Apps and offer these free or paid apps to the productivity suite’s users. For Google, the marketplace was a way to add additional layers and productivity to its business products. Over the past year, the marketplace has grown to include over 200 apps from startups like Zoho, Aviary and Socialwok. Today, Google is creating additional categorization to the app marketplace by adding a new segment for education apps.
Aimed for Google’s 10 million Google Apps for Education users, the category offers over 20 applications from 19 vendors including specialized apps for schools and universities such as social learning game Grockit, grading software LearnBoost, math teaching tool DreamBox, design apps Aviary and more. → Read More
Earlier this year, Google announced that it would be rolling out Apps interactivity with iGoogle, YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and other products in the Google family. Today the search giant is making over 60 of its homegrown products available for a deep integration for all types of Google Apps accounts.
Services like Google Voice, Reader, Analytics and AdWords will now be available on Google Apps accounts. The apps can be accessed through a new interface in administrative control panel for new customers. Existing customers can transition to the new interface at their own pace but Google says it will automatically shift all App customers over to the new control panel early next year. → Read More
Google Apps is making some serious inroads into businesses and other organizations. Today, Google announced that more than 3 million businesses, schools, and government agencies are using Google Apps. To put that in perspective, that gives Google more enterprise customers than Salesforce, which has about 2 million.
There are now 30 million employees and other enterprise users on Google Apps, which is a bundle of Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Video, and Google Sites. Google Apps has grown by 5 million enterprise users since last March. Google sells it as an economical alternative to Microsoft Office and Exchange, with better sharing features since all the apps are based in the cloud. → Read More
While Google is testing search results that update as you type on its own, startup CloudMagic is bringing that functionality to Gmail and Google Apps – and other cloud-based services in the near future – by means of a Firefox and Chrome browser extension.
Installing the extension results in an extra search box in your Gmail interface that allows you to rapidly search for anything in your inbox, with results updating as you type and the ability to preview messages from a thread in a tab or open entire conversations with a single click. → Read More
Google has long been touting the deployment of its productivity suite and Microsoft Office-killer Google Apps to the City of Los Angeles. The City planned to equip its 34,000 employees with Google Apps, replacing Novell’s GroupWise system, the e-mail technology provider that LA had previously been using. But unfortunately, the process of transitioning the government entity over to the cloud-based system has seen a few speedbumps to say the least. In April, LA City administrators began questioning the move thanks to productivity, security and slowness issues with Google Apps. During that time, there was also the possibility of a delay in the full deployment of the system to employees because of these concerns.
On Friday, we learned that this delay became a reality, and Google missed its June 30 deadline to deploy Apps to all 34,000 employees. But today, at the launch of Google Apps for Government, a specialized version of the suite to meet government security needs, Google said the situation was in fact overblown. → Read More
Google wants us to move all of our data to the cloud. And yet, they keep having issues where a service that many people rely heavily on goes down. The latest is Google Calendar, which has been down for many people for well over an hour now.
The App Status Dashboard, and Google Calendar’s Twitter account confirm the disruption, but won’t say what caused it. We have an email into Google as well and will update when we hear back. → Read More
This morning, on their main blog, Google posted a little reminder to everyone about its view on censorship on the web. Specifically, they don’t like it. And while we all know their take on China’s demand for censorship by now, the search giant also offered up a new interesting little factoid: of the 100 countries around the world in which Google offers their services, some 25 at least partially block them.
“We see these attempts at control in many ways. China is the most polarizing example, but it is not the only one. Google products — from search and Blogger to YouTube and Google Docs — have been blocked in 25 of the 100 countries where we offer our services,” Google writes. They also link to a list from the Open Net Initiative which shows countries around the world known to censor some web content. All told, there are some 40 countries today that censor the web in some way, according to this data. This is up from just four countries in 2002, according to Google. → Read More
There’s no question that Google is setting its sights on taking some of Microsoft’s marketshare in the productivity suite space. Last year, Google announced a new plug-in that syncs Google’s enterprise versions of Apps, including Gmail, contacts, and calendar, with Microsoft’s Outlook. And Google just acquired Docverse, an application lets users collaborate directly on Microsoft Office documents. Today Google is taking another swipe at Microsoft with a new tool that makes it significantly easier to make the switch over to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange.
Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange is a new server-side tool that migrates a company’s email, calendar and contact data from Microsoft Exchange, an email server software product from Microsoft, to Google Apps. Google promises ease with the tool, allowing IT administrators the ability to select the mail, calendar and contact data to move in phases and migrate hundreds of users at the same time. Plus, employees can use Exchange during the migration without any interruption. The tool works with Exchange 2033 and 2007 for both on-premise and hosted applications and is available to the enterprise and education versions of Google Apps. → Read More
Business to business software can be a tough sell. Online B2B can be even a harder sell. While there is certainly money to be made, unless you’re one of the big players, the likelihood you’re going to succeed is pretty small. Starting today, Google is taking their roll as one of the big players and extending a platform to boost some smaller players.
Tonight, Google has unveiled their Google Apps Marketplace. This is an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud. Using a set of APIs, these third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already some 25 million people are using. And that also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies.
For customers, this means a one-stop shop for a variety of applications that their business or organization can use. And it’s extremely simple to get started with apps in the marketplace — it just takes 4 clicks, Google says (though that initial click will have to come from your domain admin to approve the use of the app). For developers, particularly small startup developers, it means instant access to more users than they can likely imagine. It also potentially means something more important: money. → Read More
Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a “fake Office” by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google’s recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Here are our notes from the announcement. Zoho will be integrating two of its over 20 business applications – Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps.
So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App’s extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation. main will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation. → Read More
Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year’s TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail.
Socialwok in the the Google Apps Marketplace allows organizations to use their existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and create a social network for their domains to share within Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Spreadsheets and other Google objects in feeds. For example, with the Socialwok Gmail gadget, users can view, post and comment on various feeds in their organization right from Gmail. → Read More
Tonight, Google is hosting one of their Campfire One events at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. They’re using the event to launch their new Google Apps Marketplace. This is the app store that business applications can use to reach the more than 25 million people and 2 million business that use Google Apps for their domains.
Here are the links to our extended coverage on the Google Apps Marketplace:
Below, find our live notes from the event. → Read More
Many of us take the disaster readiness of servers and data centers for granted. But for IT admins from both small and large companies, being prepared for disaster and emergency situations is complicated and expensive issue. Google has made an announcement today for any enterprise users of Google Apps; assuring IT admins that the suite is now fully prepared for disaster recovery. Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps, tells us that as of recently, Google is prepared for disaster recovery for all of its products in the Google Apps suite, which include Gmail, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video.
Google’s secret sauce is live and synchronous replication. So every action you take in Gmail is immediately replicated in two data centers at once, so that if one data center fails, Google will transfer data over to the other one. Traditionally, Google says, synchronous replication can be very expensive for companies. For example, the cost to back up 25GB of data with synchronous replication can range from $150 to $500+ in storage and maintenance costs per employee. Google says that exact price depends on a number of factors such as the number of times the data is replicated and the choice of service provider. Of course, Google replicates all the data multiple times, and the 25GB per employee for Gmail is backed up for free. And data from Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Google Video, which encompass most of the applications in Google Apps, is also synchronously replicated for free. → Read More
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