Innovation: It's in the Genes

This Google logo, initially created to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Understanding DNA, is a great representation of what happened when Genentech turned on Google Calendar for its 12,000 employees last month. Located in South San Francisco, Genentech is a leading biotech company focused on discovering, manufacturing and delivering medicines to patients with unmet medical needs. Genentech recently decided to adopt Google Apps and wanted to make a sure the migration went smoothly.  The company deputized "Google Guides," promoted Google Apps as superheros called the "Google Squad" and built out great training materials amongst other innovations. And even though Genentech expected a record number of helpdesk tickets to flood its "war room" given the size of the deployment, to the surprise of everyone, including Todd Pierce, the CIO of Genentech, the staff hardly heard a peep.  

Dec. 4, 10 AM PT: Lessons from Genentech's Google Apps Deployment 

John Nanninga, Sr. Project Manager at Genentech, shares his 7 steps for planning and executing a cloud computing initiative, including evaluation, migration and launch recommendations.   Open Q&A with John and Google product managers to follow.  Register here.

We are also pleased to host CEO Vinny Lingham from an Internet start-up called SynthaSite.  Vinny is a true fan of Google Apps after he recently moved his headquarters from South Africa to San Francisco simply by putting his people on a plane.  With no hardware or software to maintain, SynthaSite has relied on Google Apps to help them scale their business and access their key information from anywhere.

Innovate with Google AdWords and Apps.  Learn how SynthaSite uses Google AdWords and Apps to innovate in its industry on Thursday, December 11th, 10AM PST.  Talk with CEO Vinny Lingham on using AdWords to grow revenues and Google Apps to achieve rapid scale. Register here. 

We hope you can join us for these two guest speakers.  We devote half of the time to Q&A so this is your chance to ask current customers your most important questions.  Thanks again for your interest in Google Apps!

Serena Satyasai, Google Apps Marketing

Read More

Findability without the complexity

As information continues to pile up behind the corporate firewall, companies and executives are fast recognizing that effective findability is more than a nice-to-have -- it's a must-have for their business. In fact, in a recent survey by AIIM, 62% of respondents saw findability as "imperative or significant" to their overall business goals and success, while only 5% reported that it wasn't a factor.

Findability is a complex problem, and our goal is to provide businesses with a simple solution. That's why we've put together 'Enterprise Findability Without the Complexity' - a look into our philosophy and approach to search for businesses. We've noticed that approaches to findability can vary dramatically, which can have a significant impact on subsequent results. For instance, a traditional architecture, as demonstrated in this video, might include a plethora of servers, such as front-end web servers, index servers, query servers, database servers, and SAN storage. Not to mention load balancing servers, identity servers, disaster recovery servers, patch deployment servers, and volume license management servers. What a mouthful!

On the other hand, there is the appliance based model - i.e., one box that does it all. The Google Search Appliance can search 10 million documents with just one box, and pull information together from across a business - whether it lives in a database, intranet, business application or content management system. Not to mention it looks pretty snazzy too.

You can read the full document here. We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Posted by Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager

Read More

Contact syncing with BlackBerry devices now available

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Work often needs to get done when you're not at your own desk or using your own computer. Software-as-a-service has a natural advantage here, because your information is accessible from the cloud anywhere, with any internet-connected device. Since we launched Google Sync for BlackBerry, for example, workers have been able to keep their mobile devices in sync with Google Calendar.

Calendar access isn't the whole mobile story, though, and today we're adding BlackBerry contact syncing to Google Sync. This improvement offers two-way synchronization between your BlackBerry's built-in address book and your Google Apps contacts automatically over the air.

To use Google Sync or upgrade from the older version, visit m.google.com/sync from your BlackBerry browser.

By the way, Google Apps supports mobile access on many different phones, so take a look at our other Google Apps mobile options.

Read More

Calculating the true cost of fighting spam

In today's economic climate you need to be more efficient with your IT budget. And since email is a key tool for almost every businesses, keeping spam and malware out of inboxes remains a top priority. In our experience, companies often overlook the productivity costs that spam and viruses have on their business. This simple ROI calculator lets you see how much spam can impact expenses and productivity, particularly if your current anti-spam solution is waning in effectiveness.

Once you quantify how much spam is costing your company, it makes sense to re-evaluate the IT options for managing spam. The first, and perhaps biggest, decision is whether to keep spam filtering in-house or use a hosted service. It can be difficult to add up the true expenses of each solution. On the surface, the cost of an appliance may seem reasonable, but the up-front costs are just the beginning in a complete cost-of-ownership calculation.

At Google, we believe that email security makes sense as a hosted service for several cost-related reasons:

* A cloud computing solution provides you with a predictable expense. A spike in spam can hit at any time, and companies using an in-house solution may find themselves dealing with the unexpected capital expense of a new appliance to deal with the load.

* You save on maintenance costs. After installation, most in-house appliances require regular upgrades and maintenance. With a hosted solution, all the updates are handled through the cloud. Nothing to worry about or budget for.

* Using the cloud makes email security more effective. With a hosted service such as Google Message Security, you tap into a network of intelligence that spans more than 40,000 businesses and 14 million users, reaping the benefits of the economies of scale that come with that.

To help you understand the whole cost of spam, we're introducing a TCO (total cost of ownership) calculator, which lets you compare expenses for in-house appliances versus hosted services. Using a three-year time horizon and considering both start-up and maintenance costs, companies can save thousands by choosing a hosted service. The graph below models the results of one cost scenario, for a 100-user company:



Let's look at a customer who was re-evaluating their spam solution last year: Gaines, Wolter, & Kinney, P.C. is a civil litigation firm in Birmingham, Alabama, that specializes in tort defense. They needed a solution that would reduce the inflow of network traffic and be cost effective. David Hebert, an IT administrator for GW&K, recalls, "Our limits on connection bandwidth meant that a service that filtered out spam was a no-brainer decision." But David needed data to convince management that a change was essential. He used a ROI calculator and found that they were losing 122 hours per employee in productivity each year to spam. With the hourly rate of their lawyers, this meant that choosing Google Message Security paid for itself in 1 day.

If your business is interested in learning more about how hosted services like Google Message Security can save you money and increase productivity, visit us at www.google.com/a/security.

Posted by Amanda Kleha, Google Security and Compliance Team

Read More

Fighting spam just got a little easier

Last week, a web hosting service that was a significant source of spam was taken offline by the combined efforts of Security Fix and several Internet providers. Google would like to congratulate Security Fix for leading this effort and striking another blow in the battle to stamp out spam on the web. The removal of this service helps "clean up" the web for everyone, and dovetails with efforts like Google's to make web communications safer and more secure in all of the ways that people use it.

We'll continue to monitor spam traffic, as we always do, but here's what we've seen in the past few days:

On November 11, when the spam source was taken down, we saw a 70% drop in spam from levels seen at the beginning of the month. However, we've seen drops like this before. In late July this year there was a similar drop that was reversed within a few days.

Gmail servers, which also noticed a drop in spam on November 11, are now showing an upward trend as new sources of spam, as always, continue to emerge.
The team at Google stays "on guard" as the fight continues!

Posted by Amanda Kleha, Google Security and Compliance Team

Read More

The students weigh in at the University of Westminster

With thousands of universities currently using Google Apps, it's not uncommon for us to learn about a new school going live every day. One of the latest school to deploy Apps is the University of Westminster in central London, which will soon be introducing our hosted email and collaborative tools to over 25,000 students and staff on campus.

Westminster's Information Services director, Professor Roger James, said that using Google would help the school better engage with “Gen-X, Gen-Y” students brought up on the web, and the inherent collaboration abilities of web-based software would also be a boon. As proof of their mission to resonate with students, the University even asked their students what system they would prefer to use. We were delighted to hear that over 90% of their students agreed that Google was their preference. According to James, “modern IT needs everyone to support the change to be successful; it is as much a decision around what the users want as any technical decision. Products like Google offer a tremendous platform for IT to build on the interest of their users."

We find it incredibly valuable to listen to students about how they use Apps, so we're glad that Westminster has listened to their students as well.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps EDU Marketing

Read More

Security in the cloud: learn more

You may know the term "cloud computing" or you may already be doing much of your business "in the cloud"...but whatever your use of the phrase or what it offers, there's more to learn about web-based computing at Cloud Camp.

Cloud Camps are offered by Google as a way to connect with regional audiences on various topics related to business in the cloud. Three upcoming camps – emphasizing the role of the cloud in increasing network security and reducing risks – will immerse participants in a morning of learning on eDiscovery, email security, legal issues and more. Space is limited, but our short online form will put you in touch with your local Google contacts so that you can see if this event is a fit for you.

Dates and locations follow:

Atlanta, GA – Tuesday, November 18
Philadelpia, PA – Thursday, November 20
Irvine, CA – Wednesday, December 3

Learn more about these Cloud Camps here.

Posted by Sundar Raghavan, Google Enterprise Team

Read More