Last week we added our 100th Google Enterprise Professional partner worldwide. And while the milestone is absolutely a reason to celebrate, it's not all about quantity--the breadth and expertise of our partners is what really makes this program (and our customers) successful.

We now have a whole range of partners...
- Small consultancies handling things like secure search and web design
- Large integrators combining the Google Search Appliance with content management systems, portals, and other enterprise applications behind the firewall
- ISVs building connectors to extend the reach of Google search
- Application vendors leveraging Google search, including having their solutions be "Powered by Google"
- Geospatial integrators helping with deployments of Google Earth Enterprise

And our partners are all over the globe, helping customers in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

Customers are even getting in on the act, developing OneBox modules to make dynamic business information more accessible (just like our partners are doing). Best of all, our customers are getting the services and solutions they need.

To see our growing list of partners, visit the "Partners" section of the Google Enteprise website: http://www.google.com/enterprise/gep.

Since we launched Gmail two years ago, many users have been asking us if they can use Gmail as their regular work e-mail. We understand why - in the corporate environment, the average employee gets about 10 times more mail than the average consumer! With that much e-mail – most users want the speed, storage space, simple-yet-rich user interface and the ability to search messages in a snap that Gmail provides.

Well, let me let you in a little secret and some big news.

The little secret is that I've been using a "special" version of Gmail as my work e-mail client for a while now. Having used regular e-mail clients all my life, I was a little skeptical about the web mail solution. But it took me little time to realize the benefits. Not only the everywhere access (since it's web-based), but there's no more "foldering" at the end of the day, finding e-mails and attachments is a snap and... well, the speed! My inbox holds about 10 gigs of mail, and it's still as fast as when it was empty. Try that with your regular e-mail client!

Now the big news… today we're announcing the launch of Google Apps for Your Domain, a combination of GMail + Calendar + Talk that small organizations can brand, customize and use. And this is just the start! We expect to release an enterprise version by the end of the year that will have the functionality larger organizations require.

Isn't it time everyone at work loves their e-mail, just like they love Gmail?

We couldn't have said it better ourselves:

"I can guarantee one thing: you will keep making more files, and losing track of them, every day. And whether you buy a search tool tomorrow or never, getting a grip on your files will save you time and money."

The above quote is from Network World small business networking columnist James Gaskin; from his latest column, "Find that file fast" whereby he discusses the Google Mini and additional search tools small businesses should consider in helping manage an ever-growing amount of data. We concur with Mr. Gaskin's prognostication: we're seeing more small business customers who not only need to index more data on their intranets and web sites, but also different types of data (HTML, PDF, Office docs, etc) that can be found quickly. And our Google Mini customers are proof that as small business websites, intranets and file shares grow, their search accuracy, response and benefits can thrive, not diminish.

The Google Enterprise Professional program is now on four continents! In addition to partners in North America, Europe, and Japan, we now proudly welcome Australia to our enterprise partner family.

More specifically, web services company Panalysis has signed on to help our customers in Australia and New Zealand get even more out of their Google Search Appliance and Google Mini deployments. Panalysis has extensive experience with web analytics (including Google Analytics, of course!), optimization, websites, and intranets. Also, with a focus on user experience, they're a great fit for Google. We're excited to have them on board and excited to be breaking new ground down under!

A boon to academics everywhere, the Chicago Manual of Style chose to use the Google Mini to power search in its first online version, coming out next month. Previously harried college students had to first find the Manual of Style under a pile of laundry then leaf through dog-eared sections to find information. Now they can now get instant information on how to properly cite sources such as online articles without page numbers - making Wikipedia and MySpace the #1 and #2 most popular reference sources for the under 25 set. And because of the Google Mini's automated spell checker, they can even misspell "parenthetical citation." We won't tell their high school English teachers.

I came across a nice article that accurately frames the challenges with security and search in the enterprise. The first in a series from New Idea Engineering, the piece titled "Mapping Security Requirements to Enterprise Search - Part 1: Defining Specific Security Requirements" gives a good overview of the various types of deployment options and security decisions organizations have to make when deploying search across the enterprise.

Security continues to be one of the more challenging parts of every enterprise search deployment. Most enterprise content systems weren't designed with high powered, sub-second, secure search in mind. The Google Search Appliance handles all types of security environments from NTLM to LDAP to Single Sign-On to X.509 to SAML. We continue to work with the industry leaders in the security and access control space to help solve this problem in a scalable and easy to deploy manner.

I look forward to the next article in New Idea's series.