Moving to the cloud often means bringing over a great deal of data from various legacy systems. At Google, we try to make this process as easy and seamless as possible for our users with tools such as Google Apps migration for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. These tools allow you to move old emails, calendar and contact data into Google Apps.

Directory information is another important asset to consider. About two years ago, we launched the Google Apps Directory Sync tool, which allows customers to sync their Active Directory or other LDAP servers with Google Apps to those existing repositories of user account information. Rather than manually re-creating and maintaining this info in Google Apps, you can set up Google Apps Directory Sync to continuously sync your users, user profiles, shared contacts, mailing lists, LDAP groups and more to Google Apps.

Last week we started rolling out Google Apps Directory Sync 2.0, an update that features new enhancements including:
  • Aggressive multi-threading to dramatically improve the speed of synchronizing users
  • Support for OAuth, which eliminates the need to input and remember admin passwords
  • Support for synchronizing conference rooms and other room resources
For more information about these features, please review the updated administrator's guide. Existing Google Apps Directory Sync users should see these changes today, and new customers can download the tool on our help center. As always, we appreciate your feedback, so please leave us a comment below to let us know your thoughts.

Posted by Aditya Kulkarni, Product Manager