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Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Silicon Valley veteran Andy Bechtolsheim. While at Stanford University, Bechtolsheim devised a powerful computer (which he called a workstation) because he was tired of waiting for computer time on the central university system. Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy approached him to market his invention and start Sun – derived from “Stanford University Network.” Sun Microsystems quickly became a success, with a market capitalization by 2003 of $11.5 billion. Today, Andy is Chairman of Arista Networks, a company that delivers networking solutions for large data centers and high-performance computing environments.


Andy will be speaking on a live webcast this Thursday, May 13, at 11:00 a.m. PDT, where he will also field questions from the audience.


If you are an entrepreneur or you are part of a growing start-up, then you're no doubt laser-focused on developing and marketing something game-changing. From experience, I know that you can’t afford to siphon off resources toward anything that’s not core to the business.


When we founded Arista Networks, we did not really want to buy our own servers for internal IT tasks such as hosting email. And we didn’t want to worry about data back-ups or remote access. We initially used a small, hosted email provider, but something went wrong every week. More than two years ago, we switched to Google Apps for all of our communication needs, and we have not had any problems since.


Our experience with Google Apps is very good. Email works great --- in particular the search function plus the integrated chat, and there is no SPAM. We get back-ups and world-wide remote access managed by Google. Document sharing is very useful. Basically everything just works as you would expect, and we don't have to worry about anything. We don't need a system administrator, even with a headcount of more than a hundred people.


My advice to every start-up is to use Google Apps. It saves you from having huge headaches, it is very inexpensive, and just a better system. We also use some other cloud services such as Salesforce.com for customer relationship management, Netsuite for our database and Amazon to host our website. Cloud computing works great for us. I would never buy another server to bring these functions in-house.


I would be happy to relay my experiences with Google Apps here at Arista and share three tips with you on:

  • How to use cloud computing to focus on your core competency
  • Ways to help employees increase productivity in a rapid growth environment
  • How to recharge your business approach through constant innovations in Google Apps




Please join us for this LIVE event:

May 13, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team







Do you have an informative and fun Google Apps story to share? Please submit it here.

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It’s that time of year again. Brick-and-mortar stores are clearing out the sweaters and snow-mobiles and revamping window displays with sandals and scuba gear. We know that online retailers are painstakingly updating their virtual window space as well and (perhaps even more importantly) are thinking hard about how new technologies can bring a fresh edge to their website – and the bottom line.

To kick off the season, Google hosted “search summits” for more than 200 retailers in our London and New York offices last month. These summits allowed retailers to share their top priorities and concerns from a technology and business standpoint, and provided an opportunity for Google Product Managers, Engineers, Partner Managers, and customers to trade best practices in the industry.

We want to share the learnings with people who weren’t able to attend, so we’re extending an invitation to a live webcast on Friday, May 14 presented by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager for Google Commerce Search. We’ll cover all the basics of what makes good search on e-commerce sites, how improving search speed and usability can help improve customer satisfaction and increase sales, and how top online retailers have made the switch.

Join us to learn more – and bring your questions!

Friday, May 14, 2010
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT / GMT 06:00

Posted by Anna Bishop, Enterprise Search Marketing team
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Editor's Note: Tom Hippensteel is the Vice President for LiquidConcrete, a medium-sized Seattle-based manufacturer of high-performance concrete coatings and flooring systems for industrial and transportation markets. LiquidConcrete relies on Google Apps for email, calendar, and document collaboration, and on Smartsheet, an integrated app from the Google Apps Marketplace, for online project management, general work management, and team collaboration.

Smartsheet's integration with Google Apps enables businesses to transform the work they routinely track in spreadsheets into a complete solution for managing business operations. Smartsheet currently offers three versions in the Google Apps Marketplace: online project management, sales pipeline management, and crowdsourcing.

Below, Tom explains a bit about LiquidConcrete and the steps they took to get the entire business – from the front office to the warehouse – to operate in the cloud.

To learn more about LiquidConcrete's success with Google Apps and Smartsheet, please join us for a webinar on Tuesday, May 11 at 11:00 a.m. PDT.

We win business because we have great products, and because we run a lean operation that differentiates on quick turnaround of custom jobs with high levels of customer service. Everything about our operation is focused on efficiency, so we’re always looking for software solutions that fit that model. We’ve had successes and setbacks in getting our operations into the cloud in a way that works for all of our employees. We needed tools that "just work the way that we work."

We use Quickbooks for accounting and have had great success with Google Apps for email and calendar, but had trouble finding a tool that combined the ease of use, power and flexibility we needed to manage the rest of our operations. We tried various CRM, ERP and manufacturing solutions but they made us work in a certain way and were difficult to use – people just went back to how they were doing it before.

Then we found Smartsheet, a cloud-based project management tool. It was already integrated with Google Apps, and as we began deploying it more broadly, made Google Docs much more useful. Smartsheet and Google Apps are the only tools that have been readily adopted across our whole company, all the way out to the guys on the warehouse floor.

Here’s how we use them:

Project & task management We started tracking various projects and shared task lists in Smartsheet. User adoption was not a problem and the ability to launch Smartsheet from Gmail (the first app we open every morning) might sound simple, but it was a big win. Most of us check into Smartsheet dozens of times per day and we all have it added to the first screen on our iPhones.

Order-to-ship process We then realized that Smartsheet and Gmail could help with our order entry and shipping process. It was easy to set up and quickly adopted by reps on the phones with customers as well as people in the factory and at the warehouse. Here's our new streamlined process:

1. New orders are entered in a Smartsheet with the packing slip attached to the order and special instructions added as discussion notes


2. The people at the warehouse are automatically notified by Smartsheet (via Gmail on their iPhone) that a new order needs to be shipped


3. They access Smartsheet from their email, download the packing slip and prep the order

4. Once the order is shipped, they fill out the "tracking number" field for that order in Smartsheet and change the dropdown status from "waiting" to "shipped"

5. The right people receive a Smartsheet notification that a new order has been shipped with the tracking number available


Inventory tracking We also track raw and finished goods inventory in Smartsheet, giving salespeople instant access to the latest information online or via their iPhone.

Sales pipeline We have recently started using Smartsheet to manage the sales pipeline. It's been great to have all of our client projects and potential leads tracked in one place with their relevant documents attached to their record. We have instant status updates, forecast amounts and recent call notes at our fingertips and use reminders to make sure follow up happens.

Specification document management Since we are able to easily attach Google Docs to our Smartsheets, we decided to go forward with converting hundreds of specification documents into Google Docs. Google Docs gives us collaborative writing and review to get the specifications right, and Smartsheet organizes them conveniently right inside the project workflow. Accessing files directly from our sales, inventory and order processing sheets has been a big productivity win.


Smartsheet and Google Apps are changing the way our company communicates. Our CEO loves it because he gets an update on order status or a key customer in real time. Our reps love it because they can quickly pull up an order while on the phone with a customer and give an instant answer without waiting for someone at the warehouse to call them back. This saves us a tremendous amount of time.

The two keys for us are ease of use and the flexibility, and we've yet to come across a type of work that can't be managed in Smartsheet and Google Apps. We also love that it's a fraction of the cost of many of the other solutions we've looked at and we don't have to hire expensive consultants to customize it.

Bottom line is that we serve our customers better than bigger competitors because we're nimble and agile, and we feel the same way about Smartsheet and Google Apps.

Tom Hippensteel, VP, LiquidConcrete

Join Tom and the Smartsheet team for a webinar to learn more about this customer success story. This online discussion will include a question and answer session.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

You can watch it at work here:


To learn more about Smartsheet's experience selling their app in the Google Apps Marketplace, please read their post on the Google Apps Developer Blog. To learn even more about Smartsheet, check out their Google Apps Marketplace listing.

Posted by Chris Kelly, Google Apps Marketplace team


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If you're a Google Apps user, you're already running part of your business in the cloud, and realizing the benefits around speed, efficiency and collaboration it brings. The Google Apps Marketplace enables those same cloud benefits for your entire business, beyond messaging and collaboration.

Since our launch last month, we’ve been pleased by the great success our customers have seen with Marketplace apps, and by the constant stream of innovation coming from our Marketplace vendors.

Next Wednesday, April 28, we're hosting a webinar about extending Google Apps with web-based applications from the Google Apps Marketplace. You’ll get a general overview of the marketplace, see a demo of how to find and install apps, and learn about applications – many of which are free – that you can start using right now for your business. Please join us!

Wednesday, April 28, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Chris Kelly, the Google Apps Marketplace team
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Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Jeremy Lawrence, CIO of The Mind Research Network (MRN), an organization dedicated to the discovery and advancement of clinical solutions for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of mental illness and other brain disorders. By switching from hosted Microsoft® Exchange to Google Apps, Lawrence spared his IT team from the grind of maintenance, upgrades and patches – all while providing users with a more advanced solution.

Beyond mail, Jeremy deployed Google's online documents, video, archiving, and encryption apps to help his 200+ research scientists and staff improve collaboration, boost productivity and enhance security.

Jeremy will be speaking this Thursday, April 8, on a live webcast. Register here.

Several years ago the situation at MRN could not have been more complex. The organization had grown with very little standardization and centralization. For email, we had a blend of email clients – Microsoft Outlook®, Outlook Express®, Apple® Mail, Pine, Elm, Semaphore, Morse – need I go on? There was such a proliferation of email accounts with varying reliability that people kept saying "Send it to my home account, because I never check this one." We also had growing needs in calendaring and document sharing.

We determined that we needed a single mail domain, mailing lists, a company directory, a shared calendar, as well as shared documents and project websites – something our employees weren't really aware of at the time. We thought about running Microsoft Exchange in-house, switching to another on-site platform, or a hosted model. Over a fair period of time, we calculated the costs of several solutions and analyzed all the reliability and collaboration factors.

Google won hands-down in a feature/cost comparison. We opted for a Big Bang conversion and got over the conversion hump in about a week's time. Import of email was flawless across 104 mailboxes – and we've now grown to nearly 300. We also did up-front preparation with weekly FAQ emails and bulk account creation in advance. We set up a hotline and printed instructions for users. We also conducted help sessions in the lobby. Post-migration, we provided "tip of the day" messages for 14 days.

Beyond mail, we deployed Google's online documents and video, as well as additional archiving and encryption features by Google Postini Services to help our 200+ research scientists and staff improve collaboration, boost productivity, and enhance security. Most of all, we learned that Google Apps provides capabilities far beyond our expectations and provides a platform for us to easily add on additional web apps. It's this additional extensibility and flexibility beyond just email that's a big value add for an organization of our size – and we're just scratching the surface.

We learned many tips and tricks for making users happy and we can share five (and more!) simple ways to get more out of Google Apps. Please join me for a live webcast to learn more.

Thursday, April 8, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT
Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino®.

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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Conrad Cross, CIO of the City of Orlando, Florida. In November, the city announced it had Gone Google. Last month Orlando became one of the first cities in America to switch all of its employees to Gmail. Cross has been CIO at the City of Orlando since December of 1999 and has been leading the Google Apps deployment that took only two months and is resulting in more than 60% savings.

Join Conrad for a live webcast on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT. He'll talk about moving 3,000 city employees to Google Apps. Please note that registration will occur on a third party site.

Like many city departments, the City of Orlando is facing an aging infrastructure juxtaposed with budget cuts and high demand for more advanced infrastructure services such as mobile access to email. We were using a Lotus Notes® email system and paying for numerous servers in City Hall, so we needed to find a different way of doing business.

This situation was all exacerbated by the fact that our IT department was recently whittled down from 84 workers to 69 this year. We determined after analyzing Google Apps that we could achieve significant savings and move into the cloud very quickly.

If we were to keep our current system, we estimated it would cost $133 a year for each of its 3,000 employees – or $399,000 including annual software licenses. Google charges $50 per user, or $150,000 delivering more than 60% in savings. In return, everyone from city planners to police officers will now use a web-based email system similar to Google's popular Gmail, but without the advertisements that support the free consumer version.

Google servers will store all city email and run the application, and Google technicians in Google data centers will make sure it runs smoothly. Google will also help us more securely host records such as sensitive law-enforcement and legal documents by mustering greater resources and expertise than we could on our own.

After considering the cost and feature advantages, we made the decision to move to Google Apps. We were able to move to Google Apps in less than 60 days, a major accomplishment. When the mayor cornered me in the hallway, I was nervous – but then he told me how excited and supportive he was about the switch. We're now on board with Google Apps and we don't have to worry about constant upgrades or implementing new innovations, and the cost-savings we're achieving are impressive.

My message for other city governments is: do the analysis and determine what your costs are. If the savings are compelling, then move quickly - you'll see the move into the cloud is relatively fast and painless—and ultimately very cost-effective.

We’re eager to share our experiences about the nuances involving our transition to Google Apps, including what the main concerns were across the city in making the move and how we address them.

Please join us for this live event:

City of Orlando Cuts Costs by Over 66% by Moving Email and Apps into the Cloud
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino®.
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Editors' note: Today’s guest blogger is David Rumberg, Partner and CIO of Sports Basement, a place where runners, swimmers, backpackers, fitness fans and triathletes can find great prices online on everything they need for their outdoor adventures. David has worked in retail for over 20 years. Before Sports Basement, David worked for The Men's Wearhouse, where he was an application analyst working on large projects like PeopleSoft and ecommerce.

Join David for a live webcast on Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT. Please note that registration will occur on a third party site.

Sports Basement is a specialty retailer – and to keep our mid-sized company going, we need to access email and other collaboration solutions to work in real-time from various locations. Until recently, we were using on-premise Microsoft Exchange and Outlook.

It was easy to see that there was a lot of innovative, cool stuff happening in the industry – such as managing email from your iPhone. These were the kinds of things we wanted to enable, yet we thought these capabilities would be too expensive or complicated for us. Many of them were not possible using our existing on-premise solutions. Then we investigated Google Apps, and saw that we could equip everyone with email, access it from anywhere and work collaboratively in real-time from different locations – even on mobile devices. Plus, we could free up staff time to build an online community, increase website conversions with Google Analytics and share best practices.

We're just getting started with Google Apps, but we did one thing right away that's been very helpful: uploading all of our HR forms as templates so anyone knows where to access the most recent form, copy it, and fill it out online.

In comparing our options, we did a hard cost analysis, but, as always, it was difficult to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison. If we analyzed email alone, then Microsoft and Google would break even after several years. But then we factored in instant messaging, security, spam protection, and mobile email access for all our users. And we also saw that we could end the philosophy of scarcity, ending user rationing and inbox quotas and provide a single platform for communications and collaboration for all of our employees. After we started comparing options, Google was an easy choice and we haven't looked back.

As a mid-sized business, we are still finding new ways to take advantage of Google Apps, and seeing more potential every day. Even the ability to put our forms online has been a huge boon for our productivity.

More importantly, the Google option was a way to tap into Google’s rich pool of innovation – and, in the end, that’s what we wanted. I’d be happy to share what we have learned so far about what Google inventiveness means to our business. I can also speak about tips and tricks in migrating from Microsoft Exchange and the approach we took in doing so.

Please join me for this LIVE event:

Choosing Google Apps for innovation over Microsoft Exchange
Thursday, March 11, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.
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Are you considering Google Apps for your organization? Would you want to hear about the strategies other organizations have used in deploying Google Apps? Do you want to learn field-tested best practices to accelerate deployment and maximize employee satisfaction?

Then please join us this Thursday, February 25, for a live webcast with Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy and Marcello Pedersen, Google Apps deployment specialists. Get your questions answered on which best practices will help you succeed.

Join us for this live event:

Geek Out on the Best Practices of a Google Apps Deployment
Thursday, February 25, 2010
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.
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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Tim Horton, Co-Founder and CEO of DiscountOfficeItems.com, one of the largest office supply superstores on the internet. Offering more than 65,000 name brand office supplies, technology products and office furniture, DiscountOfficeItems.com is an Inc. 500 and Internet Retailer Top 500 company.

In late 2009 Tim and his team identified search as a problem area for their site and began researching eTail search solutions. When they saw a demo of Google Commerce Search, they decided to switch and were able to integrate the new solution within their existing UI in less than a month. Almost immediately, they saw sizable lifts in revenue, traffic, transactions, and average order size.

Tim will join Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager at Google Enterprise on a live webcast Thursday, March 4 at 10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST to share his experience and answer questions about their decision to switch to Google Commerce Search.

When I co-founded Discount Office Items in 2003, our main objective was to offer customers a large selection, low prices, and top-notch customer service. Our site experienced rapid growth and high overall customer satisfaction, but our homegrown search was sluggish and returned irrelevant results.

In late 2009 we decided to evaluate Google Commerce Search and requested a demo. When we saw how fast we could recoup our spending and start making more money due to better, faster search, the decision to implement Google Commerce Search was clear. After the deployment process (which took just a couple of weeks including the winter holiday), we saw an immediate lift in revenue and traffic as well as transactions and searches done on our site.

More people are using our site search now to find the right products – Google Commerce Search works well and the results are highly relevant. Search was one of the weakest parts of our site. Now, it’s one of the strongest – all with less load on our servers and less time spent on maintenance for the IT staff.

Please join me and the Google Commerce Search team for this live webinar:

How Discount Office Items Increased Revenue 6% by Switching to Google Commerce Search
Thursday, March 4, 2010
10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST


You can contact our sales team, download the datasheet, or learn more on our website.

Posted by Eric Larson, Enterprise Search Deployment Engineer
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Although it "makes sense" that good search can increase website ROI, especially for eCommerce websites, it's important to back that intuition with quantifiable data supporting the value of online research search. Thanks to recent research from Market Strategy Group, the evidence is in.

Market Strategy Group's new white paper, titled "Search for Revenue: Leveraging Powerful Search to Boost eTail Sales" shares a range of data indicating how adding or improving search capability on eTail sites can significantly raise revenues. The study covers why site search is more important today than ever before, and delves into the potential ROI companies can achieve by having advanced search on their eCommerce sites.

We're sharing firsthand perspecitves on that value in an upcoming webinar hosted by eCommerce specialists MultiChannel Merchant:

Search: adding real ROI to eCommerce websites
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST

During this hour-long webinar, you'll hear from:All three speakers will answer audience questions as part of this event.

Register here. We hope you'll join us to get the facts on how effective search boosts results for online retailers.

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Enterprise Search team
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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild Semiconductor, the $1.2 billion chipmaker. Barry has more than 15 years of IT experience in the semiconductor industry. His responsibilities include enterprise IT support for telecommunications, messaging, database administration, and product design infrastructure as well as responsibility for business applications supporting finance, human resources, and business intelligence.

Barry will be available on a live webcast this Thursday, January 28, at 2:00 p.m. EST, 11:00 a.m. PST, 7:00 p.m. GMT to talk about his company's experience switching to Google Apps, and to answer your questions about this process.

At the end of 2008, we were at a crossroads for our email and collaboration tools. We had to make a long-term decision on what direction to take. At the time, we had over 6,000 Lotus Notes/Domino users around the world using an older platform (Lotus Notes/Domino version 6.5). We had some serious challenges: our users were frustrated with the outdated Notes/Domino functionality, the IT environment was complicated, and the ongoing maintenance costs were high. At the same time, we were working to implement an email archiving and e-discovery solution that was, frankly, not going well. To add to the mix, the world economy was in free-fall and our business was seeing those effects.

We wanted to improve our messaging tools while simplifying the IT environment, but needed a cost-effective approach. We originally thought we should upgrade our existing solutions to the latest releases, but knew that was going to be a time-consuming and expensive approach. So, we started seriously evaluating other options. During our review, we considered the hosted versions of the Lotus and Microsoft offerings, but ultimately focused our attention on evaluating Google Apps.

When Paul Lones, our SVP of IT, first suggested taking a look at using Google Apps as our enterprise email tool, we thought he was joking. But when we started looking at the capabilities, benefits, and costs of Google's enterprise offering, we were very impressed. We then began a more thorough technical and functional review. We determined that the core capabilities for email, calendar, contacts, and IM would probably meet our needs. Since email archiving and discovery were also critical for us, we looked at the Postini solutions. Again, we thought the delivered Postini features would work for Fairchild. Beyond the basics, we also saw the added value of Google's collaboration features available from Google Sites and Google Docs, and the anywhere/anytime access provided by Google's cloud-based services. Finally, we did an ROI analysis and estimated we’d save about $500,000 per year by migrating off of Lotus Notes/Domino. So, we made a case to our CEO and executive team to move forward with a pilot project using Google Apps.

For the pilot, we selected a core group of IT and business employees and asked for some volunteers. To our surprise the CEO and the entire executive team volunteered. As a result, we also included the executive assistants. Although having the execs in the pilot raised the stakes, it turned out to be one of the keys to the project's success. To help us get up to speed quickly and run the pilot smoothly, we partnered with Appirio Consulting. Appirio had previous experience converting large corporations from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps. Appirio conducted one-on-one or small group training sessions for the pilot users and targeted training for the executive admins because of the complexity of their jobs when it comes to collaboration, email, and calendar management.

After a successful pilot, we made the decision to migrate the whole company to Google. The next group of employees migrated were 400 "early adopters" from across the company, including all owners of Notes/Domino applications and databases. The idea was to give these people a head start in moving any important non-email content from Lotus to Google Apps. For the early adopters, we used a combination of live and recorded web-based training. These early adopters also became "Google guides" for the rest of the user base during the full company migration.

Ultimately, we deployed Google Apps to over 6,000 users in 20 countries in less than five months. This deployment included migrating contacts, calendar entries, and up to 12 months of historical email, plus providing BlackBerry support. At the same time, we implemented the email security and email archiving capabilities available using Google's Postini platform.

Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money. Google Docs and Sites are really changing the way people work as teams, and the way information is shared. This new way of doing working is really powerful, especially for a company that does business in so many countries and timezones. We are now looking at Google Sites to replace our existing intranet. But the ability to access Gmail and the other Google Apps from anywhere – without having to use a VPN – has probably been the biggest hit.

We learned a lot of valuable lessons throughout the process of evaluating and migrating to Google Apps that we’d be happy to share with you. Please join me to discuss our experience in more detail and to learn how you might leverage Google Apps for your company.

Join us for this LIVE Event on:
Switching from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps by Fairchild Semiconductor
Thursday, January 28, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.
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How can e-retailers surface product information and a vast number of product attributes for shoppers without sacrificing speed or relevance? In November, Google's enterprise search team launched a new website search option designed specifically for online retailers: Google Commerce Search. Since then, we've heard from many agencies, partners, and solution providers who wanted to learn more about the development and technical features of the product, because website search can present unique issues for online retailers.

If you're looking to dive a bit deeper into the technical side of Google Commerce Search, join us for a behind-the-scenes look in an interactive webinar in which Google's search product managers and engineers will review how Google Commerce Search works, address implementation and administrative questions, and discuss key product capabilities.

Google Commerce Search "Under the Hood"
Monday, February 1, 2010
1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST

This webinar will include a question and answer session. We hope you'll join us for this informative online event.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team
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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Elliot Tally, Director of IT Collaboration and Automation for Sanmina-SCI, a leading Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider focused on delivering end-to-end manufacturing solutions for communications, medical, defense and aerospace, industrial, renewable energy, and other sectors. Elliot has more than ten years of experience in high-tech manufacturing and information systems spanning a breadth of industries. He is responsible for enterprise collaboration and messaging systems, process automation and integration, and for Sanmina-SCI's suite of IT applications.

Last year, Sanmina-SCI's IT team asked themselves, "Could Google Apps replace Microsoft Exchange for a global, multilingual workforce?" After careful due diligence, the team recently completed a phased migration for 15,000 email users, charting a new course for IT. Elliot and his team will be available on a live webcast next Thursday to talk about the migration and answer questions from participants.

Sanmina-SCI is a leader in outsourced Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS). We have 37,000 diverse employees and our business is very competitive. We needed something that was less expensive to maintain and provided better collaboration tools than what our incumbent vendor, Microsoft, offered.

After putting Google through the test in more ways than you can imagine we decided that Google Apps was the way to go – especially after we saw collaboration tools like Google Sites. Then our job was to migrate 15,000 users in 18 countries...no small feat.

We started with several pilots to pinpoint any issues up front, and we conducted user surveys along the way to be sure we knew what users were facing. Many users got very excited. They knew they could get email from anywhere, and have access to collaborative tools like spreadsheets and instant messaging. We also gained valuable feedback on workflows and other issues we'd need to have a plan for during the migration.

From the start, we provided more than just a "here’s what we’re going to do, take it or leave it” approach. We were serious about ensuring that a certain set of activities happened in terms of communication and training, and showing people the features of Google Apps so they knew they were not missing anything. Then we would migrate a whole plant in less than a week. But the upfront training and familiarization process was paramount to our success. In all, the conversion went faster and easier than we anticipated.

One of the key factors was support from senior executives, who helped us drive and obtain support across the organization. We did get pushback from some employees but we spent time with them and showed them that, from a user experience standpoint, it might work differently, but they weren’t losing functionality.

In the end, we came close to our goal of a zero-touch conversion process as an IT team. It was a pretty highly automated, self-service conversion in moving everyone over. There were some gaps, but overall we are pleased with how quickly and efficiently the conversion went.

I’d be happy to share what we learned at Sanmina-SCI as a large enterprise that has made the move to Google Apps. We hope that you'll join us for this live event.

Migrating 15,000 users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps, by Sanmina-SCI
Thursday, January 14, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team


Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Tony Aug, Vice President for Enterprise Apps for Sanmina-SCI, a leading Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider focused on delivering end-to-end manufacturing solutions for communications, medical, defense and aerospace, industrial, renewable energy, and other sectors.Tony has held a variety of leadership roles since joining Sanmina-SCI in 1996 and leads a global IT team supporting various aspects of the company's operations.

Last year, Sanmina-SCI's IT team asked, "Could Google Apps really replace Microsoft Exchange for a global, multilingual workforce?" After careful due diligence, the team recently completed a phased migration for 15,000 email users, charting a new course for IT.

Tony and Elliot Tally, Director, IT Collaboration and Automation will be available on a live webcast on Thursday, January 14, to share their story and answer your questions.

Sanmina-SCI is a leader in outsourced electronics manufacturing providing Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) with highly complex design and manufacturing solutions. It is a very competitive industry, so we're always looking to reduce overall IT spending while improving service levels. We have to do it with care. We're a large enterprise with 37,000 diverse employees and operations covering every continent except Africa and Antarctica.

When we looked at email and calendaring, we asked, “What are the viable alternatives to our current on-premise Microsoft Exchange 2003 system?” Whatever we chose had to be enterprise-ready. We took several months to answer all our enterprise-level questions, and came away knowing we should seriously consider Google Apps.

We knew that a services-based model would help make our employees more productive not only as individuals but also as teams – not only within the company but also with customers and suppliers. The benefits are greater than simple cost savings. They include better customer service, streamlined business processes, and increased flexibility. Productivity is not easy to measure, but it is more important than other factors in the long term.

There were a few requirements we needed from Google’s offerings, mostly around managing user accounts and ensuring security, and we provided feedback in an iterative process and saw Google work quickly to address our issues. Convinced that Google Apps was right for us, we conducted two pilots and recently migrated 15,000 users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. From a strategic standpoint, a main driver for moving to Google Apps was low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

I’d be happy to share what we learned at Sanmina-SCI as a large enterprise that has made the move to Google Apps. Please join me for “Migrating 15,000 users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps by Sanmina-SCI. Join us for this live event.

Migrating 15,000 users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps by Sanmina-SCI
Thursday, January 14, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.


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Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is John Buckholz, VP of Information Technology for LCC International, Inc., a global wireless engineering company with 1,200 employees in North America, Europe and the Middle East. Following eight years as a management consultant with Accenture, John has since led the IT groups at three global companies. John has managed Lotus cc:Mail, IBM Notes/Domino, and Microsoft Exchange systems during his career, but his most recent choice for messaging and collaboration is Google Apps.

John will be speaking on a live webcast this Thursday at 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT.

LCC International designs, builds, operates, and maintains wireless networks throughout the world. We have a diverse user base, including field technicians who collect statistics on cell phone signals, radio frequency engineers who use applications specific to our industry, and administrative staff who support the business operations. We operate in more than 20 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. With standard workweeks varying by country, along with the various time zones across the globe, our workforce operates around the clock, 365 days a year – which means a lot of coordination to keep everyone in sync.

For email, we had most recently been using Microsoft Exchange. Prior to that, we had IBM Notes/Domino and before that, Lotus cc:Mail. The company intranet was based on Microsoft SharePoint. These on-premise solutions required a fair amount of ongoing support and maintenance. We had a total of 10 IT people supporting all of our systems, and we frequently found ourselves addressing issues on weekends, especially early on Saturday mornings as our colleagues in some countries were starting their workweek. We were stretched too thin with covering all of these products around the clock. It felt like firefighting a lot of the time.

We wanted a solution that would lower our overall costs and free up IT time. At the same time, we knew that we couldn't afford to have downtime. We initially wondered if Google Apps was enterprise-ready. Then we attended a webcast featuring Genentech, and we thought to ourselves, “If Google Apps are good enough for Genentech, it’s good enough for us.”

We conducted a pilot, and, to our surprise, everything was silent. We thought no one was using the Apps. But it turns out that people were doing fine and accessing Google’s training materials on their own when they had questions.

That’s when we decided to move into the cloud in earnest. We’ve been on Google Apps for one year now, after what I would say was a fairly easy transition with a little help from SADA Systems, a Google Apps partner. We now have good email service, including reliable access for mobile users. We collaborate on documents using Google Docs.

And we converted the company intranet from SharePoint to Google Sites. We took the least experienced person on our IT staff and asked him to try converting the intranet to Google Sites. He really amazed us. With no formal training, he just built the whole thing. It’s a testament to how easy Google Apps is to learn and use.

With Google Apps, we are now saving 60% over other alternatives, and my team no longer spends their weekends monitoring system uptime and addressing email issues. Most importantly, IT has been able to shift resources to more mission-critical initiatives. We now have a smaller IT team and a much less complex environment. A few short years ago, we were slaying dragons day and night. Now, we can all get down to supporting the business in more strategic ways.

I’d be delighted to share my insights and top three reasons to consider making a move to Google Apps. Please join us for “LCC International on three reasons to consider Google Apps.”

Join us for this LIVE Event on:
Thursday, December 3, 2009
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

UPDATE 12/02/09: Our apologies for the faulty link in the first reference to this webinar. We've corrected it and are sharing the direct link here: http://whitepapers.techrepublic.com.com/webcast.aspx?docid=1181191. We're sorry for the confusion.
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Editor's note: Please welcome today’s guest blogger, Michael Rodger, Director of Digital Innovation for Delta Hotels and Resorts. Mike oversees technology strategy, development and operations and is based in Toronto, Canada.



Delta boasts a diversified portfolio of 44 city center, airport and resort properties, and employs more than 7,000 people. The company is at the forefront of cloud computing, not only for email and collaboration, but also for building social networks that encourage employee collaboration.

Mike will be telling more about Delta's transition at a live webcast this Thursday, November 19, 2009, 2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT.

At Delta Hotels and Resorts, we continually look for ways to enhance the relationships we have built with our guests, colleagues, and owners. As a people-centric organization, we have a vibrant colleague community which is empowered to deliver honest and genuine service on a daily basis. One of our technology goals is to provide innovative ways in which our employees can strengthen the Delta community.

Our talented and hard-working colleagues are, undoubtedly, the difference-maker for our brand. Collectively, the spirit, creativity and passion for service that personify our staff enables Delta Hotels and Resorts to rank as one of Canada's top employers and maintain one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the hotel industry. Within our culture, we affectionately comment that our colleagues have "Delta in their DNA."

To support our colleagues and optimize the way in which they work, our IT department develops ideas that improve collaboration and push the boundaries of technology. One recent implementation involved the wholesale replacement of a static and outdated Intranet platform with an engaging employee social networking site. The general idea was that our colleagues would embrace a user-generated content platform that truly permits information sharing across the hotel and the entire company. The results have been staggeringly successful! So much so that our IT team is now developing enhancements which are intended to take the platform to even greater heights.

Delta Hotels and Resorts decision to embrace Google Apps is another example of our commitment to improving collaboration and breaking down conventional technology bottlenecks. The pain points of conventional, on-premise solutions include desktop software licensing, private wide area networks, and never-ending storage requirements.

Conventional solutions are simply too expensive and too rigid to support progressive organizations such as Delta. From a cost perspective alone, the move to Google has cost us 75% less than a comparable on-premise messaging and calendaring solution.

While the switch to Google has created new opportunities for colleagues, it has also enabled IT to remove bottlenecks on technology processes and resources. Extensible storage, message archiving and built-in disaster recovery are three basic examples of situations where Delta Hotels and Resorts has saved significant sums of money by choosing a cloud-based solution to replace an on-site headache.

You can see more in our video, here:



To date, Delta Hotels and Resorts has provided Google Apps accounts to more than 4,000 colleagues across 44 hotels. One out of two staff has a Google Apps account and we're striving to improve that ratio. In order to reach staff who may not otherwise touch a computer on a day-to-day basis (e.g. doormen, housekeepers, banquet servers and others), we've deployed Apple iMacs across all employee cafeterias. In addition, we've developed programs which encourage our staff to connect from home computers, smartphones or any browser with an Internet connection.

We are proud of our decision to embrace the cloud and implement Google Apps. I am delighted to share some of the insights we’ve gained from our move and supporting a multilingual workforce, during a live webcast, "From Microsoft Exchange 2007 to Google Apps: The Delta Hotels and Resorts Story."

Join us for this LIVE Event on:

Thursday, November 19, 2009
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT
(please note that you will be registering on the webinar host's site)

Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team



Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.
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