Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Enterprise

Its spring and conference season is in full swing!

Salesforce is holding a free developer conference in Santa Clara, CA on 5/21 where they'll have a host of sessions covering various aspects of their Apex platform. As part of this Google will be presenting a session specifically on the synergies between the Salesforce development platform and that of Google Apps. Salesforce has long been a thought leader in on-demand application development and delivery. Their platform is comprehensive and flexible and should feel familiar to those of you working with Google's GData APIs.

We'll look at some specifics around mashing up Salesforce's Customer Relationship Management solutions with the Google Calendar and Google Spreadsheets APIs. It should be a great opportunity to learn about the Apex platform as well as make contact with their growing network of ISVs while at the same time learning how you can leverage your knowledge of Google's APIs to build compelling business mashups. Register today and we'll see you there!

Of course don't forget that Google's own Developer Day is also right around the corner on 5/31. With lots to offer for developers of varying interests and abilities, this is gearing up to be a very exciting event that you don't want to miss!

Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product & Marketing Manager

Some of us on the Enterprise product team spent yesterday at StartUp Camp, an unconference focused on helping the start-up community work through the challenges that arise with getting a business off the ground (something I wish I had had before starting my last company).

The idea of the unconference, based on the Open Space methodology, is to have the attendees drive the agenda, with people interested in the same topics splitting off to different break-out rooms. Imagine the entire day as an extended coffee break at a traditional conference, which for me is usually when I learn the most from my fellow conference goers. All around the conference were reminders of the Open Space principles, including the "Law of 2 Feet," which states that, "If you're not learning or contributing it is your responsibility to respectfully use your two feet & find some place you are." Overall, it was a very refreshing conference format and I could see incorporating some unconference time into a more traditional conference format.

Probably the highlight of the day was "speed geeking," where about 25 start-ups presented their elevator pitches and got feedback/grilled by conference attendees. There were a ton of interesting business models being pitched and I'm happy to report that state of the start-up culture is strong. Thanks to David Berlind, Doug Gold and Sun for organizing the event.

Below are some pics from the event, including some of the attendee-generated topics we discussed.

StartUp Camp 2

Posted by Engin Yilmaz, Marketing Manager

Last week, we had our first Google Enterprise Professional (GEP) partner event in Madrid - two days of sharing sales, product and technical knowledge with our partners across Europe. Cisco and CapGemini also presented their insights on Web and Enterprise 2.0, reinforcing our consumerization of IT theme. And during our customer keynote from Vodafone, Dr. Petros Panagiotidis presented data showing that the Google Search Appliance has saved Vodafone a staggering twenty two man years of work!

We also presented our first Enterprise partner awards to:

• Mediasurface – "Best ECM Partner" in recognition of embedding the Google Search Appliance in their Morello content management system.
• Smartlogik – "Innovative Product Integration" for their Onebox implementation of taxonomy integration.
• Sword – "New Business Achievement" acknowledging their work developing connectors for various content management systems.
• Scube – "Best Enterprise Mashups" for their multi-discipline approach to customers with Search, Maps and Apps.
• Byte – "Best Newcomer" for unsurpassed levels of customer care in their work with Vodafone and their overall performance during the last five months.

We'll be posting video from the event on YouTube in the next few weeks.

Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product & Marketing Manager

Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land pointed out that the VW of America site that I previously blogged about was including site keywords in an invisible div layer on site pages, which is not in keeping with Google site quality guidelines. I reached out to the technical director of VW's creative agency and found out that they were including the keywords in this manner to increase the amount of content crawled by the Google Search Appliance for the Flash-based pages of the site. Once alerted to this, VW switched to including relevant keywords in the META data of the web pages on the site, an approach that is in keeping with Google quality guidelines. Thanks to Barry for pointing this out and to VW for being so responsive to the issue.

Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product & Marketing Manager

Recently Volkswagen of America completely redesigned their website www.vw.com, literally making the search box the center of the homepage. The site search is powered by a Google Search Appliance and they've done a lot of cool UI development so that you can see the most frequently searched for terms as well as search results in an expanding drop down window, without leaving the homepage of the site. Besides being a slick design, putting me in control of the site made me think that VW probably applied the same user-centric approach to designing their cars and made the site feel less marketing-y and more education focused. Take the site for a spin.

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Google Enterprise

We've just released the newest version of Google Desktop for Enterprise, and if we do say so ourselves, it looks pretty good. Previewing your desktop search results inside the browser helps you find the right documents, emails, and files that much more quickly. We've also increased security with warnings for web sites that might attempt to steal your personal information or install malware on your computer. For those of you who'd like to make Desktop for Enterprise available to a broader segment of your employees, we now support 12 different languages.

We've rolled these features into a Desktop package that offers a completely new look and feel for the sidebar and gadgets, too. Go give it a try.

Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product & Marketing Manager

The Google Apps website does a pretty good job of describing the various applications, Gmail, Google Calendar, etc., included in Google Apps. However, one of the most powerful aspects of the suite is how integrated the applications are. From accessing email from the personalized start page to adding a appointment to your calendar right from an email, we're working to build a seamless user experience, where you don't have to wait forever for a different desktop application to load before you can get to work. Here's Rajen Sheth, Product Manager, demonstrating some of the unique features of Google Apps.

Posted by Kevin Smith, Head of Enterprise Partnerships

Just unwrapped your shiny new Google Search Appliance? Maybe you've had one for a while and would like to get even more out of your enterprise search experience? Or perhaps you've been shopping for an enterprise search solution and want to see what the yellow box is all about? Well, check out our upcoming webinar with non-linear creations, "Secrets of Success with the Google Search Appliance".

A Google Enterprise Professional partner, non-linear creations will reveal proven approaches for success with the Google Search Appliance. Learn how to successfully return results from critical data sources, effectively fine tune your enterprise search engine, and integrate the Google Search Appliance with your enterprise content management system.

To learn more and sign up for the webinar, visit here.

Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing

The enterprise gang is hitting the road once again. In May and June we're doing 13 Google @ Work seminars throughout the US.

If you're not familiar with the Google @ Work seminars, they're a great opportunity to learn how the Google products you know and love can be used inside of your business. Each seminar will feature experts in products such as Google Apps, the Google Search Appliance, the Google Mini, and Google Earth Enterprise. In fact, many of the people who write this blog will be there!

And best of all, it's completely free for you attend. We'll even treat you to breakfast.

We'll be visiting these cities in May and June:

San Francisco, CA Tuesday, May 15
Los Angeles, CA Wednesday, May 16
San Diego, CA Thursday, May 17
Seattle, WA Tuesday, May 22
Denver, CO Wednesday, May 23
Phoenix, AZ Thursday, May 24
Chicago, IL Wednesday, May 30
Columbus, OH Thursday, May 31
New York, NY Monday, June 4
Hartford, CT Thursday, June 7
Philadelphia, PA Tuesday, June 12
Pittsburgh, PA Wednesday, June 13
Detroit, MI Thursday, June 14

Space is limited, so if you want to attend, make sure to register today.

We're looking forward to meeting you soon.

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Enterprise Partner Team

Today we announced and opened up registration for this year's Google Developer Day, which will be held in 10 locations around the world on May 31st. For those of you developing products and services using our enterprise product APIs this is a chance for you to learn more and interact with the teams. It also represents a great opportunity for you to go more in depth on Google's other developer products including Google Web Toolkits, Google Gadgets, and the AJAX Search and Google Checkout APIs.

But why would you want to? Well we continue to see a trend where enterprises are embracing new technologies and systems that have roots in consumer-based applications. We'd certainly like to think that our enterprise products, which are rooted in our own consumer offerings, are playing a healthy role in this phenomenon. Its also very intentional that our consumer and enterprise development platforms are one and the same. Now Google Developer Day represents a great chance for the enterprise developer to stay ahead of the curve by examining the many ways they could creatively leverage Google's wide range of developer products within enterprise environments. Space is limited, so register today.