Announcing Google App Engine education awards

Posted by the Google App Engine Team

(Cross-posted on the Google App Engine blog.)

In addition to the startups and businesses we frequently highlight on our blog, we have seen educational institutions and their students build amazing applications, using Google App Engine as a platform for teaching and groundbreaking research.

Earlier this year we announced funding for researchers looking to use App Engine for scientific discovery. Today we are introducing the Google App Engine Education Awards to foster continued innovation from educational institutions in areas outside of research. Through this program we are inviting faculty members, initially from the United States, to submit proposals for using App Engine for their course development, educational research, university tools or for student projects. A selection of the proposals we receive will receive $1,000 in App Engine credits to assist in making the proposal a reality.

App Engine allows you to build scalable applications using the same technology that powers Google’s global-scale web applications. With no hardware to setup, App Engine makes it simple to learn how to write a simple web application or to build an application that handles millions of hits a day. If you haven’t already tried App Engine, we encourage you to download the SDK, follow the Getting Started Guide and take advantage of our free tier to deploy your first application.

If you teach at an accredited college, university or community college in the United States, we encourage you to apply. You can submit a proposal by filling out this form. Applications must be received by midnight PST August 31, 2012.

Video chat with the whole team with Hangouts in Gmail

Posted by Fred Brewin, Product Manager

Just like many of you, at Google we tend to live in our email inboxes. If your business has already gone Google, you know that Gmail lets you email, chat, call phones, and video chat - making it easy to connect with teammates across continents and time zones. Today we are excited to announce that we’ll be making that communication experience even better by powering video chat with the new Google+ Hangouts technology.

Unlike the old video chat, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, Hangouts utilize the power of Google’s network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality. While all Gmail users will experience these benefits, if you’ve created a Google+ profile you can invite up to nine other participants to your video meetings and take advantage of advanced features like screen sharing and integrated Google Docs collaboration. Watch the video below to see how easy it is to communicate and connect with your coworkers using Hangouts in Gmail.



Even if you haven’t created a Google+ profile or if your domain hasn’t enabled Google+ yet, one-to-one video chat in Gmail will still be powered by the new Hangouts video technology.

We’ll be gradually rolling out Hangouts in Gmail, starting today with personal Google Accounts, followed by Google Apps accounts on the Rapid Release track in the coming weeks and later by Apps accounts on the Scheduled Release track. You can visit our Help Center to learn more about system requirements for Hangouts and how to optimize your network for Hangouts.

Introducing the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program: Helping businesses move to the cloud

Posted by Eric Morse, Head of Sales and Business Development, Google Cloud Platform

Cloud is core to everything we do here at Google. In the last decade, we’ve invested in building an infrastructure that can serve 4 billion hours of video every month, support 425 million Gmail users and store 100 petabytes of web index, and it’s growing every day. We’ve taken this technology and extended it via Google Cloud Platform so that you can benefit from the same infrastructure that powers Google's applications.

As a business, we know you spend a lot of valuable time thinking about IT solutions. We think it’s important to provide you with the best options for your business, which is why we are thrilled to introduce the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program. This program provides our partners with the tools, training and resources they need to successfully address your business’ IT needs. For example, Orangescape Technologies, one of our partners, integrated Google App Engine as part of their platform to help United Biscuits, a leading manufacturer of biscuits and snacks in Europe, migrate their legacy Lotus Notes applications to the cloud.

The Google Cloud Platform partner program has two types of partners.

Service Partners
Service Partners provide consulting and implementation services on various Google Cloud Platform products. You can use their knowledge and expertise to develop applications like:

• Business apps: Ci&T, a global systems integrator, built a new quotation app on Google App Engine to help SulAmerica, one of the largest insurance providers in Brazil, provide better policy quotations to millions of their customers.
• Mobile apps: Agosto built a smartphone app running on Google App Engine to help the Minneapolis Loppet Foundation register thousands of participants in a Nordic ski event.
• Social apps: PA Consulting built a crowd-sourced app on Google App Engine and Google Maps for MetOffice to provide richer, up-to-date local weather forecasts around the world.

Technology Partners
Technology Partners provide tools that integrate with Google’s platform or use one of our services as a foundation for their products.

• Google Compute Engine: Compute Engine technology partners offer a rich set of management services that help you configure and manage applications running on Google’s infrastructure.
• Google BigQuery: BigQuery technology partners enable you to import data from a wide range of existing on-premise and cloud data sources into BigQuery, as well as build rich, visually interactive dashboards on top of BigQuery.
• Google Cloud Storage: Cloud Storage technology partners have integrated Google Cloud Storage directly into their offerings to provide you with active archiving, backup and recovery, and primary storage solutions.

Contact a Google Cloud Platform partner directly to learn how they can help you make the most of your IT investments by taking advantage of Google Cloud Platform.

Want to do more with Google Apps? Tap into a community of over 6,000 experts.

Posted by Prajesh Parekh, Google Apps Reseller Team

While Google Apps for Business is built for simplicity, many businesses and organizations have found a way to go beyond the basics with Google Apps. How? These companies have taken advantage of the expertise of a Google Apps Reseller. Google Apps Resellers have invested people, time, and resources into becoming an expert on and providing specialized services for Google Apps – so you don’t have to.

When should you engage a Google Apps Reseller? Here are some ways that Resellers have assisted businesses to date:

• Assessing the initial move to cloud-based solutions
• Helping set up and manage Google Apps
• Training employees to fully explore and use the many features of Google Apps
• Data, data, data – migrating data, implementing data policies, managing storage with Google Drive, and more
• Integrating Google Apps with other business applications
• And more, including support, network and security management, and building Google Sites

This community has grown to over 6,000 resellers, serving businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions around the world. Our resellers have always been the trusted face of your relationship with Google Apps, managing everything from billing to your support needs. Within the community is a set of Google Apps Premier Resellers. These experts have proven an exceptional level of success helping Google Apps customers, and they have staff who are officially certified in deploying Google Apps. We named one Premier Reseller, Cloud Sherpas, Partner of the Year earlier this year for their track record and strong customer references.

Want to get connected with a Google Apps expert? Let us know and we’ll put you in touch.

Google Earth Pro helps Rockware geologists uncover the layers of the Earth

Posted by Jim Reed, geologist and R&D director, RockWare Inc.

Editors note: RockWare is a geological software company based in Golden, Colorado. Founded in 1983, RockWare develops a suite of earth science and mapping applications used across several industries and fields, including civil, environmental and geotechnical engineering.

As the early morning sun rises, we head into the Rocky Mountains’ Front Range to take some field measurements. The scenery is breathtaking: rusty-hued sandstone formations tilting at dramatic angles from the ground below. Studying the Earth’s natural history and uncovering the mysteries that lie beneath its surface is just another day as a RockWare geologist.

Using a GPS device and a few specialty tools, we move around the site and record the tilt of the rock formations. These data points don’t make much sense to the untrained eye. However, by plotting our data on a map, we can gain an intuitive three-dimensional understanding of the rocks and their orientation.

When we return to the office, we quickly import the data we recorded in the field into Google Earth Pro. The software produces interactive 3D visuals, which we can easily share with customers. At RockWare, we make extensive use of the Movie Maker feature, which allows us to animate complex events over time. For example, if a toxic spill is leaking into the water table, we can model the spread and speed of contamination. These animations help our clients understand the impact of these geological events and act accordingly.

We’ve seen a positive impact on sales and marketing, too. Google Earth Pro, in conjunction with RockWare’s software, gives us the tools to tell a client’s story through video, rather than just creating static maps and reports. With more dynamic ways to showcase our work, we’ve been able to advertise in a way we’ve never been able to do before. As a result, we’ve seen growth in our customer base via referrals and word-of-mouth.

Many of our customers already use Google Earth Pro in the office, which streamlines my job as a consultant. Instead of spending extensive time on product training, we can dive right into the project. Google has essentially created an environment where it's easy for RockWare and our clients to collaborate on geological projects, which simplifies the decision-making process.

Google Earth Pro brings our projects to life. It has not only contributed to RockWare’s business growth, it’s also reinforced my love for geology. Going out in the field, taking measurements, and actually being able see what I’m mapping makes my job that much more incredible.

We all scream for ice cream with Google Apps for Business

Posted by Kelly Campbell, Director of Global Enterprise Small Business Marketing

One of my fondest memories growing up is riding my bike to get ice cream with my family on a hot summer day. For me, it’s exciting to see the local ice cream industry evolve and grow, without losing its charm. Today, ice cream shop owners from around the country are using technology–like Google Apps for Business–to help them run their businesses and reach their customers. From taking their beloved treats on the road to shipping pints across the country, technology is a sweet source of their success.

In celebration of National Ice Cream Day, let’s take a look at how three ice cream shops from around the United States are using technology to scoop up business:

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams began small, but had big dreams. Jeni Britton Bauer opened her first ice cream shop in Grandview Heights, Ohio in 2002, and turned to Google Apps for Business to help her manage everything from ingredients to employee scheduling. Today, Jeni has grown the business to 10 stores throughout Ohio and Tennessee and has a booming online shipping business, and she depends on Google Apps to help her manage it all. Google Docs helps Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams employees share information from the kitchen with the planning teams on the ground at each location. And it gives her access real-time information to ensure they have the ice cream, packaging and manpower to handle spikes in online orders. Stores are also able to give feedback about each home-made batch of ice cream through a Google Docs form. So if there aren’t enough pecans in the Whiskey Pecan Ice Cream, Jeni’s team can add more in the next batch. Jeni even wrote her best selling cookbook using Google Docs.

Business partners Zach Davis and Kendra Baker knew they wanted to start their exploration in sweet treats with Google Apps. But their journey to get The Penny Ice Creamery in Santa Cruz, California off the ground includes a video they made about spending money locally and rethinking ice cream manufacturing from the ground-up, and a subsequent invitation to the White House to meet the First Lady and the President.

The ice creamery’s menu changes each season, depending upon the fruits, vegetables, flowers and herbs that are in season in Northern California, so keeping track of ingredients is crucial. Google Spreadsheets help them do this, as well as track and reconcile daily sales across multiple locations, and Google Forms help them manage their mailing lists. Zach and Kendra wear a lot of hats as proprietors of an expanding beach empire, but IT falls to Zach, who says Apps has been invaluable because, from a management perspective, it's quick and easy.

While it might feel natural to drive or bike to your favorite ice cream shop, Coolhaus does things a bit differently. They bring the ice cream to you.

The brainchild of Los Angeles natives Natasha Case and Freya Estreller, Coolhaus is an artisan ice cream sandwich truck that launched at the 2009 Coachella music festival. The entrepreneurial duo turned to Google Apps for Business to help them develop everything from writing their business plan to organizing locations to park around the city. Over the past four years, Natasha and Freya have been able to expand their business to Austin, New York, Miami, and Dallas, and they depend heavily on Google Apps to manage their 50+ employees across different locations and time zones. Google Calendar helps streamline collaboration among operation managers and truck supervisors to ensure there are enough employees at each location. And Google Docs lets regional event managers share and menus and truck catering details with CoolHaus clients.

It’s exciting to see how Google Apps has helped these entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams and reach the sweet tooths of so many people. Whether you’re a two-scoops, waffle cone or sundae kind of ice cream lover, celebrate National Ice Cream Day with a sweet treat from your favorite local ice creamery.

Georgetown Hoyas are going Google

Posted by Lisa Davis, CIO, Georgetown University 

Editors note: Today's guest blogger is Lisa Davis, Chief Information Officer at Georgetown University. 

Going Google was an opportunity to reimagine technology’s role at Georgetown and unify our campus by moving to a powerful cloud computing solution that worked no matter where our users were or what device they used. We had calendars, mail, and file storage and sharing tools before, but they were fragmented and in dire need of replacement. Our email system was twelve years old, only allowed 250MB per user, and calendars were not universally adopted or user-friendly. When our 16,000 students started using Google Apps for Education back in 2009, we instantly noticed some dramatic benefits. So we’ve decided to complete the migration by moving everyone over to the same platform. By summer’s end our 20,000 students, staff, and faculty members won’t have to worry about hitting email quota limits, guessing what teammates’ calendars look like, or being frustrated by the technology around them.

  

While modernizing our technology was one motivation, we also wanted to invest in a long-term vision of moving our university into the 21st century. Doing this in-house would have amounted to a tremendous resource commitment both now and in the future, for a relatively small boost in the end user experience. Google’s tools were an affordable way to provide a sustainable infrastructure for our faculty and staff. 

The process of moving our users to Google was fast, painless, and will ultimately make our users more productive. We were really impressed with our community’s reception to the switch. It helped that about 30% of our staff and faculty already had personal Gmail accounts, but during our outreach events, even people without that exposure were excited to migrate. We did several demonstration events to answer questions, and provided hands on support for those who needed it. 

Working on projects and tasks has become much less painful after switching to Google Apps because instead of dozens of versions attached to dozens of emails, we can all work on one copy at the same time through Google Docs. The Corp, the student-run corporation at Georgetown, uses Google Apps to coordinate schedules, plan events, and manage other aspects of the business. With our 4,000 faculty and staff now using Google Apps as well, we are excited to see the innovative uses the whole campus will find for collaboration, enhancing the education experience, and becoming more productive across campus. 

We look forward to bidding farewell to the days of full inboxes, missed appointments, and inefficient technology. Going Google allows us to switch off our email servers and at the same time take a giant leap forward in the services we provide our employees and students.

Dutch businesses are going Google

Posted by Jasper Maters, Google Apps Lead, Netherlands

Many Dutch businesses are beginning to go Google, joining the 10 top universities in the Netherlands that announced their move to Google Apps for Education last month. These businesses have transitioned to Google Apps for Business because the intuitive applications in Google Apps facilitate seamless communication and help employees work better together. Some of these businesses have been recently sharing the advantages they’ve seen since going Google.

Seamless communication
Ahold, the biggest food retailer in the Netherlands with supermarkets in Europe and the United States, has 55,000 employees using Google Apps for Business. Ahold made the decision to move to Google Apps for cost savings and to provide its workforce with a single web-based platform for communication and collaboration. Thanks to Google's mobile device management solutions, employees can access their information and work together from any location - on their work computer, home computer or mobile device.

De Rijke Group, a logistics service provider, chose Google Apps for its ability to improve online collaboration and communication. By using Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts, they’re able to share information faster with colleagues in international branches, rather than relying on email and in-person meetings.

Wegener Media, the largest Dutch publisher of local and regional media, recently switched 4,500 employees to Google Apps for Business. Their migration fits well with their transformation from traditional publisher to a media company that delivers digital content. In the news sector, minutes -- rather than hours -- can make a difference and Google Apps enable staff to access their e-mail and calendar, use Google Talk to consult colleagues and simultaneously work on the same document, regardless of time or place.

Intuitive applications
Beeld en Geluid, the Dutch Institute of Sound and Vision, transitioned to Google Apps for Business so their employees would be able to work together anywhere. Using Google Docs, everyone has easy access to the latest version of documents that they are working on within the projects that Beeld en Geluid is carrying out. By having employees create Google+ profiles, they were able to quickly and easily create a company-wide "Who's Who". As employees can add a description of their responsabilities, Google+ allows employees to easily find the people they need to get in touch with and to share valuable insights.

Deli XL, a total supplier for the food service market, found that many employees already worked with Google products such as Gmail and Google Docs, so they were able to transition employees quickly and seamlessly. Deli XL also found a higher level of self-reliance among employees using Google Apps thanks to Google’s online support resources. The introduction of Google Apps and the implementation of Identity Management tools reduced calls to the Deli XL tech support by 25%.

We have a large variety of Dutch businesses adopting Google Apps every day. What unites them all is their desire to help employees work better together. As the pressure to remain competitive and forward-thinking increases, Google Apps is helping businesses across the Netherlands cut costs while providing employees with cutting edge technology.

Fairfax Media Goes Google

Posted by Stuart McLean, Head of Google Enterprise Australia and New Zealand

(Cross-post note from the Official Google Australia Blog.)

In an increasingly web-enabled world, the speed of sharing information continues to increase at a stunning acceleration. This has changed the way businesses in every vertical operate, but no field has been more impacted than the media sector – businesses that deal in information itself.

Today Fairfax Media, a leading multi-platform media group in Australasia, announces that it will provide its employees with Google Apps for Business. This makes Fairfax Media one of the largest Google Apps customers in the Asia-Pacific region, and they join fellow Australian companies such as Visy, Jetstar, Flight Centre and Ray White. After a successful Google Apps pilot program earlier this year, Fairfax will now work with Google Apps Premier Reseller, Cloud Sherpas, to ensure all staff have access to Google Apps by November 2012.

The Fairfax Media group comprises metropolitan, rural, regional and community publications and websites across Australia and New Zealand. High profile mastheads include The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Financial Review and The Age, along with their corresponding national news websites.

A key part of Fairfax’s business is about quickly, efficiently and expertly providing information and content to its readers and customers — and the multi-tenant communication platform that Google Apps provides will help keep Fairfax at the forefront of its industry. Google Apps is a central part of the company’s “Fairfax of the Future” program transforming it into a “digital first” media organisation.

By taking up the heavy lifting of storing data and managing infrastructure, going Google will allow Fairfax to focus on being a media company and not worry about also being an IT provider. And the real-time collaboration in Docs and communication facilitated through Talk and Google+ Hangouts will allow reporters and editors working in various locations to overcome geographical barriers.

We're excited to see Google Apps as a key piece of Fairfax's transformation into the future model of a media company. These tools will allow Fairfax not just to allow employees to work in the future but to let the entire company better concentrate on the thing they do best — keeping the public informed.

A new future: hitting “Refresh” on business technology

Posted by Amit Singh, Vice President, Google Enterprise

Over the last two months I had the opportunity to spend time with hundreds of CIOs as we took Atmosphere – our annual cloud event – to 20 cities globally. What I heard from them boiled down to one simple idea: they’re looking for a better way to do things. Their employees want to work in collaborative environments without being tethered to their desks, and their IT departments are eager to shift resources from maintaining old technology to developing new ones.

These business leaders have experienced the power of living in the cloud and they want to bring that experience to the workplace. The cloud has certainly transformed my life by allowing my family to stay connected from all around the world. For example, at the São Paolo Atmosphere event, I joined a Google+ Hangout from my Android phone to wish my dad a happy birthday. This magic doesn’t need to be constrained to our personal lives. After all, we’re the same person at home and at work, and we like having access to the same devices and tools regardless.

A fundamental shift...
There was a time when business technology was at the forefront of innovation and productivity. Industries began to standardize around certain platforms that automated an individual’s work. But with complicated enterprise agreements, customer lock-in and limited competition, business technology lost its edge. IT professionals stopped innovating and relied on a handful of vendors who designed bloated software that was released every few years. At the same time, consumer technology took off. With the power of massive data centers, modern browsers and smart mobile devices at their fingertips, people found it easier than ever to communicate, create, and collaborate. Many people have fallen in love with the simplicity and freedom of these services, and they want to use them everywhere.

…to working in the future
This is where Google comes in. To provide a seamless transition from home to work (and back to home), we extended our popular consumer products–like Gmail and Google Drive–to meet the needs of businesses. For instance, Google Apps for Business provides an additional layer of enterprise features like delegated mailboxes, granular administrative controls, a 99.9% SLA, 24x7 support, migration tools, and an ecosystem of certified resellers.

We’ve also applied the same formula to other products that were born in the cloud: Google Maps Coordinate helps companies easily manage mobile workers; Chrome for Business gives you a consistent, personalized web experience on any device; Google App Engine lets you to build and host your own applications in the cloud; and Google Compute Engine allows you to rent Google’s infrastructure to operate at scale. With each of these offerings, you can access the latest innovation by clicking “refresh” in your browser.

We’re humbled that 5 million businesses (including BBVA and Roche), 66 of the top 100 U.S. universities, and government institutions in 45 of the 50 U.S. states have gone Google by choosing Google Apps to live and work in the cloud. We hear from these customers that alongside improving IT administration and individual productivity, Google Apps also helps teams of employees work better together. For example, Google documents let users collaborate in real-time and see each other’s edits as they happen. And now, with offline editing, users can continue working even without an internet connection.

As people have begun to embrace the cloud, some legacy enterprise vendors have started to offer their own cloud-labeled offerings. They claim to offer a bridge between legacy solutions and the cloud. But these offerings still rely on desktop products and on-premise servers, require heavy IT investment, have limited support for mobile devices, come with complicated pricing and licences–and ultimately they’re still focused on individual productivity. If anything, they offer a bridge to the past.

With the explosion of computing devices, ubiquitous high-speed internet, and mobile workforces, there’s a fundamental shift happening in business. The question is: do you want to cross a bridge to continue working in the past...or move to the cloud so you can live and work seamlessly in the future?

Get started with Google Apps or collaborate in real-time today with literary masters: Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Poe and more.

Gmail log search feature enhances visibility for domain admins

Posted by Priya Mathew, Google Apps Senior Strategist

Google Apps domain admins have access to a new tool – Gmail log search – that increases visibility into their email traffic. This feature in the Apps control panel allows domain admins to search through the Gmail delivery logs to investigate email delivery and traffic questions. Many domain admins have requested a self-service tool like this, and Gmail log search will make it easier to answer questions like: What happened to an inbound or outbound message? Was a message sent to my domain and marked as spam? Which users sent or received a specific message?

The information that is available in the log search feature includes:

• Basic message information like Sender, Recipient, Subject, Date and Message-ID
• Attachment size
• Total transit time
• Delivery status

This Gmail log search feature was built using Google BigQuery, a Google Cloud Platform product that allows developers to store and query large amounts of data. We chose BigQuery because it can analyze multi-terabyte data sets with billions of headers to deliver precise results in just a few seconds. Gmail log search will help domain admins have the same type of visibility into the operations of Google Apps that they are used to from the legacy, on-premise email systems.

Gmail log search will be available starting today to Google Apps for Business, Education and Government customers, and will roll out to all domains over the next few weeks. Learn more about the feature in the Google Apps Help Center.