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In Rockingham County, North Carolina, the IT department supports 500 employees who for the past several years had used three different client applications for email. The county switched to Google Apps for Government earlier this year to simplify its operations and improve collaboration among employees.

Join us for a live webinar on Wednesday, August 24 to hear from David Whicker, IT Director for Rockingham County, about the County’s experience with Google Apps, including:
  • How Rockingham County standardized on one easy-to-maintain hosted application suite, saving the County IT department precious resources
  • How Google Apps for Government boosted employee collaboration and productivity
  • How the County deployed Google’s cloud solution easily and quickly

Live Webinar: Rockingham County empowers employees with Google Apps
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
1:00 - 2:00 pm EDT
Register here.

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We’ve all been frustrated by technology that gets slower, less reliable and less useful over time. Google Apps is different – it actually gets better automatically week after week without patches or updates to manage. People can absorb this stream of innovation without being distracted from their workflow, so this month we’re taking a look back to highlight the most interesting ways that Google Apps has grown up over time. Last week, we started with Gmail and Google Calendar.

Today we’ll break down how Google Docs and Sites support better teamwork, mobile productivity, ease of use and trustworthiness – four areas where Google Apps excels. We’re holding a webinar next Thursday to explore these developments (details below), so join us if you’re interested in learning more. We hope you’ll find a few capabilities here that you didn’t know about before, or haven’t tried in some time.

Designed for Teams
Google Docs and Sites were built from the ground up to make teamwork seamless. Being able to simultaneously edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations without the hassles of attachments is just the start.
  • Great documents come from great discussions, so in addition to collaborative editing, Google Docs also enables conversations right alongside your content. Comments can be directed to specific co-editors, who can then respond in the document’s discussion panel or over email.
  • Sometimes you want to collaborate freely with others in a spreadsheet, but other situations call for a bit more control. Data validation lets you enforce cell input restrictions. You can also protect sheets – making them view-only – or hide sheets entirely within a collaborative workbook.
  • Forms in Google Docs also offer a structured way of collecting information in a spreadsheet from others. Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended, and your surveys can include branching logic to display different questions to a respondent depending on how they respond to earlier questions.
  • When a document, spreadsheet or presentation isn’t able to truly capture an idea, try a collaborative drawing. The same real-time co-editing found in those other formats is part of the drawing editor, too.
  • Across documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, revision history lets you see any edit made by any collaborator since the file was created, which comes in handy when you need to revert changes or view a previous version.
  • Google Sites can really bring a collection of information together neatly – including embedded documents, spreadsheets and presentations – into a collaborative team, project or public website. Anyone with edit access can contribute and share, no programming skills required.
  • In today’s world of distributed contributors, working across language barriers can be critical. With automatic document translation, site translation, and even a translation spreadsheet function all powered by Google Translate, being productive in multiple languages has never been easier.
  • If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, so we added built-in analytics within Google Docs and Google Sites, which provides content owners with aggregate stats and metrics about who’s accessing their files and sites.
  • Beyond collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, you can upload and share any type of file with Google Docs, including pictures, videos, and special file formats like CAD drawings. Simply upload to Google Docs and decide who should have access. You can even set permissions to a mailing list, which automatically adjusts access as individuals are added to and removed from the group.
  • Shared collections is a great way to efficiently manage sharing access across a group of files. Instead of sharing file-by-file, you can share a whole folder of information all at once.
  • And if you’re looking to bring more efficient collaboration to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint without upgrading to Office 2010, give Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office a try.

Productive Anywhere
Mobile access to email, contacts and calendar information is pretty common now, but access to documents, spreadsheets, presentations and team sites across all major smartphone platforms is unique to Google Apps.
  • Unlike software and files that live on one specific computer, you can access and work with information in Google Docs and Google Sites from any computer without hassles like software licenses and VPN connections.
  • Beyond simple mobile document viewing, you can edit documents and spreadsheets from Android and iOS devices. This can be a faster way to make a simple change than firing up your laptop.
  • The Google Docs mobile app for Android allows you to browse, search, open and share your Google Docs files from your phone or tablet. This app even lets you convert mobile phone pictures into editable documents.
  • Google Sites are also optimized for smaller screens through automatic mobile rendering. When you’re viewing a site on a small screen, we can automatically display a version of the site that’s easier to use on your phone or tablet.

Simple & Affordable
Google Docs and Sites bring together the best of two worlds: the power of the web and the richness of traditional software applications, all at a dramatically lower cost than buying, installing and managing client software.

Pure & Proven Cloud
As with Gmail, the collaboration tools in Google Apps for Business are backed by a service uptime guarantee and transparent system performance information. And compared to sharing information using old tools like thumb drives, Google Apps can help businesses keep their data a whole lot safer, too.
  • Our 99.9% uptime SLA guarantees reliable access to Google Apps, and our commitment doesn’t have any exceptions for planned maintenance. This is because our systems are designed to handle updates without interrupting service for customers.
  • Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
  • Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
  • Google Docs and Sites have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
  • With default https connections, your information is encrypted as it travels from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
  • Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As with Gmail and Google Calendar, Google Docs and Sites have been on a fast innovation path (85 improvements last year alone!) that you just can’t get from typical software upgrades every three to five years. So if you missed any of these new features over the years, give them a go – you’re bound to find a few that’ll help you work more efficiently. And if you’d like to hear more about many of these updates, join us for a free webinar next Thursday.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Docs and Google Sites
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Posted:


Google Apps has come a long way since its introduction a few years ago, with continuous improvements every week rather than disruptive shifts every few years. It’s like watching your kids grow up; you don’t notice the changes from day to day, but look back at a photo from last year and the differences can be striking.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look back to revisit key innovations from the last few years in four categories that define Google Apps: team collaboration, mobile productivity, ease of use, and trustworthiness. Today we’re starting with Gmail and Google Calendar, and many of the capabilities below have become customer favorites. If you’d like to hear more about these developments, we invite you to join our webinar on Wednesday (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps makes working in teams easier. Gmail and Google Calendar support teamwork in ways that traditional applications just can’t offer. Give these features a try if they’re new to you, or take a fresh look if it’s been a while:
  • Have an instant message conversation right from your inbox, and once you’re chatting, switch to a voice, video or group chat. It all works in the browser, not in another application.
  • When a contact isn’t online to chat, call their phone right from Gmail with your computer’s speakers and microphone.
  • Gmail helps you connect with the right people when you send traditional email messages, too, with full-fledged capabilities first tested as Labs features. By analyzing signals in your email, Gmail recommends recipients you might have forgotten, and displays a warning when you might have added the wrong person.
  • Once you’ve started an email conversation, Gmail’s people widget shows how you’ve interacted with recipients recently over email, in meetings and through shared documents.
  • Google Apps supports over 40 languages, and automatic translation can really help break down language barriers. Gmail’s message translation feature instantly converts foreign text to your native language. Translation bots provide real-time translation in chat, so you can even IM with people in other languages.
  • Finding a good meeting time with a group of busy people can be a chore, so we introduced the smart rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs. This tool automatically explores everyone’s schedule to find the best times when attendees can all get together.
  • Appointment slots also simplifies meeting scheduling by letting you establish open meeting times that other people in your organization can sign themselves up for, like “office hours”.
  • Once you’ve set up a meeting, we know there’s often meeting-related content to be shared with attendees. The event attachments Lab in Google Calendar lets you add Google Docs files to meetings, so everyone has the right information at their fingertips.
  • And sometimes you just need help managing email, contacts and calendar, and that’s where account delegation comes into play. Gmail and Google Calendar allow you to designate others who can manage your email, appointments and contacts on your behalf.

Productive Anywhere
Communication tools wouldn’t be much good if you were required to work from your desk, which is why we support full access to email, contacts and calendar on any modern browser and all major mobile device platforms.

Simple & Affordable
We built Gmail and Google Calendar to stay out of your way and help you handle tasks quickly. At $50 per user per year or $5 per month with no commitment, Google Apps packs a powerful punch in an intuitive package that anyone can use.
  • With 25GB of email storage for every employee, the ability to handle attachments up to 25MB apiece and room for 25,000 contacts, Gmail is designed so you can stop worrying about account capacity and focus on more productive things.
  • With all that space for email, you need a fast and reliable way to find old messages, and the power of Google search is essential. Gmail’s search options quickly tame even the largest message archives.
  • Priority Inbox learns patterns in how you use email, and automatically filters incoming email to put the most important messages – email from your boss perhaps – right at the top. We found this feature alone saves people 6% of the time they spend on email.
  • Keeping spam out of your inbox is another big productivity booster, and Gmail's spam filters are continuously improved to weed out unsafe and unwanted messages.
  • Like the great cilantro debate, some people like their email as threaded “conversations”, while others prefer a traditional inbox displaying individual messages. You can have it either way in Gmail now, threaded or unthreaded.
  • Instead of downloading attachments and opening them with another application, Gmail lets you view over a dozen different attachment types right in your browser. It’s faster, safer and more affordable than opening attachments with other software.
  • Beyond attachments, Gmail lets you preview other types of content without leaving your inbox, like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps locations and Picasa slideshows. You can even build custom content gadgets for other types of data residing in your existing business systems.
  • Gmail also helps you avoid email snafus, like forgetting to add an attachment. You’ll see an attachment warning if it looks like you meant to send a file but didn’t add one.
  • When you write a message and immediately have sender’s regret, just use the undo send Lab to recall the message. This lets you edit and resend, or just discard the message.
  • If working with a mouse just isn’t fast enough, try Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. You can power through your inbox faster than ever by learning a few simple keystroke combinations.
  • Google Calendar helps frequent flyers manage their appointments with time zone auto-detect. This feature recognizes where in the world you are, and automatically adjusts your schedule to reflect local time.
  • Last but not least, an oldie but a goodie: quick add in Google Calendar. Instead of filling out a form to create a new event, just summarize your event in natural language (like “Revew budget with Clark next Tuesday at 2pm”), then click “Add”.

Pure & Proven Cloud
Not only do Gmail and Google Calendar help boost productivity, they’re more reliable than traditional systems. Many customers also feel that their data is safer than ever with Google Apps.
  • Over the course of 2010, Gmail was available 99.984% of the time, and so far in 2011 we're at 99.99%. That’s less than seven minutes of downtime per month, a 40-fold improvement over traditional systems.
  • Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
  • Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
  • Gmail and Google Calendar have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
  • With default https connections, your messages are always encrypted as they travel from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
  • Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As you can see, we’ve been busy making Gmail and Google Calendar better and better, so if you haven’t explored some of these recent improvements, maybe it’s time to take another look. We’ll be hosting a free webinar on Wednesday where we’ll cover many of these updates in a bit more detail, so please join us if you’d like to hear more.

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Update: webinar schedule updated to reflect correct start time from the registration page.

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Imagination is a global communications agency whose roots lie in non-traditional, live, experience marketing. Headquartered in London, Imagination has fourteen offices in nine countries, employing around 550 permanent staff worldwide and a further 450 freelance or contract-based staff.

Imagination has grown into a globally distributed organisation and existing messaging and calendar systems were unable to support its needs, in terms of scale, and collaborative and mobile working.

In November 2009, Imagination selected Google Apps to provide not just a replacement for its existing on-premise email and calendaring solution, but also additional tools to support collaboration across the organisation. The agency is now in the second phase of this deployment, rolling out Google Docs to provide real-time collaboration on documents. To date, approximately 400 of its employees are actively using Google Docs.

On 13 July, Simon King, EMEA Operations Director at Imagination will be joining us for a live webinar to provide insight into how Imagination is using Google Apps to collaborate more effectively across global teams.

Simon comments, “Google Apps for Business has helped Imagination improve the accessibility of information distributed globally between team members to maximise its effectiveness, enabling it to: strengthen relationships with current and future clients, deepen engagement amongst employees and bring more value for clients and partners.”

This live webinar will be hosted by Angela Ashenden, who is a Principal Analyst at MWD Advisors and leads their collaboration practice.

What: Live customer webinar with Imagination
When: Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 14:00 BST (GMT+1)
Who: Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst, MWD Advisors; Simon King, EMEA Operations Director, Imagination; Matt McNeill, Google Enterprise.

Register Now!

Posted:
Posted by Anya Kuligina, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Apps

More than three million businesses have made the switch to Google Apps and are now able to enjoy tremendous collaboration boosts, not to mention saving a penny or two! In this webinar, we invite you to learn how one customer is using Google Apps to communicate and collaborate more effectively and efficiently.


Roland Corporation US is a leading manufacturer and distributor of electronic musical instruments. As with almost all business, Roland’s internal operations strategy is not by any means simple. The Marketing department alone, for a single campaign, has to produce product videos, artist demos, photographer bookings -- all while coordinating with various media agencies to make it all come together in a cohesive campaign. With all of these moving pieces, Roland needed a better ways for people to work together as a team. After exploring various options, Roland tuned to Google Apps for chart-topping functionality!

Join us for a live webinar on Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT with Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director at Roland. Dave will share why Google Apps was the ideal choice for his organization, as well as his experience and perspectives on what it takes to make the switch to Google Apps.

When: Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT

Who: Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director, Roland Corporation and Adriana Boden, Enterprise Senior Manager, Google

Register Now: Thursday, June 16, 12:00PM EDT/9:00AM PDT.

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Is your organization running Microsoft® Exchange 2003 or 2007 and looking to upgrade its archiving and continuity capabilities?

Google Message Continuity and Google Message Discovery are helping businesses increase email reliability and reduce risk by moving key services – such as spam and virus filtering, email archiving, and email continuity – to the cloud. Join us for a live webinar on June 8th to learn how Gables Residential and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago were able to deploy Google Postini services to reduce IT infrastructure costs and pave the way for a 100% web environment.

What: Google Postini services webinar (1 hr.)

When: Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST

Who:
  • James Hamrick, Director of IT at Gables Residential
  • Eric Geiger, VP of IT Operations at Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago
  • Adam Swidler, Senior Manager with Google

Click here to register. We hope to see you there!

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Join the Google Earth and Maps Enterprise team on Thursday, May 26th at 9:00AM PST for an introduction to Google Earth Builder. Launched last month, Google Earth Builder is Google’s cloud-based mapping platform. It is designed for organizations that own, license or manage large amounts of geospatial data. The product is particularly well-suited for those needing to get data out of the GIS department and into the hands of employees, constituents and the public at large.

During the webinar, we will review the workflow and intuitive user interface of Google Earth Builder. We'll show you how easy it is to store and manage your geospatial data, including publishing it to the end users.

What: Introduction to Google Earth Builder Webinar
When: Thursday, May 26th, 2011 9:00AM PST

Click here to register. We hope to see you there.

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The IT staffs of the Senate of Virginia and Division of Legislative Automated Systems (DLAS) were taxed with the responsibility of maintaining and upgrading servers and desktop clients for a legacy email system, as well as purchasing server and client licenses. As users’ mail databases grew larger, so did the storage space and the amount of data to backup daily. In addition, plans were being established for continuity of operations, which their current email system environment could not easily offer. All these factors led to their migration to Google Apps.

After conducting initial pilot projects using Google Apps, DLAS and the Senate officially migrated to Google Apps in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Last summer, convinced by compelling cost savings and reduced IT administrative work, 11 legislative agencies supported by DLAS made the switch, including the Division of Capitol Police, State Crime Commission, and Joint Commission on Health Care.

The switch to Google Apps has enabled DLAS and the Senate to reduce IT maintenance time and dramatically increase document and email storage space -- all while saving significantly on licensing costs. Best of all, employees are more productive with Google Apps. They enjoy larger email quotas, easier access to their email on the go, and the ability to collaborate on documents in real time via Google Docs.

Join us on Thursday 5/19 at 11:00am PT / 2:00pm ET for a live webcast. Presenters from DLAS and the Senate and Google partners DLT Solutions and MiCore Solutions will discuss the business drivers behind their decision to go Google and how they approached the implementation. You’ll also learn how the various legislative agencies are leveraging and integrating Google Apps into existing business processes.

Click here to register. We hope to see you there!

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WWF is a charity foundation that works with a number of partners to drive conservation and sustainability projects around the world. At any one time, WWF has over 1,300 projects underway in more than 100 countries.

With projects spanning the globe, there had been a long standing need to provide a more interactive and collaborative environment to support these dispersed project teams.

WWF began rolling out Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar in May 2009, aiming to deliver an efficient platform for creating project workspaces and file repositories, as well as provide a new framework for their intranet.

For this live webinar we are excited to be joined by Neil Morgan, Global Intranet Manager at WWF, who will provide insight into how WWF is using Google Apps to collaborate more effectively across global teams.

Neil comments, “18 months on, we have achieved significant adoption of the new collaborative platform, resulting in improved content management processes, greater efficiencies, and less reliance on email for collaboration purposes.”

This live webinar will be hosted by Angela Ashenden, who is a Principal Analyst at MWD Advisors and leads the Collaboration practice.

When: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 14:00 BST (GMT+1)
Who: Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst, MWD Advisors; Neil Morgan, Global Intranet Manager, WWF International; Kaisa Qvist, Product Specialist, Google Enterprise.

Register now

Posted:
The retail landscape is evolving as new technologies provide additional ways to discover and purchase products. Mobile devices, for example, are fundamentally changing how consumers shop by facilitating product discovery, the reading of reviews, and more – all on the fly. Online shopping is also expanding as a result of technologies like Google Product Search and the Shopper mobile app, two of many new channels which drive traffic to both desktop and mobile sites.

In a March 2011 research study conducted by ROI Research, 49% of mobile searchers made a mobile purchase in the past six months, with 82% of respondents using mobile search to find an online retailer. Understandably, more and more retailers are not only improving their desktop site, but also creating distinct mobile experiences.

Join us tomorrow for a special look at innovations in e-commerce like the ones mentioned above. We’ll share our observations and a few ways you can increase conversion by bringing the latest in online retailing to your site.

When: Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 11:00 AM PT/2:00PM ET
Who: Nitin Mangtani, Group Product Manager for Google Commerce
Nancy Miller, VP of Internet and Development for Woodcraft Supply
Register now

We hope you'll join us, and also check out some of the other retail events we’re hosting in Santa Monica and New York.

Posted:
Two months ago, the Google Maps team launched Fusion Tables Protected Map Layers for Google Maps API Premier customers. With the Fusion Tables Protected Map Layers, developers and businesses can upload tabular data to Fusion Tables and display this data on a Google Maps API implementation.

Join us for a live webinar to learn about Google Fusion Tables and how you can add Protected Map Layers into your Google Maps API Premier implementations.

When: May 3rd, 2011 10AM PT
Who: Google Developer Programs Engineer Kathryn Hurley and Google Product Marketing Manager Natasha Wyatt
Register now

Over 600,000 developers worldwide have adopted the Google Maps API for its developer and viewer usability. Google Maps API Premier is the business-ready version of Google Maps that allows your business to acquire more customers and make intelligent location-based business decisions.

We hope you'll join us and check out some of the other Google Earth and Maps events we are holding.

Posted:
Across the country, governments of all sizes are turning to Google Apps for Government. Like any other organization, governments need their employees to communicate and collaborate effectively and efficiently -- especially when employees are working from home or from remote locations.

American City and County Association has joined Google to present a live webinar “How Local Governments Use Google Apps to Improve Productivity and Reduce Cost.” The webinar will feature special guests from two local governments that recently switched to Google Apps for Government: Pierce County, Wisconsin and the City of Mesquite, Nevada.

Join us to learn:
  • The reasons these local governments switched to Google Apps -- and the benefits they’ve realized since.
  • How Google Apps has improved collaboration and productivity while meeting government requirements for security and document retention.
  • Best practices for adopting and deploying Google Apps in your government.

Register now to attend the live webinar on 4/14 @ 11:00 am PST.

Posted:
Thousands of institutions have adopted Google Apps for Education and already enjoy the tremendous collaboration boosts and cost savings that come along with it. Many, however, may be less familiar with the Google Apps Marketplace (not to mention the recently launched Education category in the Marketplace which includes applications for student tools and teaching aids). As the Apps Marketplace celebrates its first birthday, we invite you to learn how one Google Apps customer has deployed an innovative Google Docs management app from the marketplace and how it has impacted the visibility of collaboration and sharing within their organization.

Join us for a webinar on April 7th at 11am PST to hear Boise State University’s Brian Bolt, the Office for Information and Technology Team Lead, share how they are using Google Apps and CloudLock from the Google Apps Marketplace. Brian will share his lessons on rolling out Google Apps and demonstrate how CloudLock addresses some of the core IT control and visibility requirements they faced when moving increasing amounts of their organization’s data to the cloud. Specifically, Brian will cover how CloudLock helps to address:
  • Governance - Managing access to data to mitigate unauthorized access
  • Protection - Define and enforce document ownership and sharing policies
  • Analytics - Understanding how to effectively make sense of data
CloudLock’s Co-Founder, Tsahy Shapsa, will also share how their app has made it possible for organizations to extend their Google Docs repositories in order to begin to retire their legacy on-premise file servers, effectively producing a significant ROI with real hard and soft cost savings. We hope you’ll tune in to hear more about how Boise State has leveraged CloudLock.

The Power of the Apps Marketplace: A Webinar with CloudLock and Boise State
Thursday, April 7th, 2011
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Posted by Jordan Pedraza, Google Apps for Education Team

Posted:
100% web applications have many advantages over legacy and single tenant hosted technologies. There’s no need to wait years for the next big software release or manage a complex set of installers, software patches, and hardware upgrades. With Google Apps, new features are available with a simple refresh of the web browser.

We want to make it easier for customers to stay up-to-date with what’s new. On Thursday March 31 at 10am PST, I’ll be hosting a recap where you’ll hear about new applications like Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office and powerful new features like Google Apps Scripts support in Google Apps, Smart Labels, updated Contact Manager and the ability to sign outgoing messages with DKIM. I’ll also review the updated Google Apps feature release process which enables IT admins more granular control of the roll-out / deployment of updates.

For nearly real-time information on updates to Google Apps, administrators and users can follow along through RSS, email alerts or Twitter. If you’d like a refresher on previous quarters’ developments, you’re welcome to watch the replays on YouTube.

I hope you can join me. Register to attend the live webinar on March 31 at 10am PST.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Posted:
The benefits of Google Apps and cloud computing extend beyond just business communication and productivity. Today there are a growing number of cloud applications for virtually every aspect of your business through the Google Apps Marketplace. Hundreds of vendors now offer products and services through the Marketplace that integrate directly with Google Apps for business. So what do you need to start going 100% web, and what does it really take to simplify everything from messaging and collaboration to real-time financial dashboards and analytics with cloud computing?

Register for this live and interactive webcast on Wednesday, March 30 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern with Google Apps Partner Lead Scott McMullan and NetSuite Director of Business Development Dan Chang. You’ll hear about business use cases, return on investment (ROI), and other considerations for moving to the cloud with NetSuite and Google Apps.

Posted:
Rochester Hills, Michigan, and Panama City, Florida have improved internal communications and dramatically reduced costs by implementing Google Apps. These cities faced the same challenges that many other government agencies do: declining budgets, pressure to deliver better citizen services, and the high cost of a do-it-yourself hardware infrastructure.

Join IT managers from Rochester Hills and Panama City, a senior fellow from Center for Digital Government, and Google for a live discussion where they will shed light on how government agencies can:
  • Cut costs on email and office productivity applications
  • Improve collaboration with employees and the public
  • Move quickly to implement these solutions
  • Respond to trends in government cloud computing
Register to attend the live webinar on Tuesday, March 29 at @ 11am PST / 2pm EST. We hope to see you there.

Posted:
Customers are switching from legacy systems to Google Apps at an astounding rate. In 2010, our customers migrated over 3.5 billion emails, over 100 million calendar events and 25 million contacts. Over 6 million (and growing) emails are migrated to Google Apps every day!

To help make it easy for our customers to make the switch we’ve made several improvements and updates. Our data migration tools for Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft Outlook® now support several additional IMAP servers, including Novell® GroupWise, Cyrus®, Dovecot® and Courier®. Customers like Premier Access Insurance – a network of 10,000 dentists in California and other locations throughout the United States ‐ have used our migration tools to make the switch to Google Apps.

Join William Woodson of Premier Access Insurance and me on a live webinar on Thursday, March 24th at 10am PST where William will share his experience and perspectives in planning and managing the migration process, as well as lessons learned. You can also hear more about new updates and improvements to our tools and best practices in planning a migration.

If you are planning a switch, this webinar can't be missed. Register today!

Posted by Aditya Kulkarni, Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Posted:
Interested in joining the thousands of schools and millions of students, staff and faculty currently using Google Apps for Education? We’ll be holding a webinar series in March that will help you do just that.

These webinars will cover a number of topics - from an overview of Google Apps and its services to a deep dive into the Google Apps control panel. These webinars will be run by members of the Google Apps for Education team who can share lessons learned and best practices. Feel free to register for one session or the entire series. Hope you’ll join us for Google Apps for Education 101!

Register to attend one of the upcoming webinars in the series:
March 16, 10:30AM PT/1:30PM ET: Pitching Google Apps at your school
March 22, 10:30AM PT/1:30PM ET: The A to Z of a Google Apps Deployment
March 24, 10:30AM PT/1:30PM ET: What can the Google Apps control panel do for me?
March 30, 10:30AM PT/1:30PM ET: We’re going Google: marketing and project planning

Archived recordings from past Google Apps for Education webinars can also be found in our resource center.

Posted:
Faced with increased demand for live traffic and road closure information, the State of Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) has chosen to leverage Google Maps API Premier to combine and visualize geospatial data from multiple sources. Join us for a webinar on February 24th to learn why Google Maps API Premier was the ideal tool for presenting traffic and road-related data to the public. We’ll also highlight other ways that this product can be used in conjunction with other enterprise geospatial tools to build all sorts of effective, public-facing/public serving websites.

Register now for this webinar which runs on Thursday, February 24, 2:00PM EST/11:00AM PST. You will learn:
  • How the Iowa DOT has used Google Maps API Premier to unlock the value of siloed and stored geospatial data.
  • How the Iowa DOT has integrated Google Maps API Premier with Oracle Spatial and ESRI tools within the Enterprise.
  • How underlying geospatial data is managed throughout the Iowa DOT.

Who Should Attend:
Anyone in state and local government involved in map-based application development for public-facing websites. Other businesses and organizations looking to connect with the public using Google Maps API Premier will also find this webinar valuable.

Posted:
The education technology space has seen an explosion of new offerings in the past few years. What has been missing is a centralized platform for schools and universities to easily evaluate and utilize web apps. Today we are excited to launch an education category in the Google Apps Marketplace designed specifically to help schools and universities easily discover and deploy new web applications that integrate with their existing Google Apps accounts.

The new education category includes over 20 applications from 19 vendors ranging from learning management systems (LMS) to student tools and teaching aids – all of which integrate with Google Apps for Education. Each app can be accessed through single sign-on and the Google universal navigation bar and many offer deeper integrations that synchronize with Google Calendar and Documents.

This new education category will make it easier for schools to have more web apps at their fingertips, including popular existing apps such as Aviary, Grockit, and LearnBoost as well as the new apps launching today.



Learning Management
Now faculty can bring their classroom management to the cloud with apps such as:


Learning Aids
Teachers can help student learn more effectively with web-based learning aids like:

  • BrainPOP: an app that offers animated, curriculum-based content that enhances student learning in numerous ways, from illustrating complex concepts to reviewing before a test.
  • DreamBox: a tool that helps students learn math through interactive lessons and gives teachers reporting dashboards to monitor individual student progress.
  • And other teaching aids like Grockit, BuzzMath and LearnThatWord.

Student and Admin Tools
Administrators and students can tackle other education needs with even more tools:


Thousands of universities, colleges and K-12 schools around the world with over 10 million users already deploy Google Apps in their classrooms. The applications we're introducing today into the new Marketplace education category are just the beginning. We look forward to expanding and strengthening our offerings as we continue to add new education tools, including web applications by Blackboard, Knewton and the Khan Academy already on the way.

To learn more about the education category of the Apps Marketplace – and hear directly from the developers of these applications – register to attend live Google webinars and Q&A on Wednesday, February 2nd.

Manage your school in the cloud with the Google Apps Marketplace
Featuring classroom management tools Haiku and LearnBoost
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST
Register here

Help students learn more effectively with the Google Apps Marketplace
Featuring web-based learning tools Grockit, BrainPOP, and DreamBox
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
4:00 p.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. EST
Register here

Posted by Dennis Troper, Director of Product Management, Google Apps Marketplace