Posted by Jaime Garcia, IT Corporate Director of the All Inclusive Collection

(Cross-posted on the Google Latin America Blog)

Editor's note: We are excited to have guest blogger Jaime Garcia, IT Corporate Director of the All Inclusive Collection with over 5,000 employees at Hard Rock hotels in the Mayan Riviera, Cancún, Puerto Vallarta, and Punta Cana. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Hard Rock hotels, we don’t want to be a normal hotel; we want our guests to feel like rock stars from the moment they walk in the door. But, with 1,200 employees that use our IT platform across four locations, it can be challenging to create a consistent guest experience. We need tools that help us make decisions in the moment -- the party doesn’t stop at the Hard Rock!

As the IT Corporate Director of the All Inclusive Collection (which runs all of the Hard Rock Hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic), I’m responsible for providing tools to our employees that will let them to work together effectively and focus on our customers. On our old system, Microsoft® Exchange, we had a large datacenter for the hotels to maintain. Our communication tools weren’t flexible enough to make decisions on the go and we couldn’t guarantee that we were running the same promotions at the same time. We worried about the effect on our guests’ experience. I decided that we needed to move to Google Apps and get off of our on-premise infrastructure. Google Apps was fast, safe, and agile and met all of the security standards I was looking for, so I knew that all of our customers’ information would be protected, too!

Since moving to Google Apps, we've improved internal communication and are now spending half as much time on things as we were previously. While our hotels are in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, our sales teams are located all over the globe—North America, Europe, Asia, and here in Latin America—and they’re moving all the time. With Google Talk and Google+ Hangouts, we rarely use the phone anymore, it’s easier to jump on a Hangout from any device and from any of our locations. When our sales team in Miami make an important reservation for a wedding or a big group, they chat via Google Talk with the hotel in Cancun, providing immediate assurance and confirmation that everything will run smoothly.

Having so many guests across our hotels, problems can arise at anytime day or night, so we can’t have downtime. Rather than worrying about keeping our servers and email running, we spend our time managing tools through a browser. We've saved thousands of dollars in IT infrastructure and telecommunication costs, and my IT headaches are gone. I used to have a team of guys helping me manage servers and keep our email up and running. Now, only two of us manage all of the tools.

Google Sites and Google Calendar have been fundamental in organizing our promotions and standardizing our guest experience by allowing us to share across hotel locations. We just had a promotion across all our branches for Christmas and the holidays. We made a site with all of the dates, rates, and details of the deal and we could easily monitor how it was rolled out across each hotel. This process used to take weeks, and fixing discrepancies between the locations was messy. Now, it’s simple, consistent, and happens in real time.

On Google Apps, we really feel like a team, working together despite being countries apart. We are able to provide the same level of rockstar service in all of our hotels and create great experiences for our guests. All while improving our customer experience – rock on!

Posted by Hong Zhang, Google Apps Enterprise Mobile

People are using phones and tablets more than ever before to get work done from anywhere – in the field, at home or while traveling. Along with this increase in flexibility and productivity come new challenges for businesses managing all of these mobile devices. We launched tools to manage mobile devices across all mobile platforms for Google Apps last year, and since then we’ve been hard at work adding a number of new capabilities to help organizations better manage smartphones and tablets.

Some of our newest features are focused on helping administrators enforce tighter security using mobile settings in the Apps control panel to keep company data safe. We now offer administrators more ways to promote strong passwords on users’ phones and tablets and allow policies that enforce data encryption. New features also let administrators set policies to allow or block the use of the phone’s camera on Android 4.0+ devices and comply with organizational email retention policies. And now administrators can enforce these policies where available without disabling phones running older versions of Android that don’t support all the latest policies.

Through the Google Apps Device Policy app, administrators have the ability to remotely erase data from lost or stolen devices. Now we’re extending this capability so that IT admins can grant end users the ability to remotely delete data from their phone as soon as they notice it’s missing using the My Devices page.



As employees increasingly depend on their phones and tablets we’ll continue to work on making it easier and more secure for organizations to manage their fleet of devices. You can watch this video or visit our Help Center for a detailed look at how our enterprise mobile offerings can benefit your business.

Posted by Clay Bavor, Product Management Director

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)

In April, we introduced Google Drive, a place where you can create, share, and keep all your stuff. Today at the Google I/O conference we announced two new ways to get things done in the cloud: offline editing for Google documents and a Drive app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.

Offline document editing 
No internet connection? No big deal. With offline editing, you can create and edit Google documents and leave comments. Any changes you make will be automatically synced when you get back online.

You can enable offline editing from the gear icon in Google Drive and find more detailed instructions for getting set up in the Help Center. Note that you’ll need the latest versions of Chrome or ChromeOS to edit offline. We’re also working hard to make offline editing for spreadsheets and presentations available in the future.

Google Drive for iOS 
We launched the Drive app for Android phones and tablets a few weeks ago, and starting today, Google Drive is available for your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.



With the Drive app, you can open PDFs, photos, videos, documents and anything else stored in your Drive while you're on the go. You can also search all your files, add collaborators to documents, and make files available offline to view them even without an internet connection. For blind and low-vision users, the app also works great in VoiceOver mode. Learn more about what you can do with the app in our Help Center.

Get Drive in the App Store for your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch running iOS 5.0+ and visit the Play Store to get the latest on your Android phone or tablet.

To learn more about Google Drive, visit drive.google.com/start.

Posted by Franck Hémont, IPSEN

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Franck Hémont, Group Informatics Engineering & Development Director at Ipsen, who is leading the company’s project to deploy Google Apps. Ipsen (Euronext: IPN, ADR: IPSEY), is a global specialty-driven pharmaceutical company.
See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

IPSEN is a truly global company, with over 4,500 employees spread across almost 50 countries. We work collaboratively across borders and teams, and with a recently implemented restructure it has become even more important to allow the organisation to work together seamlessly.

It was these challenges we had in mind when we evaluated our messaging and collaboration tools earlier this year. When we met with Google, we were looking for a secure, efficient and innovative solution that would allow the IT organization to focus primarily on value creation and the business to more effectively work together.

We’ve been gradually migrating to Google Apps for Business since September this year, after a successful six-month pilot phase. It involved 180 users spread across divisions such as R&D, Purchasing, HR, Manufacturing and across numerous locations in Spain, China, France, United States and United Kingdom. The pilot has allowed us to evaluate how the solution will work in our organization, and how it will bring value to the company.

Revevol, a Google Apps implementation partner, assisted us for the deployment, both for the technical integration and change management.

We’ve been impressed by the sophistication of cloud computing and by the additional functionality Google Apps will bring to our business. The ability to collaborate within a 100% web environment will be invaluable, especially for our researchers spread over distant sites in France and the U.S.

With Google Apps, our employees will be able to access their working environment from anywhere, at any time and from any device, bringing major organizational benefits and allowing our teams to work more effectively together.

Posted by Ronald Ho, Product Manager

Google Apps fans, today we’re ready to add you to our circles. Google+ makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world, and now Google+ is available to people who use Google Apps at college, at work or at home.

Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.*

Google Apps users will have access to the same set of features that are available to every Google+ user, and more. In addition to sharing publicly or with your circles, you’ll also have the option to share with everyone in your organization, even if you haven’t added all of those people to a circle.



Google+ at home, at work and at college
You use Google Apps in lots of different ways, and we expect the same for Google+. Apps users from artists to doctors to parents to students to teachers have told us that they are ready to join the 40 million people already sharing on Google+.

Circles is a great way to share relevant content with the right people. With Circles, your photography crew doesn’t have to get an update about your morning workout, your triathlon team doesn’t have to see all your thoughts on the latest camera gear, and your project teams can be kept separate from all of this.



Hangouts with extras, which combines multi-person video chat with screen sharing and collaboration in Google Docs, lets you work together on projects even when your team can't be in the same room. Whether you’re out of town, working on a project with a distributed group, or just don’t feel like walking to the next building for your meeting, Hangouts with extras can give your team the productivity boost it needs.



Google+ coming to a campus near you
Many students and teachers have sent us their ideas about how they can use Google+ to teach, learn, work, and play. These are a few Google Apps for Education universities from around the world that are bringing Google+ to their campuses today:

• Abilene Christian University
• American University in Cairo (Egypt)
• Arizona State University
• AT Still University
• Boise State University
• Central Piedmont Community College
• Dublin City University (Ireland)
• ESSEC Business School (France)
• Leeds Metropolitan University (United Kingdom)
• Loughborough University (United Kingdom)
• Saint Louis University
• Strathmore University (Kenya)
• Universidad Panamericana (Mexico)
• University of Ferrara (Italy)
• University of Maryland Baltimore County
• University of Minnesota
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Pavia (Italy)
• University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom)
• University of Washington
• Vanderbilt University
• Wake Forest University

Just the beginning
For those of you who’ve already started using Google+ with a personal Google Account and would prefer to use your Google Apps account, we’re building a migration tool to help you move over. With this tool, you won’t have to rebuild your circles, and people who’ve already added you to their circles will automatically be connected to your new profile. We expect this migration option to be ready in a few weeks, so if you’d like, you can go ahead and get started with your Apps account today and merge your connections once the tool is available.

It took more technical work than we expected to bring Google+ to Google Apps, and we thank you for your patience. This integration is just the beginning. We’ll continue to add features and improve the way that Google+ works with Google Apps, and we encourage you to share your ideas.


* Google+ requires Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing and Google Talk for chat, so if these services are not enabled then Google+ will not automatically become available, even if your domain has chosen to automatically enable new services. The option to automatically enable new services is controlled in the Domain settings tab of the administrator control panel. More information about using Google+ with Google Apps is available in the Help Center.


Update: For Google Apps for Education customers, we're starting with higher ed institutions and are looking into making Google+ available to K-12s at some point in the future.


Update 2: The Circles migration tool referenced in this post is now live at google.com/takeout. You can learn more about how to use the tool in the Help Center.

Posted by Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog and Google Docs Blog.)

For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers. For example, desktop notifications for Gmail and drag-and-drop file upload in Google Docs require advanced browsers that support HTML5. Older browsers just don’t have the chops to provide you with the same high-quality experience.

For this reason, soon Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.

As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

So if it’s been a a while since your last update, we encourage you to get the latest version of your favorite browser. There are many to choose from:

• Chrome
  
• Firefox
  
• Internet Explorer
  
• Safari

As the world moves more to the web, these new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds.

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead

Over a year ago, we created the Google Apps Marketplace to help you easily discover, evaluate, and deploy integrated web applications for your business or school. In that time, many of you have told us that evaluating apps can be particularly tricky, as you need to consider questions like:

• who already uses the app, and why do they like it (or not)?
  
• will the app’s features address my particular needs?
  
• can I trust the vendor who created the app with my data?
  

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to answer these questions. For example, we offer verified app reviews to highlight comments from customers who we know to be using the app.

Today we’re announcing a feature designed to help address the trust question — a TRUSTe administered data privacy certification program for Marketplace apps. TRUSTe has created a certification program for installable Marketplace apps to verify that they clearly communicate their data handling and privacy practices. This program, which is optional for vendors, displays a green TRUSTe logo on a certified app’s Marketplace listing page as well as search results pages. The logo links then to a certification summary with more specific information about the app.



TRUSTe certification makes it easier for you, as a buyer, to verify the following about an app:

• the vendor has been contacted and certified by TRUSTe personnel
  
• the purpose for data collection and sharing, and the security used for sharing (https)
  
• there is an easy-to-read privacy policy available
  

Since certification is optional, the absence of a TRUSTe seal does not imply the app has unacceptable or difficult-to-understand practices for data handling and privacy. In fact, the program just launched today, so most apps have not yet applied for certification.

If you have additional questions about what this particular certification covers, please see the TRUSTe customer FAQ. If you’re a vendor with installable Marketplace apps and are interested in certification, please review the application process.

Last month, the Google Apps Marketplace turned 1 and we looked back on our first year providing integrated web applications for Google Apps users. To kick off our second year, we welcome you to this month’s App Tuesday to explore the many new apps we have we have to offer.

To help make application discovery easier, last week, we also introduced a Marketplace feature that allows any Google Apps user to request that their administrator install an application for their organization. This new feature means that every Google Apps user can now help their organization discover and deploy the right web apps.




As always, all Marketplace apps offer single sign-on convenience and hassle-free access through the universal navigation bar. Many go even further by integrating with your Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Calendars and more to improve your productivity.

This month we welcome more apps from long-time vendors, Zoho and SADA, as well as fresh apps from many new ones:

• Assistly is a helpdesk tool that allows teams and entire companies to support customers via email, phone, chat, web, Facebook and Twitter.
• WorkETC combines CRM, project management, billing, sales and more with a powerful automation engine to help small businesses.
• Orangescape is a visual development platform for building and deploying business applications on Google App Engine.
• SADA Audit Tool is a centralized admin tool that gives you an overview of how resources (Docs, Sites, etc.) have been shared externally.

You can browse all of our newest apps in the Google Apps Marketplace. Now everyone can use the Marketplace to discover new apps — and directly install an app if you’re the domain admin or send a request if you’re not.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team

Google Sites makes it easy for organizations to create and manage their intranets or external web pages. By making content management available to non-technical users, information is managed by more people making it more relevant and up to date.

But sometimes intranets have more complex needs such as:

• Content varied based on an employee’s location
  
• Information in another system that needs to be presented in a site
  
• A project tracker with a custom workflow
  
• An issue tracker
  
• A team issue tracker
  

To support these needs, we are excited to announce further integration between Google Sites and Google Apps Scripts that allows custom applications to be built in your Google Sites. To get started, take a look at our “hello world” tutorial and our Apps Scripts help center. To get a sense for what is possible, we also recommend our tutorial on how to build an entire time-tracking application, right in your site.

Posted by Laurent Tu, Software Engineer

Today the Google Apps Marketplace turns one! In the past year, we’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with many of the best developers on the web, working to make it easy for you to extend Google Apps with great apps for your businesses or school. Our selection has grown from 50 to over 300 apps, and includes great apps for CRM, project management, customer support, finance, email marketing, and more.

You’ve told us we’re on to something...what else have we learned? In a nutshell:

1. Web app adoption is accelerating across every business function and need
2. You value web apps that work together — what we call integrated apps (see video below)
3. It’s harder than ever to evaluate and select the right app, given the number of new apps coming to market, and their increasing specialization

With these learnings firmly in mind, we’re more excited than ever about our mission with Apps Marketplace, and are working on features to make it even easier for you to discover, evaluate and deploy web apps that integrate out of the box. Beyond single sign-on and quick access through our universal navigation bar, our best Marketplace apps synchronize data and offer integrated features designed to keep you and your users productive as you move closer to 100% web.



Here’s a look back at some of our fondest memories from our first 12 months.

One year ago, the Apps Marketplace was born with 50 apps, including cloud content management app Box.net, fostering a new model for businesses to discover, purchase and deploy integrated web apps online.

Then in May, to make integrations even more useful, we announced the ability for apps to seamlessly appear inside Gmail when a message is read, enabling users to interact with their apps -- like marking an approval or updating a customer record — without leaving Gmail. For example Capsule CRM offers a Gmail contextual gadget, saving users precious time as they process their email.

With the number of apps continuing to grow, in June we started inviting businesses to “make it App Tuesday” on the 2nd Tuesday of each month. Instead of patching legacy software to fix bugs and close security holes, businesses can simply get more functionality — such as Mailchimp for email marketing.

Starting mid-summer, it became clear users were particularly interested in a handful of top selling app categories. So we shared publicly that our top search term was “CRM”, which was driving success for apps like Insightly, and ended up attracting even more apps to the Marketplace to help you manage customers. We also shared that our most installed app category was Project Management, where apps like Smartsheet were seeing success. We wrapped up our category highlights with a timely post on Accounting and Finance before tax season, which featured apps such as Outright for small business accounting.

All along, we were hearing a growing demand from our Google Apps for Education customers for more education-focused apps. So on January 25th, we introduced an education category and added 20+ related apps, including LearnBoost, a free online gradebook.

It’s been a successful year bringing 300 new integrated apps to our users around the world. Let us know what you’d like to see added or improved using our ideas page, and keep checking back for new apps.

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise

Update: We're excited to announce that the new Gmail Contacts for Google Apps has launched for all Rapid Release users as of 4/7/11. Please continue to give us your feedback in the Comments below.

In our ever-connected world, working revolves around collaborating. It’s important to be able to quickly reach people in your network, speeding up the tasks you perform daily, like making a phone call or sending an email – whether you’re at your desk or on the go. To help with this, we’re rolling out an updated version of Contacts that makes it easier to use, organize and edit your work contacts in Gmail.

In addition to all of the improvements we made to Contacts for individual users, we’ve been hard at work on bringing additional, business-specific features to help you and your colleagues get in touch with contacts more easily. Now, you can:

• Add new contact information that will default to “Work” instead of “Home” field types
• View contact details from the domain directory together with the contact details that you’ve added yourself
• Add contacts from the domain directory to your “My Contacts” list in a single click
• Manage groups more easily by quickly adding email addresses to groups, and picking from a contact’s multiple email addresses to use on a group-by-group basis
• Revert changes to your Contacts for up to 30 days in case you need to restore deleted or merged contacts, or undo an import

If you’re the Google Apps administrator for your organization, you can enable the new Contacts interface in Gmail for your users from the Service Settings > Contacts area of the next generation administrative control panel. It may take up to an hour for users to see the difference once you make the change.

Make collaboration easier today by switching to the new Gmail Contacts (and once you do, be sure to contact us with your feedback).

Millions of businesses are experiencing radical productivity gains with web-powered tools, and today Google Apps collaboration is ready for every employee. We’re bringing multi-person, simultaneous editing to the Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications that coworkers may still need from time to time. More people will be able to achieve a 100% web future entirely in Google Docs after learning the benefits of web-powered collaboration within traditional software.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is now available to all users worldwide, letting two or more people work together on the same file at the same time in Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 or 2010 on Windows PCs. For example, you can edit a Word document’s table of contents from Dublin while coworkers adjust formatting and make revisions from Denver. Instead of bombarding each other with attachments and hassling to reconcile people’s edits, your whole team can focus on productive work together.



Google Cloud Connect vastly improves Microsoft Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, so companies can start using web-enabled teamwork tools without upgrading Microsoft Office or implementing SharePoint 2010.


Comparison of collaboration alternatives

Today we’re also introducing the 90-Day Appsperience program globally so businesses encumbered with 1990s technology can experience modern collaboration and the burst of productivity that’s possible now. Whether you manage IT for your whole business, lead a department, or manage a complex project like an industry event, a nominal fee covers 90-day unlimited use of Google Apps collaboration plus hands-on support from Google experts. To help companies measure the productivity impact of better teamwork -- and ultimately pay for what they really need instead of desktop software that could sit on the shelf -- the new collaboration dashboard in the Google Apps for Business and Education control panel provides aggregated activity metrics to administrators. Both Google Cloud Connect and this collaboration dashboard are available in English, with many more supported languages to follow soon.


This year we look forward to bringing you countless stories on the Google Enterprise Blog from schools, businesses and other organizations that are becoming much more productive with Google Apps. To get the wheels turning, check out the transformation that’s speeding ahead at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.

Join me for a live webinar on March 3rd, 2011 at 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6pm GMT to learn more about Google Cloud Connect and the 90-Day Appsperience program. Register to attend the live event.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Google Apps Product Manager

Update: Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

We’re back with App Tuesday, and a lot has happened since our last post. Over the past couple months, we’ve been busy growing the Google Apps Marketplace to include new apps like SAP’s StreamWork and 20+ new education-focused apps in the new education category.

This App Tuesday, we welcome a number of new apps that were added to the Marketplace in the past month, including apps for financial tracking, employee recruiting and mentoring, and productivity. As always, all installable Marketplace apps are integrated with Google Apps and offer single sign-on convenience, giving users hassle-free access through the Google Apps universal navigation bar (see image below).


We wanted to highlight a few apps in the last month that integrate with users’ Gmail inbox and synchronize with Google Contacts:

• Celigo Gmail Sync for NetSuite provides a seamless integration between Gmail and NetSuite, allowing Gmail users to locate, add and edit NetSuite records and quickly attach messages to those records directly from within Gmail.
• Zoho Books gives businesses the ability to manage their accounting online with complete visibility of their financial positions and the inflow and outflow of money.
• Chronus Mentor enables organizations to run hi-impact mentoring programs in a forward-thinking and cost-effective manner.

Other notable new apps are Zoho Recruit, an easy to use applicant tracking system (ATS), Bookeo, an online meeting scheduler, and Travel Expenses Instant App, an expense reporting app.

Check out the Google Apps Marketplace to explore and install these new apps, or one of the more than 250 additional apps. If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know which apps you recommend via Twitter, or submit your suggestions for additional apps.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team

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:

• Haiku: an LMS that allows teachers to create media-rich class websites, give and auto-grade assessments, annotate assignments and interact online with students.
• LearnBoost: an all-in-one gradebook and lesson plan software for teachers that includes tools to visualize data and student performance.
• And other classroom management tools such as eduARC, Class.io, PlanbookEdu, ThinkWave SIS and Applane SIS, gradebooks such as Engrade and ThinkWave Gradebook, and assessment tools such as EduBrite and RCampus iRubric.

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:

• EasyBib: an automatic bibliography composer that helps students format sources quickly and accurately to cite in papers.
• Digication: an online e-Portfolio creation tool that helps students share and showcase their work and achievements online.
• And other student and admin tools like Aviary, Edutone Sakai Connector, Edutone Moodle Connector, Leveled Library and Rcampus e-Portfolio.

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

People expect email to be as reliable as their phone's dial tone, and our goal is to deliver that kind of always-on availability with our applications. It's been a couple years since we blogged about the reliability of Gmail, so we thought we'd share some changes to our Google Apps service level agreement (SLA) and some new data.

Strengthening our SLA
We're pleased to make a couple changes that improve our SLA for our customers. Unlike most providers, we don't plan for our users to be down, even when we're upgrading our services or maintaining our systems. For that reason, we're removing the SLA clause that allows for scheduled downtime. Going forward, all downtime will be counted and applied towards the customer's SLA. We are the first major cloud provider to eliminate maintenance windows from their service level agreement.

We're also amending our SLA so that any intermittent downtime is counted. Previously, a period of less than ten minutes was not included. We believe any instance that causes our users to experience downtime should be avoided -- period.

Gmail: 99.984%
In 2010, Gmail was available 99.984 percent of the time, for both business and consumer users. 99.984 percent translates to seven minutes of downtime per month over the last year. That seven-minute average represents the accumulation of small delays of a few seconds, and most people experienced no issues at all. For those few who were disrupted for a longer period of time, we're very sorry, and Google Apps for Business customers received compensation where appropriate. We're particularly pleased with this level of reliability since it was accomplished without any planned downtime while launching 30 new features and adding tens of millions of active users.

Seven minutes of downtime compares very favorably with on-premises email, which is subject to much higher rates of interruption that hurt employee productivity. The latest research from the Radicati Group found that on-premises email averaged 3.8 hours of downtime per month. In comparison to Radicati's metrics for on-premises email, our calculations suggest that Gmail is 32 times more reliable than the average email system, and 46 times more available than Microsoft Exchange®.¹


Fortunately Microsoft Exchange® customers can still benefit from the reliability of Gmail with Google Message Continuity. Comparable data for Microsoft BPOS® is unavailable, though their service notifications show 113 incidents in 2010: 74 unplanned outages, and 33 days with planned downtime.

Email is much more complex than your home phone, so making it as reliable as the dial tone is no mean feat. Despite our best efforts, we will have outages in the future. But we're proud of our track record so far and we're working hard to make it even better. Every time you reach for your phone you expect it to work. And we believe that is a worthwhile benchmark.

1. The Radicati Group, 2010. "Corporate IT Survey – Messaging & Collaboration, 2010-2011"

Posted by Matthew Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director

Update: clarification added to fifth paragraph.

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of posts on apps or topics in the Google Apps Marketplace that have caught our eye here at Google. We’ll do this every so often as we see things we'd like to share. Look for the label "marketplace highlights" and subscribe to the series if you'd like to stay tuned.

As we work our way into the new year, we recognize that tax season can be very difficult for businesses. Face this tax season with ease and confidence by attending a live webinar and Q&A on using integrated finance apps from the Google Apps Marketplace - featuring Shoeboxed, Harvest, and Outright.

   Using applications from the Google Apps Marketplace to conquer tax season
   Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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With dozens of Marketplace accounting and finance apps, you can customize solutions to your business’s specific needs. Each application integrates with Google Apps and provides single sign-on convenience and access through the Google universal navigation bar.

For example, here’s one way your business might cut down the work of tax season this year by using Marketplace apps to organize financial documents, streamline invoicing, and aggregate accounting information.

Digitize your important documents
If you’ve been putting off the tedious task of organizing your receipts, Shoeboxed can help. Send your receipts to them inside a provided postage-paid envelope and within a few days, Shoeboxed will transform your paper clutter into a secure, searchable, IRS-accepted online database. Shoeboxed also offers a variety of export options and integrates with various tax applications. By using Shoeboxed now, you can get your receipts in order before the April 15th tax deadline.

Simplify invoicing and billing to easily monitor cash flow
It’s also easy to seamlessly manage your accounts payables and receivables with the Apps Marketplace. For example, Harvest helps you create and track invoices and set up retainers for clients and projects. Other features such as multi-currency support, automated reminders and online payment help you get paid faster. Harvest also offers a contextual gadget in Gmail to streamline invoicing activities.

Prepare your finances for tax time
When it comes to aggregating your financials to prep for tax time, there are several options, including Outright. Outright automates the accounting process, provides key financial reports and tracks where your money is going by integrating with Google Apps, Shoeboxed, Harvest, your bank account and other sources. At tax time, Outright calculates any estimated taxes you owe and pre-populates your annual tax form, the IRS Schedule C. It also provides helpful alerts that integrate into your Google Calendar to keep you apprised of upcoming deadlines.

In addition to Shoeboxed, Harvest and Outright, the Apps Marketplace offers your business many other applications that can satisfy your accounting and finance needs.

Invoicing/Billing Freshbooks Zoho Invoice Invoicera Bill.com Invoic€xpress WorkingPoint Harvest

Accounting Yendo Accounts FreeAgent Rhino Accouting Kashoo.com Outright

ERP MyERP.com Brightpearl ERPLY

Expense Reporting Expensify Concur Breeze Yendo Expenses Shoeboxed

Try out these apps Google Apps Marketplace and make this tax season a breeze.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Apps Marketplace

Closing out 2010, we are excited to offer over 250 installable applications in the Google Apps Marketplace that work seamlessly with Google Apps. The Apps Marketplace has grown rapidly, now with over 4 million users with at least one Marketplace app installed on their domains.

With Google Apps and the Apps Marketplace, you can finally go 100% web with your business, realizing greater functionality and flexibility at a lower cost. For example, you can manage your entire sales cycle anywhere you have access to a browser – send marketing and lead generation emails through MailChimp, manage and track responses with Zoho CRM and even close the sale with an e-signature from EchoSign.

Every month on App Tuesday, we aim to give you a break from patching your systems by introducing even more apps to help you move to the cloud. To wrap up the year, we wanted to give you a recap of what’s been big in the Marketplace, the top categories and apps of the year as well as a preview of 2011.

Top Installed Categories

1. Project Management - with over 30 project management apps, businesses can find applications that address key project needs including cross-functional collaboration, task list management, and time tracking.
   Top 3 installed: Manymoon, Mavenlink, RapidTASK
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - the most popular searched for category in 2010, businesses can find all types of CRM apps, including those related to end-to-end sales cycles, social and project-based.
   Top 3 installed: Insightly, Zoho CRM, Applane
3. Accounting and Finance - bring simplicity to your accounting and finance needs with Marketplace apps that manage your cash flow, billing and invoicing, and expense tracking.
   Top 3 installed: Outright, myERP.com, Freshbooks

Top Recently Installed Apps of 2010

1. Manymoon
2. Insightly
3. Zoho CRM
4. Aviary Design Suite
5. Mavenlink
6. Outright
7. MailChimp
8. RapidTask
9. Insync
10. myERP.com

Best Integration
Gmail contextual gadgets - This integration, offered by many Marketplace apps, allows you to access your most relevant and important data streams right where you need it, inline with your emails. For example, many CRM apps provide gadgets that populate information about contacts in an email thread to add context to your communications.

Looking forward to 2011, we have a number of new ideas in the pipeline. We have plans to help improve your shopping experience, find the exact apps you need, and add additional integration capabilities to make users more efficient.

As you prepare for 2011, consider making a new year’s resolution to go 100% web to capture the benefits of reduced costs, greater scalability and flexibility. Whether it’s switching your messaging and collaboration tools to Google Apps or augmenting your sales and marketing efforts with web applications from the Apps Marketplace, resolve to make 2011 the year your business moves to the web and boosts productivity.

Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Apps Marketplace