Devnet Cloud View & Web Industry News

Google have announced that Message Security is to be provided free to K-12 schools that use Google Apps, and free also to K-12 schools that sign up for Google Apps before July 2010.
Google Message Security lets administrators limit messages based on who they’re from, who they’re going to, or the content they contain. Message rules can be applied to groups of users, making it easy to customise for younger students, older students or teachers.
Yet another reason for you to check out Devnet’s ‘Cloud Ready’ program for education. Get going, get Google.

Top 5 reasons why Educators should move to Google Apps:

1. Students will love you for it
2. Save money
3. Google protects your privacy
4. Collaborate globally
5. Devnet’s got your back

If your interested in finding out how you can get Google Apps launched within your school please complete our contact form for more information.

Google Blog

Wednesday, July 1, 2009 at 7:23 AM
Posted by Andrew Mitchell, Google Apps Team

Since we launched Google Apps in 2006, thousands of schools, businesses and organisations globally have adopted Google’s cloud-based communication and collaboration tools - helping them increase productivity and effectiveness, reduce cost, and increase security. In fact, we announced today that more than four million students worldwide are using Google Apps in their classrooms.

Here in Australia and New Zealand, educators are embracing cloud computing, helping them achieve a wide range of learning outcomes and, most importantly, making learning fun.

Earlier this year, the New South Wales Department of Education followed the lead of the University of Waikato, the University of Auckland, and Macquarie University when they successfully migrated 1.2 million students to Google Apps. At the completion of the project, Stephen Wilson (the Chief Information Officer at the NSW DET) said: “Gmail has been working flawlessly, particularly considering that we could roll it out in a few months. It’s going fantastically and without a hitch”. Soon after, the the University of Adelaide migrated 16,000 students to Google Apps at no cost to the University.

Google Apps has proved popular at smaller schools across Australia and New Zealand too. “With Google Apps we’ve been able to offer communication and collaboration resources to our students and teachers which rival that of any school in the world … all without having to worry about servers, maintenance and other overheads,” says Michael Merrylees, Principal at Christ the King Anglican College in Cobram, Victoria. “Our students and teachers use Google Apps every day; like any good communication and collaboration system it simply disappears into the background, working without a hitch day after day.”

As a company that’s committed to constant innovation, we’d like to make it even easier for primary and secondary (K12) schools to use our tools. Today we’re announcing that Google Message Security will be offered free to current and new eligible K12 Google Apps customers that opt-in to Google Message Security – powered by Postini – by July 2010. Google Message Security lets administrators limit messages based on who they’re from, who they’re going to, or the content they contain. Message rules can be applied to groups of users, making it easy to customise the scheme for different groups (for instance younger students, older students, and teachers).

And to further support primary and secondary education, we’re launching the Google Apps Education Community site for educators and students to share and learn more about Google Apps, as well as the Google Apps Education resource centre with more than 20 classroom-ready lesson plans. We’re committed to providing even more educational resources in the future - watch this space!

OUT-LAW News, 23/06/2009

The Government has asked all public sector bodies to make future IT purchases consistent with cloud computing so that it can move all its digital services into a private, secure ‘cloud’ called ‘G-cloud’ for government bodies.

In its Digital Britain report the Government said that it wanted the public sector to reap the benefites of scalable, speed of provisioning and flexible pricing that it says cloud computing can bring.

While it consults with an IT trade body the Government has told all departments to make sure that all IT procurement from now on is compatible with cloud computing.

“All those Government bodies likely to procure ICT services should look to do so on a scaleable, cloud basis such that other public bodies can benefit from the new capability,” said the Digital Britain report.

Cloud computing is the use of massive central computing resources for IT work, with more modest computers connected to servers by networks. With the increasing ubiquity of broadband internet access cloud computing has become increasingly widespread.

The Digital Britain report outlined the phenomenon as has been observed in the consumer world. “The ‘public’ cloud  – where services can run on any server anywhere in the world – has attracted attention from industry commentators,” it said. “Achieving it, would be a first around the world for Digital Britain.”

It is not the report’s recommendation, though, that the Government run its business over public cloud networks.
“There are issues of meeting governmental needs for data location, security, data recovery, availability and reliability [with cloud computing],” it said.

The Government’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and CIO Council has consulted with high tech industry trade body Intellect and has commissioned a strategy study to investigate the use of cloud computing in Government, which will be called a ‘G-Cloud’.

“The strategy study has established a route-map towards the creation of a G-Cloud, as part of the rationalisation of data centres used by Government and the wider public sector,” it said. “This would both allow Government to benefit from the core attributes of Cloud Computing e.g. enhanced user experience, flexible pricing, elastic scaling, rapid provisioning, advanced virtualisation while also maintaining the appropriate levels of security, accountability and control required for most Government systems, and lead to substantial savings in costs.”

“The establishment of a G-Cloud will however require investment in technical development and physical facilities, and the CIO Council and the Intellect Public Sector Council are now developing the strategic business case to justify funding the G-Cloud,” it said.

The Government said that if the business case is proven then it would expect a G-Cloud to be saving money in procurement and IT projects within three years.

In order to ensure a consistent policy across Government, the report says that the CIO should have the ultimate decision making responsibility on IT procurement. “That will secure Government-wide standards and systems,” it said.

The report also highlighted the Government’s policy that when it commissions work which creates intellectual property rights (IPR), those rights should not stop others from using the work.

It is OPSI [Office of Public Sector Information]’s overriding recommendation that, wherever possible, IP under Crown copyright is made available for re-use by anyone, thereby maximising the potential economic benefit,” it said. “This is consistent with the Government’s approach to open source, open standards and reuse, where IP created by Government IT is available for re-use by anyone.”

The report said, though, that Government departments do not follow this guidance and many not only restrict the use of IP in different ways but even use different definitions of IP itself. It said that the Government would establish a pilot system of simpler IPR licensing in projects by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA).

The Digital Britain report also said that Government needed to try harder to make its procurement processes accessible for smaller companies that might come up with more imaginative technical solutions than large existing suppliers.

“The barriers to entry can lead to the Government or wider public sector becoming dependent on incumbent providers,” it said. “The complexity and scale of both the tender process and procurement information demands can often also militate against entry to the market of smaller, innovative companies, to the detriment of public service users.”

It said that the Government should create some trials of a simplified, fast-track procurement process that would be more accessible to companies that previously could only have been sub-contractors to larger firms.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009 at 10:45 AM,
Reference - Official Google Blog
Posted by Eric Orth, Software Engineer, Google Apps team

Over the last year, we’ve had a razor sharp focus on making it as easy as possible for businesses to deploy Google Apps. In the last few months you’ve seen some of the results, from offline Gmail to user directory synchronization to full Blackberry interoperability.

Today we’re excited remove another key barrier to enterprise adoption of Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions.

Many business users prefer Gmail’s interface and features to products they’ve used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we’ve developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail’s web interface to access their information when they’re not on their work computer.

Key features include:

Email, calendar, and contacts synchronization. For email, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which is much faster than IMAP or other methods.

Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook’s calendar or Google Calendar.

A simple, two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Watch it work in this 3 minute video:

Here’s what the IT execs at Genentech and Avago have to say about using this capability:

Three key service providers – NuVox, Netfirms and IKANO – have already begun offering Google Apps Sync. NuVox, a leading telecom provider in the Southeast and Midwest, sees “an incredible response to Google Apps from [our] customer base,” says CEO Jim Akerhielm. “We’re excited that Google Apps Sync helps our customers stop running Exchange and spend more time focusing on their core business.”

Netfirms, which powers 1.2m websites in the U.S. and Canada, is launching Google Apps to their customers in concert with Google Apps Sync. George Mitsopoulos, V.P. of DNA Mail (an IKANO company) says, “Google Apps Sync gives our customers even more options while minimizing our deployment effort. It’s ‘install, launch and you’re ready to go.’”

If your business hasn’t started using Google Apps yet, you can learn more about Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. If you already use Google Apps Premier or Education Edition, go ahead and give the plug-in a try.

Posted by Eric Orth, Software Engineer, Google Apps team

Reference - Official Google Blog
28/05/2009, by Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager

Back in early 2004, Google took an interest in a tiny mapping startup called Where 2 Tech, founded by my brother Jens and me. We were excited to join Google and help create what would become Google Maps. But we also started thinking about what might come next for us after maps.

As always, Jens came up with the answer: communication. He pointed out that two of the most spectacular successes in digital communication, email and instant messaging, were originally designed in the ’60s to imitate analog formats — email mimicked snail mail, and IM mimicked phone calls. Since then, so many different forms of communication had been invented — blogs, wikis, collaborative documents, etc. — and computers and networks had dramatically improved. So Jens proposed a new communications model that presumed all these advances as a starting point, and I was immediately sold. (Jens insists it took him hours to convince me, but I like my version better.)

We had a blast the next couple years turning Where 2’s prototype mapping site into Google Maps. But finally we decided it was time to leave the Maps team and turn Jens’ new idea into a project, which we codenamed “Walkabout.” We started with a set of tough questions:

• Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?
• Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?
• What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers’ current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person “startup” team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we’re very eager to return and see what the world might think. Today we’re giving developers an early preview of Google Wave.

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

As with Android, Google Chrome, and many other Google efforts, we plan to make the code open source as a way to encourage the developer community to get involved. Google Wave is very open and extensible, and we’re inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch. Google Wave has three layers: the product, the platform, and the protocol:

• The Google Wave product (available as a developer preview) is the web application people will use to access and edit waves. It’s an HTML 5 app, built on Google Web Toolkit. It includes a rich text editor and other functions like desktop drag-and-drop (which, for example, lets you drag a set of photos right into a wave).
• Google Wave can also be considered a platform with a rich set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services, and to build new extensions that work inside waves.
• The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the “live” concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, we intend to open source the code behind Google Wave.

So, this leaves one big question we need your help answering: What else can we do with this?

If you’re a developer and you’d like to roll up your sleeves and start working on Google Wave with us, you can read more on the Google Wave Developer blog about the Google Wave APIs, and check out the Google Code blog to learn more about the Google Wave Federation Protocol.

If you’d like to be notified when we launch Google Wave as a public product, you can sign up at http://wave.google.com/. We don’t have a specific timeframe for public release, but we’re planning to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview. We’re excited to see what feedback we get from our early tinkerers, and we’ll undoubtedly make lots of changes to the Google Wave product, platform, and protocol as we go.

We look forward to seeing what you come up with!

Update @ 7:07PM: The video of the Google Wave keynote presentation is now available:

Google Wave Developer Preview at Google I/O 2009

Reference - Official Google Docs Blog
by: Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager, Google Apps
Monday, June 01, 2009 9:41 AM

I still remember the first time I was introduced to Google Docs by a friend. I had one of those “aha” moments. Here was a product where I could easily share documents with people all over the world, and never have to worry about overlapping revisions or heavy email attachments. And with everything stored online, it meant that I didn’t have to always carry around my computer or back up my files.

Aha.

Well, it didn’t take long for me to start telling everyone I knew (and even some people I didn’t!) about my experience with Docs. But there was one recurring question from my friends - how do I get my Word and Excel 2007 documents into the cloud?

Today, I’m happy to be able to answer their question: we’ve added .docx and .xlsx to the list of file formats that we accept for uploading documents (which already included .doc, .odt, xls, .ods, .ppt, .csv, .html, .txt, .rtf, and others).

To import a .docx or .xlsx file, simply click the “Upload” button in your Docs List menu, select your file, and voila! We’ll upload and convert your document for use in Google Docs. This is a another great benefit of Google Docs - you don’t have to worry about what format the file is in. Just upload it and we’ll figure it out for you.

And if you have lots of files and would prefer to upload them all at once, then be sure to check out the Google Documents List API.

Australian-owned Devnet says users should consider exiting investments in Microsoft Exchange or Sharepoint and ride Google’s Wave.

Google Enterprise Apps partner Devnet, said it has begun work to integrate, the Web giant’s collaboration platform, Google Wave, into its ‘Cloud Ready’ program.

Devnet managing director Craig Deveson said a lot of cloud-based solutions have simply taken legacy server-based computer and made it available via the browser.

“Google Wave is a collaboration platform that unites email, instant messaging, blogs, wikis and other technologies into a single hosted conversation,” he said.

“Our recommendation is that organisations running legacy solutions like Microsoft Exchange or Sharepoint, seriously consider the potential impact that Google Wave may have before embarking on any significant upgrades of those technologies.”

Deveson said that the Wave protocol will allow anyone to become a Wave provider and share Waves with others, opening up enormous opportunity for innovation from all organisations.

“Devnet will push ahead to develop Wave-based services so that businesses, ISPs and government organisations can take advantage of this great platform and incorporate local and regional features,” he said.

“The attraction is uniting the many disparate electronic communication tools in a single platform. Also many companies have resisted cloud computing because their data won’t sit behind a firewall or reside on their own servers.

“With Google Wave a company’s sensitive data can sit behind a firewall or we can manage it on a server and then we use an open source program to help connect to Google’s Federated Wave servers globally.”

Deveson said a number of companies, with 50-100 users are moving from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps because maintaining hardware or software doesn’t make sense.

“The channel for the past 20 years has been content with Microsoft related services and Linux,” he said.

“Google has become a disruptive change because we are talking about technology that will leave Microsoft at the [starting] gate.”

He said the Web company has already developed proven technology like, Google Android for mobile phones, Google Maps and the Google Web browser.

“Google Wave was developed in Australia by Lars Rasmussen and his team,” said Deveson.

“They helped create Google Maps, so it’s also a boost for the local software industry.

“This week [the country] may go into an official recession but not this part of the market.”

Devnet is a Google enterprise partner that resells Google apps and services. The company also develops its own software and works with both resellers and end users.

“Resellers need to choose how they will move forward. Will they wait for Microsoft or Linux to come up with something new? Or will they  at Google offerings with us?” He said.

“We will be happy to work with them, we have channel goals which can help resellers customise Google apps to suit companies in this region.”

Deveson said however there’s an education process with resellers because of a lack of understanding from the community about Google’s channel.

“That’s why we need to work directly with a number of customers and work with more like minded partners to help expand our footprint,” he said.

As a website grows, organizing its content becomes ever more important. Google Sites has always allowed you to group pages in a hierarchy, but this wasn’t very apparent when finding your way around. We’ve been working on navigation, and today we’ve released a new feature that lets you set up a tree structure in your sidebar, to help show the structure of the site at a glance.

To set this up, click the “Edit Sidebar” link below the sidebar (or choose “Manage Site” from the “More Actions” menu), then edit the navigation widget. The configuration panel now lets you indent and “outdent” items to set up a hierarchy. The navigation widget can also be set up to highlight the current page, to help viewers see where they are, via a new “Navigation Current Page” color setting in the site’s “Colors and Fonts” configuration.

By grouping sub-pages in categories you can give viewers a more detailed view of your site while keeping the overall framework simple. By default only the top-level items will be expanded, as shown in the example above. A user can of course expand and collapse any items s/he wants, and those changes will be remembered across all the pages in the site.

We have many more improvements to site navigation in development; look for them in the coming months.

But that’s not the only user-interface change. We’ve also changed the toolbar to more closely resemble Google Docs, in our continuing efforts to make our applications have a more uniform look and feel. Additionally, we switched the site settings area to use vertical navigation, to make room for some upcoming features like AdSense integration. We’ve also started to add some collaborator tools to the site management area.

Less visibly, we made some major changes to our rendering infrastructure to improve performance and in preparation for new upcoming themes. This is meant to remain compatible with the layout customizations site owners have made, but it might have minor impacts on how your site looks. See this help article for details. As part of these changes, we grouped related Colors and Fonts settings to make them easier to understand. We also added a “from theme” option to each variable which makes it easy to revert to the original theme value. And we now allow the gadgets in the canvas to be styled separately from the gadgets in the sidebar.

Finally, we heard from you that it was often confusing to have your site content appear in one language, while other areas of the site appear in the user’s language. To improve this we now offer a site language configuration in general settings (”Other stuff”) which allows this to be uniform.

Posted by Jens Alfke, Software Engineer

The third day of Cebit was very active.  Webciety had a cloud focus day and we saw a number of customers come back to the stand who had been past earlier in the week.

In the Webciety presentation area we had presentations from the following companies.

• Devnet - Google Apps & Cloud Ready
• Siteflex - CMS
• Saasu.com - Accounting Online
• IPScape - Networks Comms Hub

Following the presentations we had a panel discussion on the Cloud and how each of the panel members saw the cloud evolving. The topics of most interest were the GFC and the NBN. All panel members believed that the National Broadband Network and the Global Financial Crises would accelerate the adoption of Cloud Computing and Software as a Service.

Sky New Business Channel has a great segment on IT that is covered on air and on the web.  The show is hosted by Richard Goncalves it is highly recommended as good wrap on Cebit.  The show covers whats new in the world of IT, new media and gadgets with a focus on how IT can help your busness and lifestyle.

In segment one there are interviews with Jackie Taranto, Google and Telstra  discussion on the NBN, Gadgets and Plasma technology.

In segment two there are interviews with NICTA, Devnet, Modsite, Blackberry and others.

http://www.businesschannel.com.au/it

All participants believed the show was good value and the Webciety in particular was a highlight.  Well done to Jackie Taranto and Gilard on another great show.

The second day of cebit was bigger than the first. Webciety is working really well and the crowds were up. The media centre is right behind Webceiety and this proved fruitful again providing an interview with Ryan Egan who runs Tech Stream on ABC Radio. http://blogs.radioaustralia.net.au/techstream/ The interview was about cloud computing, webciety and how Devnet helps companies move to Cloud based Google Apps.

Webciety focused on Social Networking and there was an excellent talk from Iggy Pintado on social networking and how it is being used by business, government and celebrities.

The Devnet stand spoke to a number current users and potential users of Google Apps. There are a number of Google and Devnet fans out there which is great. We find that Google users are very passionate, similar to Apple users. They love the product and generally very loyal supporters.

ZDNet.com.au hosted the third annual Emerging Technology Innovation Awards at Webciety CeBIT 2009. With a ceremony held on the show floor there lots of great applications and the winner was gStepOne.

gStepOne combines your expertise with your organisation’s business processes to create interactive wizards tailored to your needs.

With gGtepOne, you can map your organisational procedures the way YOU want them done, link them to relevant knowledge in websites, documents, videos, pictures and maps, and Google Apps to create task wizards in an instant.

gStepOne wizards will support your staff and customers by explaining each procedural step, activating the necessary tools at step-level, and tracking a task as it progresses. Users immediately take on the skills and knowledge needed to comply with your business processes.

Another great innovation that works with the Google Apps platform. We are seeing more and more great 3rd party applications being built around Google Apps.

The day ended well with fun to be had at the ICT Celebration Party. Congratulations the the Webciety winners in Mark Kofhal and Geoff McQueen

Looking forward to Day 3.

The fist day of cebit was full of action. The layout is far better this year and it is easier to move around the show.

Webciety is a new concept for Cebit Australia. It features 12 of Australia’s leading Web based companies including :

• Devnet
• Hiive Systems
• Siteflex
• ModSite
• Saasu.com
• Buzz Numbers
• wotnews.com.au
• SportsPassion
• Design Bay
• TJoos
• IPScape
• Travellr

Webciety provides a great area to interact with customers at the show, with a presentation stage and a “twitter wall” - which also caters for online interaction.

Our first interview was with Senator Kate Lundy who is a user of the technology and posted a tweet via her Blackberry. The next interview was with the Sky News Business Channel who wanted me to help their audience understand Cloud Computing and our Cloud Ready Program.

In the last 12 months the market has become more educated around Google Apps, and the concept of using cloud based software is becoming more mainstream.

We had a number of customers come to the stand and say how much they like using Google Apps and suggesting new features to add to the product roadmap.

In the afternoon we presented at the Enterprise conference APPLICATIONS IN THE CLOUD PART 1. This session featured the Cloud Ready presentation from Devnet, Geoff McQueen from Hiive Systems and Craig Sullivan of NetSuite. The session had an engaged audience and a show of hands indicated that appoximately 30% of the audience planned to adopt cloud applications in next 12 months.

During the afternoon there was an internet failure at the exhibition however our Google Apps with Offline kept working.

The day ended well with fun to be had at the Innovation Nation party.

Looking forward to Day 2.