Devnet Cloud View & Web Industry News

Google has added Groups to its enterprise Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers.

As one of the Google’s “most widely used applications,” the addition of Google Groups allows users to more effectively collaborate with others within the workplace.

According to Google, companies will be able to use Groups “as mailing lists, but they can also share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with groups, instead of many individual recipients.” The app will allow those users to receive messages in their in-box or in the Groups forum view. Group managers will be able to send messages on behalf of the entire group. All discussions, files, and other content is archived and searchable, Google said.

IT administrators will need to activate Google Groups from Google Apps’ administrative control panel. Once complete, users will be able to manage their own groups without requiring IT-administrator approval. That said, administrators can still set group policies and manage group settings.

Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers can try out Google Groups now.

This is great news for current and future Google Apps customers.

Reference
Official Google Blog - Tuesday, October 20, 2009 at 8:33 AM
Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search

When we launched Google Search Appliance 6.0 in June we introduced a brand new architecture, (GSA)n. The GSA now lets organizations search over a billion documents, and we are constantly looking to develop on (GSA)n even further. In that vein, our engineers have been working feverishly to build more capabilities and ease of use into the appliance. Today we’re announcing more than 10 new features available on the GSA from Google Enterprise, including one that automatically improves results over time, the Self-Learning Scorer. Take a look here:

Self-Learning Scorer analyzes employee clicks and behavior to automatically fine-tune and improve its built-in relevance. For instance, if most users click on the fourth result for a given query, the GSA recognizes that and automatically boosts its placement – without any intervention from an administrator. Along with our existing and intuitive biasing features and Ranking Framework, this provides ease of relevance tuning.

Most enterprise search engines do three things: crawl, index and serve. With the new Self-learning Scorer, we’re adding a new step to the mix: analysis. As the GSA continually serves up results, it’s also learning to dynamically improve – automatically. This gives the GSA new self-improving intelligence, and adds a new step to the enterprise search cycle.

With this release, we’re adding a new login feature, which provides a simple approach to securely mapping user credentials to the various back-end systems within an organization. Many larger organizations may have not one, but several ’single sign-on’ systems, so this new universal login feature minimizes the number of logins for the user when performing an internal search across all company systems.

Today we’re also expanding connectivity to a myriad of systems, including content management systems, file shares and databases. We are newly providing native integration for SharePoint out of the box, making indexing of SharePoint content 10x faster. Second, we are providing connectivity to Lotus Notes through Enterprise Labs. Third, we are expanding our support for file shares and databases, so organizations can connect to any file share or database in any format. The new GSA is built to be easier for users and admins – these connectors will make everyone in the office’s life easer. We’re also expanding the connectors program in our Enterprise Labs, live here.

These are just a couple of the product updates – you can learn about all the new features in this video too. Getting IT admins away from the tuning knobs and back to their real jobs will be a major benefit to our customers. More importantly, it will make employees across the company more productive. When internal search results improve, employees actually search more and find more information with which to do their work. You can read more about this on our blogpost, from a major US pharmaceutical company tracking the number of employee searches over time. After deploying the GSA, employees actually used their internal network significantly more – simply because it worked better.

Enterprise search isn’t just about ECMs, connectors and security – it’s about utilization. More relevant search results mean more employees utilizing the tools of their trade. Today’s GSA update brings the search appliance into the realm of constant innovation – and self-improving intelligence. You can learn more about how the GSA adds the analytical step to the enterprise search cycle at GSA at google.com/gsa.

Google Apps is transforming business and over the last 2 years Devnet has been the leader in the region helping customers with the transition to Cloud Computing with Google here is an update on the local campaign

Each day, thousands of companies around the world choose to “go Google” — that is, switch to Google Apps. More than two million businesses and 20 million users in over 100 countries and more than 40 languages have adopted Apps for their workplace, and we’re happy to welcome companies around the world such as Konica Minolta, Rentokil Initial and TOTO that have just decided to go Google. These companies no longer have to deal with the hassles of managing email servers or rolling out software updates, and their employees now enjoy the convenience of shared documents and calendars, Gmail and more.

In Australia and New Zealand, organisations small and large, from technology companies like Altium and successful SMEs like De Bortoli wines, to state managed enterprises like New Zealand Postal Services Group have made the switch… and well over 1.5 million students in schools across Australia and New Zealand have already ‘gone’.

Today, we’re excited to support this global momentum with the expansion of the “Gone Google” initiative to additional countries including the U.K., France, Canada, Japan, Australia and Singapore. We hope our messages — in train stations such as Paddington, La Défense and Shinagawa, at airports Toronto, Dallas and beyond, and in certain spots around Sydney — help companies, schools and other organisations learn all about the benefits of going Google with our enterprise products. Here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect around the world:

So share you experiences. Talk to us. Ask the question ?

Are you ready to Go Google ? If So call Devnet 1300 780 955 sales@devnet.com.au Let get into the cloud together !

When they wanted to ‘corner’ the motoring market the NRMA chose Devnet. Using Devnet developed aggregation technology; the NRMA Trip Planner became the most visited area of the NRMA website within its first three months of operation.

Integrating Google’s mapping engine with tourism information and hotel / motel booking facilities the NRMA Trip Planner is a highly sophisticated online initiative. The application can alert you to convenient petrol stations and eateries, help you find the local car rental office or present offers to members.

A key element of the application is the ability for the NRMA to define complex business rules that tie together offers and the information it presents to map users.

Reference - Australian IT Online
Mahesh Sharma | September 22, 2009

NRMA Motoring and Services is developing an online tourism platform as it seeks to extract value from its web properties.

The NRMA Trip Planner is based on the Google Maps engine and the maps are overlaid with tourism information from the national motoring club tourism body AAA Tourism.

It is the first version of the platform, which replaced a four-year-old system. It was built by integrator Devnet over the past three months and cost more than $100,000.

The platform will use aggregation technology developed by Devnet and eventually provide geographically based information about tourism locations and local businesses.

It can be used to plan holidays nationally and book accommodation in real time.

NRMA digital head Mick Baber said the Trip Planner was a core part of the organisation’s digital strategy to drive revenues from tourism-based activities.

He said the mynrma.com.au site attracted 350,000 unique visitors, and the platform would help double that figure over the next 12 to 18 months.

“It’s only about three months since we’ve been doing Trip Planner in its current form, and the users are pulling in about

1.5 million” map impressions,” Mr Baber said.

“Trip Planner is the most-visited page on the site, so we’ll use it as the vehicle to drive most, if not all, of the growth to the mynrma site. It’s going to be one of our major platforms in terms of driving traffic to the website and driving transactional values to our travel businesses and our associated motoring businesses.”

Mr Baber differentiated the trip planner from Google Maps and other tourism sites, which simply showed how to get from one destination to another.

“Around the Asia-Pacific region, no one is really trying to corner the motoring market as such,” Mr Baber said.

“There’s lots of point A to point B but no one is pulling it together in a cohesive manner and I think that’s our goal — to really be able to drive tourism off the beaten track.

“That’s the beauty of what we’ve done. We have a connection with motorists in NSW and in other states through other clubs.”

He said more functions would be added to the platform, including a new booking engine.

Mail Delegation in Gmail
Released on 8/04/2009, Google Apps Official Update from the Google Apps team.

You can now allow others (i.e. administrative assistants) in your domain access to your email.
Now included in the Premier Edition, Languages included: US English

How to access what’s new:
Administrators must first enable mail delegation by checking the Mail Delegation checkbox under ‘Email Settings’ in the administrator control panel.

To enter delegates, users can select the ‘Accounts’ tab under ‘Settings’ and click ‘Add another account’ to enter their delegate’s email address.

More Information

Grant access to your account

You can delegate access to your Gmail account to someone else in your organisation so they can read, send, and delete messages on your behalf. For example, you can delegate e-mail rights to an admin, or you can set up a small group mailbox. You won’t be able to give anyone permission to change your account password or settings, or chat on your behalf. Also, you can specify up to 10 users. Here’s how:

1. Click the Settings link, and select the Accounts tab.
2. Under ‘Grant access to your account,’ click the Add another account link.
3. Enter the email address of the person you’d like to access your account and click Next Step.
4. You’ll see a confirmation message. Click Grant Access if you’re sure.

Any messages someone else sends from your account will have your name listed in addition to the other person’s name, so they’ll show the sender as: Your Name (sent by Delegate).

If someone has granted access to their account to you, you can access it by clicking the down-arrow next to your email address in the upper-left corner. Select your delegate’s email address from the drop-down menu

Reference Official Google Blog
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Enterprise

What do Fairchild Semiconductor, Hamilton Beach, JohnsonDiversey and Valeo have in common? Together they migrated nearly 50,000 Lotus Notes users to Google Apps.

Today we’re making it easier for Lotus Notes users to switch to Google Apps. We’re releasing a new tool, Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes, that migrates mail, calendar and contacts quickly and easily. The tool is a native Notes application and key features include:

• Easy deployment Centrally administered server side migration process. No user intervention needed
• No downtime Users can continue to use Notes even during the migration process. After they’re migrated, Gmail will open Notes links in Lotus Notes
• Global efficiency Migrate multiple offices simultaneously or separately. Assign administration controls at the organization and the office level as needed
• Trackable reports Centralized event logging to manage & monitor migration across any number of Domino servers and sites

See it in action in this short video:

These features and more make Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes a simple and complete way to quickly switch your users to Google Apps. JohnsonDiversey used the tool in its recent migration of 10,000 employees, and the video below captures CIO Brent Hoag’s satisfaction with the deployment process.

Google partner CapGemini relied on the tool to migrate Valeo, a 30,000-employee automotive supplier. As CapGemini IT Project Lead Philippe Bonnemains says, “We used it for Valeo and for several other enterprise customers. Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes is clearly a great solution for Notes-based companies that want to quickly and efficiently provide users with continuity of mail archives, contacts and calendars, while moving to Google Apps.”

If you’d like help with the migration process, or with overall project planning, deployment and training, several Google partners are ready to provide products and services to address your specific needs. If you’re thinking about migrating your Domino applications to the cloud, this migration whitepaper will help guide your analysis.

If you’re considering switching your users from Lotus Notes to Google Apps, talk to our sales team or sign up for a trial now. Or, if you’re already a Google Apps Premier or Education Edition customer and want to migrate today, you can can learn more or download the migration tool here.

Reference - Official Google Blog
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Google Apps has always been a compelling offering for small and medium sized companies, and they’ve accounted for much of our growth to 1.75 million businesses. Large enterprises can also get great results with Apps, as Fairchild Semiconductor and the dozens of other big companies that have Gone Google have discovered. Still, we appreciate that there have been some boulders along the road to adoption for the largest businesses in the world.

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve focused on making it as easy as possible for those large enterprises to switch to Google, and offline access, BlackBerry and Microsoft Outlook support, and enterprise contact management were the dynamite that cleared the road to Apps.

Today we’re paving the road. We’re taking the beta label off of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk to remove any doubt that Apps is a mature product suite.

We’re also launching a tool that will be particularly useful to administrative support staff to screen and send email on behalf of others – a feature called email delegation. And to help customers comply with regulations that may exist specific to their industry, we’re adding email retention so that IT administrators can set up policies to determine when email will be purged. Both retention and delegation are in testing with customers, and will start rolling out to all Premier edition domains over the next weeks.

Finally, we’re continuing to implement additional procedures to ensure that our business customers enjoy even greater reliability: live replication of data to other locations for near-instant disaster recovery, and special handling of business users’ data in our data center operations.

While we believe these features will be most useful to big companies, we hope they’ll also help today’s small business grow into tomorrow’s global enterprise. To complement these new features, enterprise IT managers can access tools for switching to Google Apps in our Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes resource centers.

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