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Broadway Malyan improves accessibility and lowers costs by going Google
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Editor’s note
: Over 3 million businesses have adopted
Google Apps
. Today we’ll hear from Ali Ball, CIO of Broadway Malyan. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our
community map
or test drive life in the cloud with the
Go Google cloud calculator
.
Broadway Malyan
is an award-winning international practice of architects, urbanists and designers with a highly dispersed workforce. Headquartered in the U.K, we have over 500 employees working across 13 offices throughout the UK, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The practice also has project offices in Baku and Edinburgh, and associated offices across Europe. In September 2010 we made the decision to switch to Google Apps with the support of
Cloudreach
, a UK-based
Google Apps Authorized reseller
and Cloud solutions system integrator. They have extensive experience in migrating businesses to Google Apps, and place a particular emphasis on managing business change and application development.
Our main motivation for moving to the cloud was to simplify our IT infrastructure and improve accessibility. After consultation from Cloudreach, we felt that Google Apps would provide exactly what we needed in terms of a greatly simplified service for our global user base and the accessibility that our mobile users require. We had recently upgraded to Microsoft Exchange 2010, however there were some major operational costs involved in running that platform. Despite those recent upgrade costs, there was still a significant financial advantage in moving directly to Google Apps.
From a day-to-day perspective, we were able to introduce our users to a new way of working through the real time collaboration in Google Docs. This method of working helps us significantly when building proposals or customer presentations. Giving users the ability to collaborate on documents and presentations online, and also use the chat and video features has not only increased our efficiency, but it has also saved us money by reducing the amount of travel required.
With Google Apps, the average user’s inbox storage has increased significantly from 1Gb to 25Gb meaning they never have to delete an email again. Plus, with Gmail’s built-in search feature they can find an email or chat message in an instant.
We have also implemented a mixture of Google Groups and Google Sites as a direct replacement for public folders, which will no longer be supported by Microsoft.
We’ve already saved a significant amount of money by moving to Google Apps, but I estimate savings will continue to increase in the future since we’ll no longer have to carry out upgrades to server-based applications, or spend management time on it. For example we no longer have to buy care packs for all of our Microsoft Exchange servers, or worry about purchasing new disks for the storage arrays when we reach capacity. To accomplish what we have with Google Apps using traditional hosted solutions would be almost impossible, and certainly cost-prohibitive. We’ve also made ourselves less dependent on office infrastructure. Everything now runs smoothly, with no intervention from us.
Posted by Ali Ball, Broadway Malyan
Enhance your productivity with more applications for Google Apps
Monday, December 20, 2010
Last month we
launched an improvement
that makes more than 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. Since the launch, we’ve featured posts from product teams across Google to showcase how you can benefit from the new services.
Our colleagues working on
Google Reader
,
Google Alerts
,
Google News
, and
Google Finance
described how their products give you new ways to discover content on the web. The
Blogger
and
YouTube
teams shared how their services can be used to connect with your customers and communicate information about your products and brand. We also featured posts from the
Google Analytics
,
Google Website Optimizer
,
Google Custom Search
, and
Google Translator Toolkit
teams to highligh tools that help your company build and optimize your web property. Posts from
Google AdWords
and
Google Places
showed how you can make it easier for potential customers to discover your business when they are searching online, and a post from
Google Checkout
described how you can let visitors purchase products from your site once they arrive. And if your business isn’t built around an online transaction model, the
Google AdSense
and
DoubleClick for Publishers
teams outlined tools that you can use to efficiently monetize traffic to your website. We also featured posts on
Picasa Web Albums
and
Google SketchUp & 3D Warehouse
that highlighted use cases for sharing and editing photos and 3D images at your organization. Finally, posts from
Google Voice
and
Google Chrome Sync
featured products that leverage the power of the web to allow you to work seamlessly across multiple devices, so you’re not tied to your desk phone or desktop PC to be productive.
This series has highlighted a few ways that you can use these additional Google applications, and we’re confident that you will discover many new and interesting use cases that fit your business. You can explore even more exciting Google services now available with your Google Apps account at
http://www.google.com/apps/more
.
All of these new services can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at
https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com]
(replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). Your domain administrator can grant
different groups of users
access to different sets of applications, so your company can get up and running today with more than 60 productivity-boosting applications matched to those users that will benefit from them most.
Posted by Jeremiah Dillon, Google Apps team
Note: Some products may not be available in all areas.
Improved migration tools for Microsoft® Exchange and Microsoft Outlook®
Monday, December 20, 2010
With more than 3 million businesses using Google Apps, it’s been an exciting year for 100% web-based computing! To help make it easy for our customers transition to Google Apps, over the years we've launched several
tools to migrate
email, contacts and calendar data from Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook and other IMAP servers into Google Apps. This year alone, customers have migrated over 3.5 billion emails to Google Apps, along with over 100 million calendar events and 25 million contacts. But we’re still working to make it even easier: today we’ve added new versions of our data migration tools for Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook, which are available to Google Apps for Business and Education customers.
Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange:
This tool lets administrators migrate data for batches of users from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. The new version features performance improvements and supports several additional IMAP servers, including Novell® GroupWise, Cyrus®, Dovecot® and Courier®. You can migrate email from @gmail.com accounts as well with this tool. We’ve also improved support for PST files and Hosted Exchange with this release. Please explore the
administrator’s guide
and visit the
download page
for more information.
Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook:
This tool allows end-users to migrate email, contacts and calendar data from their Microsoft Outlook profiles or local PST file to Google Apps. The new version features improvements for Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007, and adds support for 2010. It also includes support for 64-bit versions of Microsoft Outlook. Head over to the
download page
to get the updated migration tool.
Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook:
If some of your users want to continue using Microsoft Outlook as their email interface, this tool is for them. This tool now also allows seamless migration of existing data from Microsoft Outlook into Google Apps (via Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook), and keeps Outlook email, contacts and calendar data in sync with Google Apps accounts. Get the latest version from the
download page
.
Google Calendar Connectors for Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes:
Some customers still choose to operate in a dual-deployment environment, and to that end, we’ve also been busy updating Google Calendar connectors that allow bi-directional look-ups of calendar free/busy information for users in the organization still on
Microsoft Exchange
or
Lotus Notes
. The new versions of the Calendar Connectors also now support the new Google Apps account infrastructure that brings
over 60 additional Google applications
to your Google Apps accounts.
Posted by Aditya Kulkarni, Product Manager
A look at the best of the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
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
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
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
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
Manymoon
Insightly
Zoho CRM
Aviary Design Suite
Mavenlink
Outright
MailChimp
RapidTask
Insync
myERP.com
Honorable Mention - #11 for 2011
11.
Grockit
, our first ever app focused on education
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
Now available with Google Apps: Google Chrome Sync
Friday, December 17, 2010
Editor’s note:
We recently
launched an improvement
that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users.
This series
showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.
Welcome to Google Chrome Sync
These days, we spend more and more time working in a web browser, in fact, the number of hours the average American spends online has grown by over 120% in the last 5 years.* Much of the information we consume is delivered through the web, and tools like Google Apps make it easier than ever for workers to collaborate and create using nothing but the web. This shift of data and applications to the cloud makes us less dependent on the specific hardware device that we use to get our work done.
You may use a desktop or laptop PC or Linux box at your desk, then a netbook or maybe even a
pilot program Chrome OS notebook
when you’re on the go, and then perhaps work from a personal computer when you need to send a quick email from home. Traditionally, your experience has been different on each of these devices depending on how the browser is configured. Now, recently added integration with Google Apps lets you unify your browsing experience across the different devices you use to get your work done, just like millions of Chrome users already do with
Google Chrome Sync
.
Google Chrome
is a modern web browser that was built with today’s web in mind, with a focus on speed, security, and simplicity, and it’s used by more than 120 million people worldwide. One of the features of Chrome that makes it so simple and easy to use is the ability to synchronize your bookmarks, extensions, apps, theme and browser preferences with a Google account, so they are always available in the browser, no matter where you are signed in. Google Apps users now have access to this functionality, allowing you to make these components of your browsing experience available across any device you use to access the Chrome browser.
With Chrome Sync, many of the inefficiencies that result when you switch from one device to another are eliminated. When you bookmark a news article relevant to your business on your desktop PC as you're running out the door to catch a flight, that bookmark will be there when you connect to WiFi as you’re waiting at the airport. The
Google Mail Checker
extension you discovered last week was synced to your laptop so you notice the email that comes in at the last minute before you close your laptop for take-off. And when the passenger in the seat next to you spills coffee on your keyboard in the middle of the flight, you’re secure in the knowledge that Chrome on your new laptop will have all of the personalization you added on your old one.
Now that Google Chrome is
ready for business
, Chrome and Chrome Sync combined with Google Apps make a powerful combination for workers leveraging the power of the cloud to be productive no matter where they are and what device they are using.
Learn more and get started
Google Chrome Sync
can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at
https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com]
(replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at
http://www.google.com/apps/more
.
You can find more information about using Chrome in your organization on our
Chrome for Business
webpage or take a look at a
product overview
.
Posted by Nick Carter, Software Engineer, Google Chrome
Note: Google Chrome Sync may not be available in all areas.
* Forreseter Research, 2010
Gaining Altitude: Perspectives on Productivity in the Cloud
Friday, December 17, 2010
Editor’s note:
Continuing our Gaining Altitude series, we’ve invited guest blogger Michael Bungay Stanier, the author of
Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork and Start the Work that Matters.
Do you ever feel that your work life consists mostly of meetings and email, while the all real, important work needs to be squeezed into the gaps? In an age of information overload, people often talk about the importance of multi-tasking. This can be an effective way to survive the constant onslaught of information, but you have to wonder: does multi-tasking take away from our ability to do great work? How can we actually come up with ideas and think them through if we don’t have dedicated time to focus? Perhaps we need to change the way we operate so we can we not just get things done, but instead do great work?
In Do More Great Work I suggest you can divide everything you do into three simple but powerful categories:
Bad Work:
Often called bureaucracy - excess rules, excessive processes, pointless meetings. Sadly, it often comes standard as part of your job.
Good Work:
Productive, efficient and focused, this is the bulk of what you do. It’s also at the heart of how your organization succeeds - which means that “good work” is essential. The challenge is there's almost always more Good Work to do than there is time in the day - it sometimes seems that your time is spent just trying not to get further behind.
Great Work:
The work that makes a difference and that has meaning. It’s what you were hoping for when you signed up for the job. It’s both exciting and engaging - and a little scary and uncertain.
What you're looking for is a better work diet, one that has you making an impact and doing work with more meaning. What you want is more Great Work - and less of the other stuff.
Simple recipes for success
A few simple techniques and some good tools - like Google Apps - will help you make sure you're doing more great work.
1.
Define your Great Work Project
Before kicking off 2011, take the time to think about the one or two Great Work projects you want to work on. Define where you you want to truly invest your time and effort, your hard work and brain power. Establish a goal that will stretch and challenge you. Set your Great Work Project for the year: how it starts, who else needs to be involved, what success looks like, when it will be completed. Use your Great Work Project as the foundation of a memorable, challenging and interesting year.
2.
Keep what matters top of mind
Use Calendar and Gmail to prioritize your day. Begin the day by identifying your One Plus Two. First, determine one action that must happen to move your Great Work forward. Then add another two actions that, if you get to them, will be an added bonus. This gives you both focus and flexibility.
Add these three actions as an all-day event at the top of your Google Calendar. That way they’re front-and-center every time you look at your calendar, and serve to remind you to focus on what matters.
If you haven’t gotten to those important actions by mid-day, use labels in Gmail to label any incoming email related to your One Plus Two activities. Then, as the day unfolds and when information is coming at you from all directions, you’ll be able to identify the high priority emails that need your attention.
3.
Good work takes collaboration
There are talented people on your team, in your business division and your company. Great Work is often the product of many people sharing ideas and working together. Google Apps makes this easy. Instead of creating a document and working alone, start a Google document and share it with members of your team. With real-time collaboration you can edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations simultaneously, or leave comments and suggestions in the margins.
We all know how hard it can be sometimes to find a time when everyone can meet in person. Rather than setting up a meeting or clogging up your co-workers inboxes with another email, try using Google Talk or video chat to quickly ask a question.
If you prioritize, set aside the time and collaborate with talented peers, instead of trying to do everything, you may just find that you do Great Work.
Posted by Michael Bungay Stanier, author of Do More Great Work
We Asked. You Told Us Your Wishes for 2011.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Editor's note
: For all the small businesses out there including the millions that use our
Google Enterprise products
, we recently asked a question – if you had one wish for your small business in 2011, what would it be? Today we're excited to share some of the responses in this
cross-post from the Google Small Business Blog
.
Two weeks ago, the Small Business Marketing team asked about your aspirations for the coming year. You told us the
biggest wish for your business
, and the wish for
expanding your business’ online presence
. Today, we’d like to share what we heard.
We combined your responses from our
blog
,
Facebook
and
Twitter
and organized them into three main themes and then sub-themes. Of course, not all wishes fell neatly into these themes, so we did create a Miscellaneous category.
Before the drum roll, thanks to everyone that took time to share and participate. Some wishes were big and audacious and others more practical, but all with an underlying tone of passion for what you do and a focus on delighting your customers. On with the results…
Theme 1: Move my business online
Not surprisingly, you’re passionate about the business products you’re using and made very specific feature requests. Rest assured if they were Google product related, we’ve shared your wishes with our product teams. Additionally, you said you want more online resources to help your business grow. Your comments acknowledged that referrals are now happening online through social media channels and, as such, you want to understand how to use these online tools. You also want more out of your websites. Ultimately, you said you want to do more online to run your business more efficiently and spend more time concentrating on your customers.
Click for larger image.
Theme 2: Grow my busines
s
We heard that you want to continue to grow your business with increased profits, more customers, or more people. Lots of wishes for more marketing tools to increase your business’ visibility – the range included the entire marketing mix. You want simple tools made specifically for you. There were wishes for funds to buy equipment, spend more on advertising, build e-commerce into your offering, and lease real estate – to name a few.
Click for larger image.
Theme 3: Love my business
Many resounding wishes to continue fueling your passion because you love what you do. You’d love to learn more – from social media, AdWords and Places to creating marketing plans. You prefer support face-to-face with people and training at a relatively low cost. Many of you want more opportunities to network and support your fellow business owners. Whether it’s help getting the most out of applications and tools, or navigating a healthcare plan, you’d like some expertise to assist.
Click for larger image.
We thank you again for telling us your wishes for the coming year. Stay tuned as we will use these wishes to build upon our plans to help small businesses succeed in 2011.
Posted by Leslie Hernandez, Product Marketing Manager, Google Small Business Team
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