Adoption of Google Apps is accelerating around the world with over 3 million businesses that have gone Google. Google Apps Authorized Resellers play a critical role in helping businesses get started. As our partner community has more than doubled in the last year to over 2,500 partners in over 70 countries, partners have been seeking opportunities to demonstrate their expertise and competence to a growing customer base.
We are therefore happy to announce the Google Apps Certification Program, which recognizes IT professionals for demonstrated abilities to sell, deploy, develop, and support Google Apps. Available today globally, is the first of these certifications, the Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialist, which certifies IT professionals who have demonstrated the fundamental knowledge and skills required to migrate to, configure, and deploy Google Apps.
“As we continue to build out our global Google Apps practice, it is essential for us to differentiate ourselves and to gain recognition for the great depth of Apps expertise we have developed with so many customers. The Google Apps Certification Program will help generate new client interest by highlighting our commitment to offering the highest-value consulting services to the market," explains Jon Hallett, CEO of Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller.
Like Google Apps, this certification is 100% web – any IT professional with a browser and an Internet connection can register to take the online proctored exam. It is available in English now, and will soon be available in additional languages. To learn more, go to certification.googleapps.com.
Posted by Stephen Cho, Director, Google Apps Channels
Showing posts with label partner. Show all posts
Showing posts with label partner. Show all posts
App Tuesday brings new integrated web apps for your domain
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:
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
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
App Tuesday: Celebrate Google Apps Marketplace’s half birthday with 12 new apps
Six months ago, the Google Apps Marketplace was born, and we’re excited to celebrate its growth in this short time. Today, more than 4 million Google Apps users have Marketplace apps installed on their domain. In addition, there are now more than 200 integrated apps available to Google Apps users, covering customer relationship management, accounting, finance, project management, and more. Almost every week, third-party applications are joining the Apps Marketplace to address an expanding range of business needs.
This App Tuesday, we’re celebrating our half birthday by launching 12 new apps to the Marketplace. If you are an Apps domain admin, you can extend your Google Apps functionality with just a few easy clicks. All of these installable apps offer single sign-on, so your users can start using them conveniently right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. In addition, many applications have implemented deeper integrations with Google Apps, such as Calendar sync or Gmail contextual gadgets, which present relevant information from third-party apps in-line within a Gmail message. Try out these apps and join the other 4 million Apps Marketplace users:
Check out our Apps Marketplace to explore one of these new apps or the other over 200 existing apps. If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestions for additional apps.
Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
This App Tuesday, we’re celebrating our half birthday by launching 12 new apps to the Marketplace. If you are an Apps domain admin, you can extend your Google Apps functionality with just a few easy clicks. All of these installable apps offer single sign-on, so your users can start using them conveniently right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. In addition, many applications have implemented deeper integrations with Google Apps, such as Calendar sync or Gmail contextual gadgets, which present relevant information from third-party apps in-line within a Gmail message. Try out these apps and join the other 4 million Apps Marketplace users:
- Grockit - Social Learning Platform for Students
A social platform for learning that provides students with collaborative, real-time study rooms and relevant coursework to achieve various educational goals.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar sync, Google Docs - Elance - Talent Acquisition and Management
An employment platform that offers talent-hungry companies instant access to qualified online workers and the tools to hire, evaluate, and compensate them.
Integrations: Single sign-on - ERPLY - Enterprise Resource Planning
An ERP software that helps you easily manage your points of sale (POS), inventory, relationships and billing by providing real time information.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar - Insync - Document Management
A dropbox for Google Apps that bi-directionally syncs Google Docs to Finder and Explorer, allowing a user to work seamlessly across a desktop and browser.
Intergrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs sync, Google Contacts - Rainmaker - Social CRM
A tool to supercharge your contacts by searching a user’s social networks to auto-populate critical information and merging it right into Google Contacts.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Contact Sync - Pipeline Deals - Customer Management
A CRM tool to help manage your sales pipeline by overseeing deal flow, tracking leads, and running reports. Current PipelineDeals users manage a combined sales pipeline of $60 billion.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar Sync, Google Contacts Sync - Idea2 - Customer Management
A CRM tool that organizes data according to employees’ usage patterns and makes critical data available to them in the most relevant locations.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Gmail, Google Calendar - Kashoo - Accounting and Finance
Accounting software that creates and sends invoices, manages expenses, reconciles bank statements, tracks cash flow, and generates financial reports.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail - SimplifyThis - Productivity
A tool to help employees book appointments, manage billing, and track clients through a fluid interface with Google Apps.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Calendar - OffiServ - Productivity
An application that supports administrative processes by automating various functions, such as purchase order approval, vacation management, and resource distribution.
Integrations: Single sign-on - Mindquilt - Productivity
An internal question and answer platform for companies to help streamline the process of employee inquiries and knowledge distribution.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Gmail, Google Talk - RecMan - Security and Compliance
A tool that provides transparent records management and compliance features, centralized document access control, and retention, legal holds and disposition policy management.
Integrations: Single sign-on, Google Docs, Gmail
Check out our Apps Marketplace to explore one of these new apps or the other over 200 existing apps. If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestions for additional apps.
Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
You Can Be Lost in Data Without A Map
Editor's note: From time to time, Google likes to highlight partners and customers who have developed interesting and unique applications using our products. Peter Rossiter is a founder and CEO of Integeo, a company whose product leverages Google Maps API Premier. With over thirty years experience in the IT industry, Peter has led many innovative commercial ventures and research projects.
Location-based services have quickly become pervasive in our everyday lives and maps are now widely used as a convenient and useful visual tool to present data in ways that people can easily relate to.
Business Intelligence (BI) covers a collection of techniques and tools that support an organization’s decision making process. The advent of Google Maps familiarized people with the concept of data points on a map and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.
But a tool is only useful if it’s usable. You need to focus on solving your business problems not technology. Avoiding the need for specialist programming resources is a good start followed by ensuring the BI skills of a dashboard or report designer are sufficient even if the underlying spatial analysis is quite complex.
Google Maps API Premier is a solid platform for presenting a rich background context of street and satellite data for analysis of business data. The Google API also enables us to dynamically geocode address data and users can zoom to particular areas of interest using our enhanced Google Search facility.
There is a lot more to visualizing data on maps than just plotting points and icons. Integeo’s Map Intelligence comes out of the box with an extensible, easy to use palette of spatial analytical functions. These enable clear and immediate perception of data relationships, groupings, classifications, patterns, trends and variations that stand out when mapped. A summary of the features of Map Intelligence can be found on our website.
At the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. The dynamic map layers are generated by Map Intelligence from the “facts and dimensions” in the dashboard or spreadsheet, offering the choice to either use KML (KMZ including images, legend, etc.) or a network link that will update from the Map Intelligence server whenever the user changes their Google Earth view. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.
Please visit www.integeo.com if you would like to learn more about Integeo and see why Map Intelligence is the only BI product to rank top 10 among purpose built GIS solutions (Ovum Research 2009). We offer integrated mapping analytics incorporating Google Maps API Premier as an “off the shelf” solution for users of all the major BI platforms - currently these include (but are not restricted to) BI products from Cognos (IBM), Business Objects (SAP), Oracle, MicroStrategy, QlikView, Actuate, BIRT, Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting Services.
Posted By Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Team
Location-based services have quickly become pervasive in our everyday lives and maps are now widely used as a convenient and useful visual tool to present data in ways that people can easily relate to.
Business Intelligence (BI) covers a collection of techniques and tools that support an organization’s decision making process. The advent of Google Maps familiarized people with the concept of data points on a map and progressively more and more BI customers are expecting fully integrated maps and spatial analytics with their tools of choice. Seeing data in the context of its location often exposes information previously hidden in the raw data.
But a tool is only useful if it’s usable. You need to focus on solving your business problems not technology. Avoiding the need for specialist programming resources is a good start followed by ensuring the BI skills of a dashboard or report designer are sufficient even if the underlying spatial analysis is quite complex.
Google Maps API Premier is a solid platform for presenting a rich background context of street and satellite data for analysis of business data. The Google API also enables us to dynamically geocode address data and users can zoom to particular areas of interest using our enhanced Google Search facility.
There is a lot more to visualizing data on maps than just plotting points and icons. Integeo’s Map Intelligence comes out of the box with an extensible, easy to use palette of spatial analytical functions. These enable clear and immediate perception of data relationships, groupings, classifications, patterns, trends and variations that stand out when mapped. A summary of the features of Map Intelligence can be found on our website.
At the click of a button, the analytics currently being viewed by a user can be interactively viewed on Google Earth. The dynamic map layers are generated by Map Intelligence from the “facts and dimensions” in the dashboard or spreadsheet, offering the choice to either use KML (KMZ including images, legend, etc.) or a network link that will update from the Map Intelligence server whenever the user changes their Google Earth view. All the information and data relationship layers are dynamically available so that as filters are applied in the BI environment they are automatically applied to the view in Google Earth.
Please visit www.integeo.com if you would like to learn more about Integeo and see why Map Intelligence is the only BI product to rank top 10 among purpose built GIS solutions (Ovum Research 2009). We offer integrated mapping analytics incorporating Google Maps API Premier as an “off the shelf” solution for users of all the major BI platforms - currently these include (but are not restricted to) BI products from Cognos (IBM), Business Objects (SAP), Oracle, MicroStrategy, QlikView, Actuate, BIRT, Microsoft Excel and SQL Reporting Services.
Posted By Natasha Wyatt, Google Earth and Maps Team
short and sweet with Moags and Smeet!
Following my post last week about 'your crafty partner' I received the following from Laura, from Moags and Smeet about her partner Dan:
My partner (Dan) is the "Smeet" in Moags and Smeet. He has a few crafty tendencies and creates excellent carvings, but I believe that the urge to create and the irresistible allure of "the stash" baffles him most of the time. Despite not comprehending my craft-obsession, he is exceptionally supportive. Whether its building storage, setting up markets, or (horror of horrors) cruising bead and gem shows, when I need him, he is there for me. His business sense is also a great boost to my efforts.
Bronze and Black Lava necklace by moagsandsmeet on etsy
Sweet huh? I thought so :) I have a couple more stories to share, so will post them in the coming weeks.
Posted by Angelene
connect with me on facebook!
Sweet huh? I thought so :) I have a couple more stories to share, so will post them in the coming weeks.
Posted by Angelene
connect with me on facebook!
App Tuesday: nine new apps announced for the Apps Marketplace to help your business grow
As your business grows, so does the complexity of managing projects, securing data, tracking resource usage, and communicating with coworkers. Today, we are excited to announce nine new installable apps in the Google Apps Marketplace that can help ensure that your business growth doesn't outpace your technological capabilities. So instead of patching servers and updating desktop-based software today, check out some of our more than 150 installable web apps available to Google Apps users. All of these installable apps offer single sign-on functionality so your users can start using them conveniently right from the universal navigation bar in Google Apps. Some have additional integrations with Gmail, Calendar, Docs and other apps, which makes these Marketplace apps more powerful than comparable stand-alone offerings.
Google Apps Premier, Education and Standard Edition administrators can install Marketplace applications in a few simple steps -- watch this video to see how it works.
Complex projects and tasks have a potential to grow out of control and lose focus, so we’ve included a series of project, communication, time, and task-specific management apps in this App Tuesday launch.
We encourage you to explore some of these great new apps in the Marketplace. Join us next Wednesday when we hold a live webinar to discuss with a few of the app creators on maximizing your productivity with these apps.
Webinar: Increase productivity with new Google Apps Marketplace Apps
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here
Google Apps Premier, Education and Standard Edition administrators can install Marketplace applications in a few simple steps -- watch this video to see how it works.
Complex projects and tasks have a potential to grow out of control and lose focus, so we’ve included a series of project, communication, time, and task-specific management apps in this App Tuesday launch.
- DeskAway is a simple, yet powerful web-based project collaboration tool that streamlines the way you and your team work by giving you an accurate view of project progress and tackling some common problems that occur when multiple people are collaborating.
- Acunote is an online project management software. It helps you manage projects, products and requirements, track progress, realistically predict completion dates and analyze company productivity.
- RescueTime is an automatic time and attention tracker that helps teams work smarter. It is widely used by a range of companies and now has user and team sync for Google Apps accounts, plus a real time stats gadget in Gmail.
- ToBeeDo is an online task management service. The familiar, fast and intuitive interface helps you to organize your workflow and it doesn’t require any setup.
- Ketera is a network that simultaneously offers savings for business buyers and online sales opportunities for B2B suppliers to help members discover new trading partners and market insights, aiding in billions of dollars in transactions every year.
- FormLizard is for when you need paperwork completed properly. You and your customers can complete forms, contracts, and more online, giving you complete, accurate, legible, and professional paperwork every time.
- LumoFlow provides social collaboration workspaces for enterprises to manage projects, share documents and keep teams in sync. It also helps connect global business operations and manage joint projects with partners and customers.
- MangoSpring Collaboration Suite seamlessly integrates all the MangoApps to provide next generation collaboration experience. Each MangoApp solves an important part of the business workflow.
- Backupify provides secure, scalable, and automatic backup for your Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Contacts, and Sites. You can securely access and manage archives of backups from any web browser.
We encourage you to explore some of these great new apps in the Marketplace. Join us next Wednesday when we hold a live webinar to discuss with a few of the app creators on maximizing your productivity with these apps.
Webinar: Increase productivity with new Google Apps Marketplace Apps
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT
Register here
If you've #gonegoogle and tried the #appsmarketplace, let other users know what you recommend via Twitter or submit your suggestion for additional apps.
Bergelectric on evaluating Microsoft BPOS-S and choosing Google Apps
Editor’s Note: We invited Kyle Swafford, Director of IT Services for Bergelectric, to share the story of Bergelectric’s evaluation of Google Apps and Microsoft BPOS-S and their subsequent migration from Novell Groupwise to Google Apps using Google Apps Authorized Reseller SADA Systems, Inc.
Since our founding in 1946, Bergelectric Corporation has provided electrical contracting on thousands of construction projects for clients such as Phoenix International Raceway, the FBI, the University of Southern California, and Ritz Carlton Hotels. Bergelectric has more than 1,300 field employees and over 400 office professionals coast to coast.
Our company had been a Novell Groupwise shop for many years, and IT staff had begun to feel increasing frustration with the platform due to its stagnancy. They were forced to dedicate substantial time and resources to maintaining servers across many sites nationwide. And we had to enforce email storage quotas of 100MB, though this amount of storage was often inadequate for users. Collaboration possibilities were practically nonexistent. In short, this aging environment wasn’t keeping pace with Bergelectric and this created a significant challenge for the organization.
The choice to move to a hosted e-mail service was discussed passionately at every level of the company and marked a significant departure from the costly, and dated, infrastructure constraints of our on-premise system. After we made the decision to move to a hosted provider, we spent a considerable amount of time comparing offerings, including Microsoft BPOS-S and Google Apps. Initially we found Microsoft BPOS-S an attractive option, but as we delved deeper into the contract and piloted a production environment deployment we found the BPOS-S solution came up short - even with the significant concessions Microsoft made in order to be competitive with Google. For example, we were put off by the fact that we would have to go through a third party company for email archiving and retention. We soon came to the realization that we would have to invest significant additional time and money into BPOS in order to meet our initial expectations of migrating to the cloud.
We decided to revisit Google Apps. For email archiving and retention, Google Message Discovery was easier to use, significantly cheaper, better integrated into the entire email migration process, and offered more features than the third party options available with BPOS. Once more, through the course of our lengthy evaluation, Google continued to update Apps’ functionality to incorporate virtually all of the features that we had valued in Microsoft’s offering. After updates such as Google Calendar Sync, which syncs events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar, and the ability to delegate calendar management to an administrative assistant, we had reached the tipping point where users adamant about using Outlook became confident in the capabilities of the Google Apps suite.
Following a rapid response by a combined team from Google and Google Apps Authorized Reseller, SADA Systems, Inc., Bergelectric quickly made plans to “Go Google.” Key components of the deployment included user synchronization between Active Directory and Google Apps, single sign-on to Apps using Active Directory credentials, migration of all data from Groupwise to Google (including historical email, contacts and calendar items), Google Apps integration with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, implementation of the Google Message Discovery product for mail archiving and discovery, and a complete training and change management effort to ensure the smoothest possible transition and high user adoption rates.
Our migration off the Groupwise platform has allowed the IT staff to focus its resources on more strategic, business-driven initiatives in the online space. The IT team has regained precious time previously spent patching and keeping the e-mail servers running and are now able to focus on things like business continuity and compliance. Employees have a generous 25 GB of e-mail storage and the ability access e-mail and collaboration tools from our many offices and remote project sites, whether it’s via a desktop, laptop or mobile device.
We were impressed by Google’s commitment to making it easy and simple for long-term on-premise users to migrate to the cloud. And Google’s data liberation policy gave us peace of mind that, if we ever wanted to move platforms, we’d be able to readily do so. Once more, their commitment to open standards and APIs allow us to access our own data and customize our implementation in ways that we never thought possible. As our business needs evolve, we can find additional apps in the Google Apps Marketplace or we can easily build our own on Google App Engine.
Overall, our employees have been extremely happy with the move to Google Apps. IT is relieved to finally have true redundancy, painless scalability and better control, all while no longer needing to maintain remote servers and tape backups. Management is pleased with the cost savings and vastly improved service offerings.
Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise
Since our founding in 1946, Bergelectric Corporation has provided electrical contracting on thousands of construction projects for clients such as Phoenix International Raceway, the FBI, the University of Southern California, and Ritz Carlton Hotels. Bergelectric has more than 1,300 field employees and over 400 office professionals coast to coast.
Our company had been a Novell Groupwise shop for many years, and IT staff had begun to feel increasing frustration with the platform due to its stagnancy. They were forced to dedicate substantial time and resources to maintaining servers across many sites nationwide. And we had to enforce email storage quotas of 100MB, though this amount of storage was often inadequate for users. Collaboration possibilities were practically nonexistent. In short, this aging environment wasn’t keeping pace with Bergelectric and this created a significant challenge for the organization.
The choice to move to a hosted e-mail service was discussed passionately at every level of the company and marked a significant departure from the costly, and dated, infrastructure constraints of our on-premise system. After we made the decision to move to a hosted provider, we spent a considerable amount of time comparing offerings, including Microsoft BPOS-S and Google Apps. Initially we found Microsoft BPOS-S an attractive option, but as we delved deeper into the contract and piloted a production environment deployment we found the BPOS-S solution came up short - even with the significant concessions Microsoft made in order to be competitive with Google. For example, we were put off by the fact that we would have to go through a third party company for email archiving and retention. We soon came to the realization that we would have to invest significant additional time and money into BPOS in order to meet our initial expectations of migrating to the cloud.
We decided to revisit Google Apps. For email archiving and retention, Google Message Discovery was easier to use, significantly cheaper, better integrated into the entire email migration process, and offered more features than the third party options available with BPOS. Once more, through the course of our lengthy evaluation, Google continued to update Apps’ functionality to incorporate virtually all of the features that we had valued in Microsoft’s offering. After updates such as Google Calendar Sync, which syncs events between Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar, and the ability to delegate calendar management to an administrative assistant, we had reached the tipping point where users adamant about using Outlook became confident in the capabilities of the Google Apps suite.
Following a rapid response by a combined team from Google and Google Apps Authorized Reseller, SADA Systems, Inc., Bergelectric quickly made plans to “Go Google.” Key components of the deployment included user synchronization between Active Directory and Google Apps, single sign-on to Apps using Active Directory credentials, migration of all data from Groupwise to Google (including historical email, contacts and calendar items), Google Apps integration with BlackBerry Enterprise Server, implementation of the Google Message Discovery product for mail archiving and discovery, and a complete training and change management effort to ensure the smoothest possible transition and high user adoption rates.
Our migration off the Groupwise platform has allowed the IT staff to focus its resources on more strategic, business-driven initiatives in the online space. The IT team has regained precious time previously spent patching and keeping the e-mail servers running and are now able to focus on things like business continuity and compliance. Employees have a generous 25 GB of e-mail storage and the ability access e-mail and collaboration tools from our many offices and remote project sites, whether it’s via a desktop, laptop or mobile device.
We were impressed by Google’s commitment to making it easy and simple for long-term on-premise users to migrate to the cloud. And Google’s data liberation policy gave us peace of mind that, if we ever wanted to move platforms, we’d be able to readily do so. Once more, their commitment to open standards and APIs allow us to access our own data and customize our implementation in ways that we never thought possible. As our business needs evolve, we can find additional apps in the Google Apps Marketplace or we can easily build our own on Google App Engine.
Overall, our employees have been extremely happy with the move to Google Apps. IT is relieved to finally have true redundancy, painless scalability and better control, all while no longer needing to maintain remote servers and tape backups. Management is pleased with the cost savings and vastly improved service offerings.
Posted by Kevin Gough, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise
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