City of Orlando: cutting costs while advancing our infrastructure in just two months

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Conrad Cross, CIO of the City of Orlando, Florida. In November, the city announced it had Gone Google. Last month Orlando became one of the first cities in America to switch all of its employees to Gmail. Cross has been CIO at the City of Orlando since December of 1999 and has been leading the Google Apps deployment that took only two months and is resulting in more than 60% savings.

Join Conrad for a live webcast on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 at 11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT. He'll talk about moving 3,000 city employees to Google Apps. Please note that registration will occur on a third party site.

Like many city departments, the City of Orlando is facing an aging infrastructure juxtaposed with budget cuts and high demand for more advanced infrastructure services such as mobile access to email. We were using a Lotus Notes® email system and paying for numerous servers in City Hall, so we needed to find a different way of doing business.

This situation was all exacerbated by the fact that our IT department was recently whittled down from 84 workers to 69 this year. We determined after analyzing Google Apps that we could achieve significant savings and move into the cloud very quickly.

If we were to keep our current system, we estimated it would cost $133 a year for each of its 3,000 employees – or $399,000 including annual software licenses. Google charges $50 per user, or $150,000 delivering more than 60% in savings. In return, everyone from city planners to police officers will now use a web-based email system similar to Google's popular Gmail, but without the advertisements that support the free consumer version.

Google servers will store all city email and run the application, and Google technicians in Google data centers will make sure it runs smoothly. Google will also help us more securely host records such as sensitive law-enforcement and legal documents by mustering greater resources and expertise than we could on our own.

After considering the cost and feature advantages, we made the decision to move to Google Apps. We were able to move to Google Apps in less than 60 days, a major accomplishment. When the mayor cornered me in the hallway, I was nervous – but then he told me how excited and supportive he was about the switch. We're now on board with Google Apps and we don't have to worry about constant upgrades or implementing new innovations, and the cost-savings we're achieving are impressive.

My message for other city governments is: do the analysis and determine what your costs are. If the savings are compelling, then move quickly - you'll see the move into the cloud is relatively fast and painless—and ultimately very cost-effective.

We’re eager to share our experiences about the nuances involving our transition to Google Apps, including what the main concerns were across the city in making the move and how we address them.

Please join us for this live event:

City of Orlando Cuts Costs by Over 66% by Moving Email and Apps into the Cloud
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft® Exchange and Lotus Notes®/Domino®.

Flying into the cloud

Every day thousands of companies move to Google Apps, but it's not that often that we get to bring Apps to those who already work among the clouds. We're excited to share that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has moved 11,200 of their crew members to Gmail as part of their Google Apps Premier Edition deployment. KLM crew members will now be able to send and receive email effectively from any location and using any Internet connected device, including personal laptops, shared computers, BlackBerry devices, mobile phones, or PDA devices.

The adoption of Gmail marks KLM's move to cloud computing. With 25 GB of storage per account, Gmail provides them with a powerful, intuitive and efficient messaging platform with integrated IM (Google Talk) and a series of additional features that facilitate communication.

For example, message translation allows KLM employees to translate email from and into 42 different languages with one click of the mouse. The employees' familiarity with Google's consumer products meant that minimal or no training was needed to complete the deployment.

If you're interested in joining KLM in the cloud, check out http://www.google.com/a

Posted by Adrian Joseph, Managing Director of Google Enterprise for Europe, Middle East and Africa

Seven million students have gone Google...and we're road tripping!

Editor's note: We're sharing some news – and a cross post from the Official Google Blog – about a new milestone for Google Apps Education Edition: use by 7 million students and faculty worldwide.

Since the fall of 2009 we've seen more and more students and faculty take advantage of Google Apps Education Edition. We've seen our active users grow – first we had 5 million, then 6 million, and today we're happy to announce that we've crossed the 7 million mark. With so many students and faculty using Google Docs, Google Sites, and Gmail to collaborate and share their academic work, we figured it's the perfect time to hit the road and help more schools see Google Apps in action.

Beginning in April, the Google Apps Education team will travel to universities across the southern and eastern US to meet with regional CIOs and IT directors in higher education. We'll be hosting these events with some great universities using Google Apps, including Hofstra, Columbus State University, the University of South Florida, Texas Southern University, and the University of Virginia.

At every stop, the host universities will share how their students and/or faculty use Google Apps, and show how they've deployed and connected Apps within their technology infrastructure. We'll be devoting a lot of time for questions and we'll have plenty of demos from the Google Apps team. If you're a university CIO, CTO. or IT Director in New York, Florida, Georgia or Virginia (or nearby!) and would like to join us at a roadtrip stop, please let us know via this contact form. We hope to see you there!

Google Apps Education Edition CIO Roadtrip - Spring 2010

4/16 : Hofstra University
(in conjunction with the New York Higher Education Technology Forum)
Hempstead, NY

4/19 : University of South Florida
Tampa, FL

4/21 : Columbus State University
Columbus, GA

4/23 : University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA

Early June : Texas Southern University
Houston, TX

Posted by Jason Cook, Google Apps Education team

Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Jay Kenney, CIO of Lincoln Property Company, a residential property management and development company. Prior to joining Lincoln Property, Jay was a Managing Director at BearingPoint for eight years and spent 19 years at SBC (now AT&T).

Last year Jay inherited a Novell Groupwise system powering email for 950 of his firm's approximately 3,500 employees. After careful consideration, Lincoln Property migrated from Groupwise to Google Apps, saving the company $200K – and enabling Jay to provide all 3,500 employees with company email.

Jay will be available on a live webcast this Thursday at 11:00 a.m. PST, 2:00 p.m. EST, 7:00 p.m. GMT to share his experience and answer questions about Lincoln Property Company's experience in switching to Google Apps. Michael Cohn from Cloud Sherpas, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, will also be on hand to answer questions about the migration process.

Lincoln Property is the fifth largest property manager in the United States. When I joined the company, 950 of our 3,500 employees were using Novell Groupwise for email. We were maintaining an expensive infrastructure including servers, a SAN and data center space. It was difficult to maintain our email archive. It was also tough to find IT staff skilled in Groupwise. At the same time, we were looking to outsource as many of our mission-critical applications as possible.

Evaluating our options, we first considered remaining with Groupwise or switching to Microsoft Exchange. At the prodding of one of our tech-savvy partners, we tried out Google Apps and liked what we found. We did a comprehensive TCO analysis that included licensing and maintenance, data center costs, spam protection, server, SAN, migration costs, you name it.

The business case was clear. At approximately $200K per year cheaper than the existing system and infrastructure, Google Apps would provide email, instant messaging, great mobile options, and AV/AS protection for just $50/user/year. And, we would be able to equip all 3,500 employees with company email instead of just the 950 who were on the legacy on premise system.

After trialing Gmail, Google Calendar, and Gmail's integrated chat, we made the move to Google Apps. Cloud Sherpas was instrumental in helping us extract email and contacts data out of GroupWise and migrate it into Google Apps for 950 users in a phased migration. They also provided webinar and video training to ease our users through the transition.

Now we are on track to migrate our remaining 2,500 users in 2010. The results so far have been stellar. I’d be happy to share the lessons we’ve learned – what we did that I’m glad we did!

Please join me for this live webinar.

Lincoln Property Company finds a new home with Google Apps
Thursday, February 11, 2009
11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST / 7:00 p.m. GMT


Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino.

MWV has gone Google

MWV (formerly MeadWestvaco), a global packaging company based in Glen Allen, Virginia, has migrated its 12,000 technology-enabled employees to Google Apps. A 165-year-old company with a diverse set of commercial and consumer solutions, MWV products are ubiquitous in everyday life – Mead Five-Star notebooks, coffee cups from your local barista, canned beverage FridgePak cases you see in your grocery store, collectors edition DVD cases, and fluid dispensers for luxury perfumes and lotions – among many others.

MWV has grown extensively through acquisitions, which left it with twelve siloed email systems, including multiple instances of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes across the globe.

MWV embarked on a journey to unite its global workforce on a single email platform. Critical to their "One MWV" initiative was to enable users in 34 countries and speaking a wide variety of languages to collaborate and easily communicate as one global team.

Mark Gulling, MWV's CIO, explains that "The shift to Google has enhanced our ability to effectively collaborate by simplifying our email infrastructure, and delivered a richer set of communication tools. Google provides not only a rich collaboration suite, but a constant stream of innovative, market-defining products that enhance and constantly evolve our user's working experience." Gulling reports a number of benefits since switching to Google:

• Increased productivity. Users, from executives to individual contributors, have reported increases of over 30 minutes per day, thanks to powerful search capability and the organization features of Labels, Filters, and more.

• Online information sharing. Users have rapidly adopted Google Sites to share information and media. Approximately 200 group, product, and project collaboration sites have been created since MWV switched to Google Apps.

• Real-time communications. MWV has used Google Docs and video chat to help people stay in touch and collaborate in real time, avoiding unnecessary travel or videoconferencing costs.

• Innovation. MWV's product sales team was able to quickly roll out a new quote management framework based on Google Forms and Google Docs with the help of Google Apps Script.

MWV's users are excited about the switch to Google and the new features available to them. As Mel Shaffer, VP of Global Service Delivery, says, "Moving to Google has givenMWV the ability to ride a wave of collaboration and technology features that would be difficult to duplicate in any other product."

Continuing, Shaffer adds, "Google's innovative product design and commitment to user experience translate into a feature-rich user experience that is unparalleled in the IT marketplace today. Additionally, Google's price point enables IT to reduce costs and minimize or eliminate capital investment – a true win for our enterprise and our users."

Join us in welcoming MWV to the growing ranks of businesses who have gone Google.

Posted by Colleen Horan, Google Enterprise team

Gone Google at EDUCAUSE 2009

According to the newly-released 2009 Campus Computing survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely — are going Google.

Since this time last year we have seen lots of exciting growth for Google Apps Education Edition. We've rolled out more than 100 new features, launched free Google Message Security for K-12 schools, integrated with other learning services such as Blackboard and Moodle, and have reached well over six million students and faculty – a 400% increase since this time last year.

The Google Apps for Education team celebrated these big changes with Apps customers – including students – and conference attendees last week at EDUCAUSE, an important annual gathering for higher ed IT. Here are a few photos:

Read more about EDUCAUSE and our exciting year of change, and be sure to visit www.google.com/appsatschool to learn more about how your school can go Google.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team

How non-profit organizations go Google

In addition to the thousands of companies and schools that go Google every day, more and more non-profit organizations are choosing Google Apps to help remove the cost and complexity associated with traditional IT, which can often challenge the limited resources of 501(c)3 organizations.

Learn more about the special discounts available for accredited organizations with Google Apps for Non-Profits and read about how USA Water Polo made the switch to Apps and was able to provide 35,000 staff, volunteers, and players with improved email and collaboration tools while re-allocating costs toward funding for their players, teams and members.

Google Apps helps organizations of all kinds improve the way they work by minimizing on-premise hardware, increasing uptime, and making it easy for users to get productive fast. This is especially helpful for non-profit organizations, who can direct their focus away from IT maintenance and put their talents toward what they do best: doing good.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education and Non-Profit teams

A full complement of tools for a quarter the cost

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Benjamin Doyle, Information Systems Administrator for Alta Planning + Design, a company that combines the skills of planning, design, landscape architecture and engineering to create bicycle, pedestrian, greenway, and trail projects for communities. With headquarters in Portland, Oregon, Alta has a total of 12 offices across the United States.

Benjamin talks about choosing Google Apps over both hosted and in-house Microsoft Exchange.

Scalability, without complexity Alta has 60 employees and we’re growing rapidly. We knew we needed something that could scale up without bogging us down with decisions on hardware, upgrades, and maintenance. We also needed portability and easy collaboration because our employees are constantly on the go, visiting the communities we work with around the globe. We were pretty sure we didn’t want the headache and constant maintenance of an in-house system.

Our previous email system – provided free through our website host – couldn't keep up with our needs for reliability and ease of access. Messages were downloaded to individual computers, limiting remote access and making archiving near impossible. It also left us without a way to have a shared calendar solution accessible to all our users in all offices (many of us were already using Google Calendar), and it made sense to choose a service which so cleanly integrates calendars with e-mail.

Savings We compared hosted Microsoft Exchange, in-house Microsoft Exchange, and Google Apps Premier Edition – plus their associated operating costs – and Google Apps came out way below the other alternatives cost-wise, yet provided all the functionality we were after.

Google Apps was projected to save us about 62% in the first year over setting up an in-house Exchange server and 67% annual savings compared to hosted Microsoft Exchange. For a business with no prior communications budget to speak of, Google Apps was a huge advantage that provided great cost savings.

Many unexpected benefits Google Apps was virtually painless to implement, and it’s given us fast, reliable communication and collaboration. Spread out among 12 offices, there's not another solution on the market we know of that pulls together all the tools we need as well as Google Apps. We’re pretty much using the full gamut of capabilities: Gmail, Google's instant messaging, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Video and Google Docs. We use the web mail interface to keep things simple.

Communication via integrated voice the video chat was an unexpected boon for us – it’s widely popular for our network of offices as a way of quickly sharing information without having to pick up the phone. We were able to create a more reliable and accessible intranet with Google Sites than we could have done with other tools.

Being able to access our documents and other data from almost any browser is also great since we all travel so much. Everyone has access to mail and calendars with their mobile devices, and they can go from their workstation to a travel laptop seamlessly.

What’s great is that Google offers constant improvement and development. New features are introduced on an ongoing basis. Some of the extra features included in Google Apps aren't available with other services. I keep up on the new features by subscribing to Apps Update Alerts (RSS feed or email alerts). Because updates and improvements are implemented by Google, and not on on-premise servers, it's fewer "off hours" working hours for me.

Our IT budget has been able to shift more dollars into data storage and networking – money that would have otherwise been spent on a mail server and user applications. Plus, with Google keeping our mail and intranet secure and running with a 99+% up time guarantee, we have less to worry about and more time to spend on other important projects. Since our information is flowing quicker between users through a range of mediums, and our users have no trouble accessing communication and internal resources on the go.

- Benjamin Doyle, Information Systems Administrator, Alta Planning + Design

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps Team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Guest post: Australia's Mortgage Choice goes Google

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Peter Herrmann, solution architect, Information Technology Department, at Mortgage Choice Limited. Peter led the development of the business case to switch Mortgage Choice to Google, and is project manager and tech lead for the organization-wide deployment of Google Apps. Peter has been working with Mortgage Choice for eight years and has been involved with IT strategy, consulting to internal business units, implementation, migrations, integration and lifecycle for many systems at Mortgage Choice.

Peter has a background in messaging and collaboration technologies and still remembers his delight in getting messages to flow (in 1992) between islands of Lotus Notes, cc:Mail, MS Mail (Windows & Mac), Memo (a mainframe based email system) and MHS (from Novell) during a proof of concept integration he did for a large multinational.

Mortgage Choice, Australia's largest independently-owned mortgage broker, was established in 1992 and operates a franchise-based business model. We have over 1,000 users operating from around 350 locations across Australia.

The Australian mortgage broking industry has undergone a period of significant change and consolidation. In this challenging environment, the ability to scale both up and out while improving our business systems and resources, along with keeping a steady cost base, is critical to growing and strengthening our business.

In IT, we are constantly challenged by the ongoing overhead of installing, upgrading, storing, supporting and maintaining installed software across a geographically dispersed environment.

Prior to our transition to Google Apps, we diligently kept our users' software up-to-date and met system and service SLAs, but simply meeting our service obligations does not necessarily add value! At the end of the day, after buying, running and maintaining our infrastructure and software, our capacity to really add value through innovation was constrained by resource limitations.

By late 2008, with a newly reinvigorated IT strategy taking shape, the Google Apps platform was right in focus. We developed a business case for Google Apps, focusing on the benefits of simplicity (no installed software), choice (access anywhere anytime from any Internet connected device), scalability (growth with a variable cost base) and user happiness (great user experience from modern apps evolved from massive consumer driven input).

During mid-2009, Mortgage Choice ran an initial deployment of Google Apps (Mail, Calendar and Chat) for some 70 users across the country. We used Google Sites for FAQs, feedback forums and spreadsheet forms for polls to get regular user feedback. This was used to continuously improve our change management, communication, migration and support processes and collateral.

At completion of the initial deployment, 91% of users recommended we roll-out Google Apps to the entire organisation. The results also reinforced our IT strategy imperatives to "provide the business with a technology environment that is scalable, flexible, simple to use, leverages modern and emerging technologies and provides users with choice".

Even now, as we roll out to the rest of the organization, we're seeing immediate benefits outside the original project focus of Mail, Calendar and Chat. Users are adopting other Google Apps, such as Google Docs, for collaboration in real time with co-workers and business partners. They're building forms based workflows for their business processes, and have used Google Sites and Google Video to deliver specific on-demand training websites and online manuals.

This innovation is taking place organically at the initiative of users and without the requirement for traditional IT involvement or assistance. Furthermore, it has come at no additional cost and at a pace chosen by the initiators.

Since we've "gone Google", we are seeing tangible benefits from adopting Google Apps across the organisation and we expect this to increase as our people - an increasingly mobile workforce - leverage the platform further in future.

– Peter Herrmann, solution architect, Mortgage Choice Limited

Posted by Annie Baxter, Google Australia team

Geek Out on the technical details of a Google Apps migration

If you are actively considering Google Apps as part of your next-generation messaging strategy or just starting to learn more about cloud computing, you – and your boss – no doubt have questions about the technical details of moving into the cloud.

Whether you are switching from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino, you may wonder about what it takes to change your DNS and mail settings, and what to do to set up both POP and IMAP mail. You may also have questions about how to support your mobile device users, or end users who must use a local client such as Microsoft Outlook, or about directory sync tools, APIs and which migration tools and services best meet your needs. Above all, you want to avoid mistakes or pitfalls that could cost your company time and money.

The list of technical details and questions can seem overwhelming, but our customers tell us repeatedly that with advanced planning migration to the cloud can be accomplished quickly – and with minimal business disruption.

On October 22, we invite you to learn from members of our Google Apps Deployment Team. They work in the field, hand-in-hand with Apps customers, and have a wealth of experience, as well as some insider tips and tricks to help migrations to Apps go as smoothly as possible.

Migration experts Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy, and Marcello Pederson will host a live webcast, “Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration,” that will help you with the nitty-gritty details of moving into the cloud and answer your technical questions.

Our expert panelists include:

Jim Copeland Jim works with Google Apps customers on best practices for deployment and migration. He has been at Google for four years with a background in the legal, financial, and publishing industries.

Dan Kennedy Dan worked for over 10 years as a Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory administrator before coming to work with Google Apps customers via Google's acquisition of Postini. Dan specializes in large deployments where customers require interoperability between systems.

Marcello Pedersen Marcello works with Google Apps customers on a wide range of technical issues such as API usage, SAML/SSO implementations, and complex engineering questions.

Join our live webcast on October 22, 2009 to learn from our experts on the front lines who are helping customers with their Google Apps deployments.

Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration
Thursday, October 22, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m GMT

Register today.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Faculty and staff are going Google, too

September was a big month for Google Apps Education Edition as everyone headed back to school. When we announced five million active users in early September, we didn't expect that it would only be about a month before we would announce that more than six million students, staff, and faculty at schools worldwide are now actively using Google Apps at school.

We talk a lot about what students want and need (and we also try to learn from them as much as possible), but it's important to remember that these six million users aren't only students – they are also faculty and staff members using Google Apps technology in education.

The cloud is all about collaboration, and this means not only students working together, but also students working with their teachers and professors to improve learning outcomes and save time. Using internet-based solutions like Google Apps to enhance the cycle of lesson, evaluation, and adjustment can shorten what used to take days or weeks into minutes, and collaborating in the cloud helps educators connect more effectively with students.

There are lots of examples we're seeing crop up on campuses. For example New York City's Intermediate School 339 ensured clear communication between students, teachers, and the community by moving the entire campus to Google Apps, and taking advantage of features like forms in Google Docs to create real-time quizzes helped to double Math performance scores, increase attendance, and build student engagement.

And, after Boise State University migrated their 2,400 faculty and staff to Google Apps, not only were they able to foster better collaboration between students and staff, but they reduced costs for IT infrastructure, support, and maintenance by $90,000 annually.

Other schools that have chosen Google Apps for their faculty and staff include Temple University, Columbus State University, Abilene Christian University, Macalester College, Manhattan College, Mary Baldwin College, Northeastern State University, and Saint Louis University (including 8,500 staff from their Medical Center and Hospital).

We strongly believe that when all education users - from students to professors to school administrators - have access to cloud-based tools and aren't limited by where or when they work, it enhances their ability to communicate and collaborate effectively. So come on, Go Google and join these schools (and many others) in the cloud with Google Apps.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

UK Universities going Google

Last month, we announced that over 5 million students were actively using Google Apps Education Edition. Today, we're pleased to note that several noteworthy universities in the UK have joined this growing movement by announcing plans to deploy Google Apps for the coming academic year.

The University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, the University of Portsmouth and De Montfort University are the latest to sign on with Google Apps, joining established UK Apps users like the University of Westminster and Leeds Met.

We recently mapped Google Apps' adoption in schools across the globe, but we think it's just as interesting to hear how students from the University of Portsmouth are logging in from 26 countries in 10 languages while studying abroad – all in the first month of using Apps. With tools like integrated video chat and real-time collaboration, Google Apps are working in the cloud to make the world a little bit smaller, while making campuses larger than ever.

To read more about UK universities that have gone Google, click here.

Posted by Jason Cook, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

Get your money's worth with cloud-based messaging

Do you know how much your email system is costing you? More than just the necessary hardware and software systems, email also requires substantial time and money for maintenance and upkeep. In-house email calls for patches, precautions to maintain high availability and disaster recovery, and the never-ending work it takes to secure and protect email from spam, phishing, and malware.

In a September 2009 study, Osterman Research found that decision makers typically underestimate the cost of providing messaging services. According to Osterman, one-quarter of decision makers believe that their organizations spend less than $10 per seat per month to provide messaging services, while another one-third believe they spend anywhere from $10 to $15 per seat per month – but this cost estimate leaves out several important factors, particularly maintenance.

The research firm also found that the use of cloud-based email can allow organizations to focus more on their core business rather than devote resources to managing the messaging infrastructure.

Another analyst firm, Forrester Research, found that for a 15,000-person firm requiring archiving, the fully loaded cost of on-premise email was $25.18 per user per month compared to a cost of $8.47 for Google Apps.

But it's not all about cost savings – you need more than just a cheaper messaging solution. You also want one that can help your workforce achieve more. Moving to the cloud and Google Apps can help you streamline your IT infrastructure and provide a platform for innovation and increased employee satisfaction.

On October 8, join us for a live webcast as Google Apps expert, Rhonda Stites, walks through a simple financial model that evaluates the savings in adopting Google Apps. You will hear about real customer experiences, get your questions answered and have the tools you need to bring substantial value to your organization.

Register now to learn more about the potential cost savings for your organization.

Save Money with Cloud Computing and Google Apps
Thursday, October 8, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT

We hope to see you there!

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

*Note: The pricing and features available in each architecture vary by provider. Download the full independent research report, “Should Your Email Live In The Cloud? A Comparative Cost Analysis,” Forrester Research, Inc., January 2009.

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Clarkstown Central School District designs collaborative curriculum with Google Apps

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome John Calvert, Technology Learning Facilitator and Google Certified Teacher from Clarkstown Central School District, as our guest blogger today. Calvert's post describes how his district has created a collaborative curriculum portal for teachers using Google Apps Education Edition. You can also read or download a case study about Clarkstown Central School District's full Google Apps deployment.

As in most districts, the Clarkstown Central School District curriculum is a living document. We tweak our maps each year, based on student and teacher experience, but communicating these changes to our 800 teachers has always been a logistical nightmare. Even though we have a web based mapping system, our faculty often worked from old copies printed in binders. For most teachers this was the easiest way to work and there wasn't a compelling value add from the old mapping system to change their practice. Google Apps has added this incentive by helping us create a space that is collaborative, purposeful, and always current. The result is a change that has connected our teachers to the map and each other.

Clarkstown Central School District is a central district pulling students from several communities located 20 miles north of New York City. We have 14 schools, ranging from kindergarten to twelfth grade, employ roughly 1700 people, and educate nearly 10,000 students. The district has made a recent commitment to prepare our students for the technology rich future they will inherit. We decided that Google Apps would be a key tool to leverage this goal. We wanted to extend past the tech savvy and tech willing teachers, to the users who would not be your typical technology teachers. We needed buy-in from teachers and administrators to make sure a roll out of this scale would be successful.

With this in mind, we decided to use something of real value to our community - in our case, a curriculum resource portal that was created with Google – as the first step in transitioning toward a new technology platform.

We introduced Google Calendar first because it was easiest for the majority of users to understand. The big desk planners teachers are familiar with do not facilitate collaboration with colleagues and can only be used when you're literally standing in front of them. Google Calendar solved these common teacher problems.

We also created centrally controlled calendars that teachers could add to their own, making life easier. Then, we created curriculum scope and sequence calendars. This let, say, a 5th grade teacher turn on the curriculum calendars and plan lessons for the month based on where they should be in the curriculum. Clicking on a curriculum event provides and overview of the content and a link to the resource site page for that unit.

Each curriculum area for each grade level has a resource site organized by unit. The unit pages are linked to the appropriate calendar events in Google Calendar. These pages display the curriculum which is fed directly from the mapping software. The pages also organize links, documents, and other resources. Some documents are shared across multiple grades and units from Docs. When the original is changed, each linked unit updates automatically. Other sites are created to support professional development in the district.

Most importantly, teachers are now creating unit plans and other resources collaboratively using Apps; these contributions are also shared in the resource sites.

So far, the project has been a resounding success. We started with the elementary curriculum and will be expanding the project to the secondary grades this year. The initiative has "won over" our administrators and teachers. Our faculty is more connected to the curriculum than they have ever been. The work we have done has inspired many of our teachers to bring Google Apps into their teaching. In response to this enthusiasm, we are introducing our Student Apps portal this Fall.

If you'd like to hear more about how K-12 school districts like Clarkstown Central are using Google Apps to save IT resources and encourage district-wide collaboration, please join us at this upcoming webinar:

Google Apps Education Edition at Maine Township High School District
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)

Have questions for the Maine Township and Google Apps teams? Submit them here.

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education Edition team

Learn more about what's possible for your school with Google Apps Education Edition.

Singapore's Ministry of Education and 30,000 teachers go Google

The Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) is going Google, the first government ministry in Asia to do so. The MOE announced this week that it will be making Google Apps Education edition available to more than 30,000 teachers and staff members at over 350 schools in the country by the end of this year. The winning tender was awarded to NCS, Google's large enterprise solutions partner in Singapore, and to Google, providing the Google Apps online communications and collaboration suite to all public school teachers. We'd like to welcome all of them to the Google Apps community.

The MOE chose to move to the cloud to transform the public education sector through Web 2.0 technologies and a constant stream of product innovation and free upgrades with Google Apps. Chan Tee Miang, the MOE's CIO, also highlighted the benefits for Singapore's teachers, explaining that "this is a key project for MOE as it will facilitate collaboration and sharing among our teachers and help enhance their teaching practices."

James Kang, Assistant Chief Executive, Government Chief Information Office at the Infocomm Development Authority, said that the adoption of a cloud computing solution for MOE email and apps, "is in line with the government’s key criteria of ‘fit for purpose, value for money’ in infocomm procurement for the public sector.”

The new system is built on Google's distributed cloud computing platform with higher scalability, redundancy and flexibility to cater for unforeseen increases in usage and future upgrades without the need to re-architect the entire system infrastructure.

Google Apps Edu will provide each teacher with more storage space of 7GB (the current email system only provides 110MB of disk space) and better, up-to-date features for their email as well as bring collaboration apps like Google Docs and Google Sites into the mix. The end result will be to increase productivity, share knowledge and enhance the teaching and learning environment in schools all across the nation. The rollout starts in November and should be completed by the end of the year, just in time for the new school year to start in January, 2010.

To read more about the Singapore MOE's announcement, click here. To check out Google Apps Education Edition, go to www.google.com/a/edu.

Posted by Dickson Seow, Google Singapore

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JohnsonDiversey: migrating 12,000+ users from Lotus Notes/ Domino to Google Apps in 48 hours

Editor’s note: Brent Hoag is Senior Director, IT for JohnsonDiversey, formed when Johnson Wax Professional acquired DiverseyLever. Its focus is on providing products to commercial businesses for food safety, housekeeping, and industrial cleaning. Throughout its history, the company has been dedicated to leadership in environmental issues, health, and safety. You can read more about the company's work in these areas in the post we shared a few days back.

Please join Brent and members of the Google Enterprise team for a live webcast this Thursday, September 17, at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT.

When we first decided to switch to Google Apps from Lotus Notes/Domino, we planned on using a typical IT deployment process. As a global company, JohnsonDiversey (JDI) conducts "go-lives" in its IT environment almost weekly, and therefore we are all old hands at managing rollouts to achieve a smooth technical transition and minimize business disruption.

Given that Google Apps would impact all of our 12,000 global users spread across 168 locations and 70 countries, we made two assumptions. First, we thought a phased migration would be best. We planned to migrate employee data and continue to support our two legacy local email clients at the same time. Second, we’d staff a command center to handle the flood of calls from employees trying to learn the new system.

Both assumptions proved totally wrong.

As we delved deeper into our migration planning and learned from our early adopters, we realized that we would be better off using a big bang approach. One major reason is that getting everyone onto a single system faster reduces the largest pain of having co-existence of two systems for any amount of time.

Google Apps is helping JDI, as a global company, communicate and collaborate better from a single platform. Under our old Lotus Notes/Domino system, even simple tasks like booking meetings were difficult, because employees could not easily see the details of someone's availability, an agenda or other participants. People’s inboxes were also filling up when they were traveling. With Google Apps, we realized we would solve many problems at once (read Part I of our story here).

What did we actually end up doing? We provided Apps to early adopters who became business champions – and ultimately helped others if they ran into issues. We decided to support only the web interface and provided early access prior to go-live to mitigate login issues. We also provided tools for self-service migration and put up a Google Site providing a centralized point of information. We offered global deployment support for the first two days after go-live.

Since deploying, we've received some nice feedback and results:

• one employee told us "this is the first project that IT did for the users rather than to the users"
• our help desk volume has substantially dropped from our legacy steady state call volume and most of the questions are "how-to"
• our department has more time to work on strategic initiatives

You can watch a bit more about our success with Google Apps here:

Moving 12,000 people over to any new solution can be daunting – but it can also be painless. We found that out the easy way. We would be happy to share our experiences with you. Join us for a webinar:

Migrating 12,000+ users from Lotus Notes/ Domino to Google Apps in 48 hours
Thursday, September 17, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT

We'll share our story and be happy to answer your questions.

Brent Hoag, Director, IT, JohnsonDiversey

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Google at SMB Nation Fall Conference

As part of our continued outreach to find leading solution providers and MSPs for our Google Apps Authorized Reseller program, the Google Apps Partner team will head to Las Vegas on October 2, 3, and 4 for "SMB Nation Fall 2009." This conference, focused on technologies for small and medium businesses, is designed for consultants, channel partners and VARs, and offers the community a chance to engage in conversations around hosted, cloud-based solutions. It's targeted at both technical and business audiences, with an emphasis on managed services.

Program managers from Google will speak about opportunities for Google Apps Authorized Resellers. They'll also be listening to feedback from the community on areas for further improvement to the program. Google's partners often play a critical role in helping customers get the most out of Google Apps, and building a strong partner network will be key to keeping up with the accelerating adoption of Google Apps.

Learn more and register at smbnation.com, and be sure to find members of the Google team when you're there.

Posted by Jeff Ragusa, Google Apps Partner team

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Data portability and Google Apps

Earlier this morning, you may have seen Google's Data Liberation announcement, which stemmed from our core belief that it ought to be easy for users to move their data into or away from Google's cloud.

This principle not only applies to individual users, but also to businesses, schools and other organizations that choose Google Apps to provide better tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. It should be easy to bring legacy data into the cloud, share data between Google Apps and other IT infrastructure, and get data out of the cloud if it ever makes sense to stop using our service. I invite you to read more about Google Apps data portability on the Data Liberation site.

And while we're on the topic of data portability, stay tuned here for information about moving content to and from Google Sites. We're looking forward to sharing more about this with you soon.

Posted by Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager

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JohnsonDiversey goes greener with Google Apps

Editor’s note: John Matthews is Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Director, Office of the President, for JohnsonDiversey. The company is a global provider of commercial cleaning, sanitation and hygiene solutions and serves customers in the lodging, food service, retail, health care, and food and beverage sectors. One of four companies founded by the Johnson Family, JohnsonDiversey is located in Located in Racine, Wisconsin and has a long-standing history of dedication to environmental, health, and safety leadership.

Our CEO, Ed Lonergan, has challenged all employees to live by strong sustainability principles in everything they do. Last spring, we migrated over 11,000 global employees to Google Apps from Lotus Notes/Domino and Microsoft Outlook, moving us 73 tons closer to our goal of achieving an 89,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions by the year 2013. When we achieve our 89,000-ton reduction in carbon emissions, it will place us back at where we were in 2003, even as we continue to grow our business and add additional resources.

In addition, optimizing our IT infrastructure by moving to Google Apps has allowed us to decommission eight servers and avoid buying four more. As we reduce this reliance on hardware, we also gain a better and easier messaging and collaboration platform.

Google’s innovation in data center design and maintenance means that Google achieves more energy efficiency than our company could on its own – and Google’s commitment to carbon neutrality also reinforces our goals as a member of the World Wildlife Fund's Climate Savers program. The alternate IT solution would have increased our server count by 12, more than doubling our server count. This would have raised our CO₂ emissions by 111 metric tons.

Beyond helping JohnsonDiversey achieve sustainability goals, Google Apps also helps us better communicate and collaborate. Our employees and contractors speak more than 26 languages across approximately 170 locations in 70 countries. Now, we all have the ability to literally work off the same page – wherever we are – with tools like Google Docs and Google Sites.

We also avoided significant capital outlays in upgrading from our on-premise Lotus Notes/Domino solution while improving our internal service levels with Google's commitment to be up and running 99.9% of the time.

Environmental stewardship is not only the right thing to do. It also makes good business sense. Our choice of Google Apps is a case in point. It's helped us reduce costs and advance our IT efficiency. If your enterprise is striving to reduce its environmental footprint and streamline IT infrastructure, hear how we did it at a livewebcast featuring our IT team.

You can learn more about our company and our use of Google Apps here:



Our IT team will host a live webcast next week on Thursday, September 17, 2009, 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT on how Google Apps is helping us meet both our sustainability and business goals.

We'll also share perspectives from our IT team on the deployment in a blog post we'll publish next week (update: now published).

John Matthews, SVP, Corporate Affairs
Director, Office of the President, JohnsonDiversey

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

The movement continues: "Going Google" at school & with Postini

In the past month, many of you told us how you've "gone Google" with Google Apps in your workplace. We're excited that the #goneGoogle movement continues with the millions of students who have switched to Google Apps in schools, as well as growing adoption of our Postini email security and archiving services.

More than 5 million students in 145 countries around the world have gone Google at school with our Google Apps Education Edition. To celebrate this milestone, Google's "EDU" team has created a new site that highlights many of the schools that have gone Google, as well as tips for students and educators.

Schools as well as businesses of all sizes have also chosen to protect their on-premise email systems with our hosted email security and archiving services – more than 3 billion email messages are protected by Postini each day. Postini helps your organization keep email secure, spam-free and centrally archived, without the need for hardware or software installations and upgrades. If you're still dealing with tuning your spam appliance and searching your backup tape drives, now is a good time to go Google with Postini.

We've loved hearing your feedback and encourage you to continue the conversation with us via Twitter (hashtag #gonegoogle) as well as through our Spread the Word site. The billboards may be complete (you can check out the recap video here), but we're not finished yet. Look for more "gone Google" initiatives in the US and abroad in the next few months – and don't forget to sign up for free Gone Google goodies!

Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps Team

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