Google Joins Cloud2 Commission Examining Cloud Computing

Posted by Sarah Falvey, Sr. Policy Analyst, Google

At Google, we believe the Internet is a rich platform for innovation and that when organizations fully adopt online services (what we call "100% web") they dramatically improve productivity and reduce their costs. In order to advance these interests, we work closely with similarly minded groups to advance this common goal and to enable innovation.

To that end, we are excited to participate in the TechAmerica Foundation’s recently formed Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD²). The Commission’s three-month mandate is to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how the U.S. Government could help drive American innovation in the cloud. This comes on the heels of the Administration's "Cloud First" policy, an important first step in helping the federal government take advantage of the benefits cloud computing has to offer. The Commission will make recommendations to the U.S. Government on ways to spur the adoption of cloud computing and to address policies that hinder U.S. leadership in the commercial space. We’re supporting the efforts of two CLOUD² working groups: the first works on facilitating the flow of information between countries, and the second deals with security in the cloud.

With Google Apps, we are investing in technologies that help businesses, educational institutions and governments be productive with a 100% web approach. We’re committed to minimizing barriers to adoption of the cloud by the public sector. Additionally, we hope to promote the development of technology-neutral, non-proprietary and interoperable standards to ensure that the benefits offered by cloud computing are fully realized.

For these reasons, we’re excited to support TechAmerica’s efforts in this important area and look forward to working with other industry players to further the adoption of cloud computing.

Security First: Google at the Cyber Security Strategies Summit

Posted by Adam Swidler, Sr. Manager, Google Enterprise Team

This week the Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Cyber Security Strategies Summit (CSSS) in Washington DC on May 10th-12th. At the summit later today, I’ll be presenting a session on cloud security at scale and the data protections that are in place for our Google Apps customers.

If you’re not able to attend the conference, you can visit our Google Apps Trust site and find more information on the security and data protection measures in Google Apps. Many of them are highlighted in our security white paper and data center video tour. We take extreme measures protect our users data and we are constantly innovating to develop new features and capabilities in these areas.

Security first: How Google Apps security helped our customers go Google

At Google, two things that are important to us are hearing directly from customers and designing and building applications with data protection features in mind.

Today, we get the pleasure of combining the two as we host a Google Apps Customer Advisory Forum focused on security and compliance. These forums are one of the many ways that we interact with customers, share our plans, discuss their priorities and together help shape the future of Google Apps. Customers will share why the security and compliance features of Google Apps led them to Go Google, and how we can further enhance our products in these areas.

Many of the security and data protection measures in Google Apps are outlined in our security white paper. We’re the first major cloud provider to offer 2-step verification, default https encryption, attachment viewing and mobile device management in the browser, and many other security and administrative capabilities.

For additional information about the security and privacy of Google Apps, please visit our Google Apps Trust site where you can see a video that highlights the data protections that are in place in our data centers.

Posted by Adam Swidler, Sr. Manager, Google Enterprise

Security First: Security and data protection in Google data centers

Home-Based Businesses to Adopt Cloud Services

Surviving the economic pressures of today has been difficult for most businesses, especially the smallest. But despite the economic downturn, Home-Based Business (HBB) appears to be a high growth sector for employment in the U.S. market. Moreover, American HBBs are showing strong signs of sustained growth plans into the foreseeable future.

According to the latest market study by AMI-Partners, there was an 11 percent increase in those who started their home-based business due to corporate downsizing last year.

When some employees are downsized from their employment at larger companies, they are motivated to create their own future employment path -- by starting their own company, based out of their home office.

"What's interesting is that 80 percent of those who became HBBs because of downsizing from a larger company do not plan to return to the corporate workforce," says Jessica Efta, manager of market development at AMI-Partners.

Committed to Ongoing Self-Employment 

Apparently, many survey respondents say they plan to stay HBBs for the long term. Utilizing today's numerous productivity-enhancing business technologies, a small business owner does not need a retail storefront or traditional office building to conduct a successful commercial operation.

Last year, sole proprietorship businesses were two thirds of the home-based business market -- this year it is only one third of the total market, indicating that some home-based businesses are growing and hiring new employees.

This trend will likely continue. Over the last year, there was a 10 percent jump in respondents who say they have plans to grow their business and hire more employees.

Business Technology and Cloud Services Adoption

According to the AMI assessment, reported revenues became positive for HBBs in 2010 and projections show positive growth expectations for 2011. As average employee size increased, so did the average PC use per company.

Cloud computing is another area of growing interest among HBBs. One quarter of U.S. home-based business owners are interested in procuring hosted applications -- nearly double the amount of their nearest peer group (small businesses operating out of a commercial setting, with fewer than 5 employees).

Considering the 16 million home-based businesses already in the U.S. market, this translates into a significant new market development opportunity for on-demand managed cloud service providers.

Public Cloud Computing and Managed Hosting Services

The promise of cloud computing and application hosting benefits are already delivering practical solutions to very real business problems, according to the latest market study by In-Stat. In fact, many small businesses are using managed cloud services as their primary method to solve a variety of IT requirements.

"Web hosting and data storage are the most obvious IT needs that can be addressed by public cloud services" says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat.

"With the advent of Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings many businesses are realizing that much of their IT needs can be fulfilled without the need for expensive networking equipment and high-end computers."

Moreover, many small businesses are now re-visiting the use of thin clients for most of their employees, as the need for increased computer processing power is rendered moot by the cloud.

SMB IT Applications Transition to the Cloud

For the SOHO and small business market, there is considerable opportunity for a variety of cloud service providers. According to In-Stat’s latest market assessment, small business spending on public cloud services in 2010 was roughly $3 billion.

As a direct result of this growing demand, In-Stat forecast that public cloud computing revenues are set to increase well over 100 percent from 2010 to 2014.

This significant increase is changing the IT infrastructure paradigm in small office and home office (1-4 employees) and small business (5-99 employees) environments – it’s also transforming business technology application scenarios.

In-Stat’s research shows that SOHO and small businesses will comprise roughly 65 percent of the public cloud computing market in 2014.

Hybrid-Cloud Appeals to the Larger Employers

Mid-sized (100-999 employees) and enterprise (1000 and more employees) businesses have other issues to consider -- primarily security and the cost of transition, when evaluating their choices for cloud computing solutions.

For these companies the choice between public and private clouds will dominate their decision-making processes.

In-Stat believes that private clouds give businesses that are securing sensitive data an alternative to the public cloud, as they can realize cost advantages and improved utilization of IT equipment over a traditional physical infrastructure deployment.

A great number of enterprises are running virtualization software on their current infrastructure, and they’re already recognizing the cost savings yielded by utilizing cloud infrastructure.

For those companies not already utilizing a private cloud platform, In-Stat believes that the public cloud offers an appealing demand-based payment model and scalable infrastructure solution.

In the end, some large companies will very likely choose the hybrid cloud approach -- moving their mission-critical information and applications to a private cloud, and then partnering with a public cloud infrastructure service provider for their other remaining application needs.

Cloud and Managed Services Spending Forecast

Gartner recently shared their top technology predictions. They said that increased transparency -- and the need to drive business value -- are bringing disruptive change to IT organizations in 2011 and beyond. One of their key findings: cloud computing will enable many organizations to exploit internal capabilities to establish new business service revenue streams.

Other informed industry analysts share a similar point of view.

Businesses are increasingly moving their computing and collaboration applications to the cloud, and their shift in IT spending reflects that change in behavior. A recent market study by In-Stat forecasts cloud computing and managed hosting spending by U.S. businesses will surpass $13 billion in 2014, up from less than 3 billion today.

“Although spending across all sectors and size of business is projected to grow, there are some segments where growth will be staggering,” says Greg Potter, Research Analyst at In-Stat.

Apparently, based on In-Stat’s assessment, the professional services and healthcare verticals will see the largest growth in spending on cloud computing services -- increasing at a rate of over 124 percent between 2010 and 2014.

In-Stat’s market study findings include the following:

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) spending will increase 112 percent between 2010 and 2014.
• Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) spending will approach $4 billion in 2014.
• Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) spending will increase 113 percent to roughly $460 million in 2014.
• Small office/home office (SOHO) businesses are leading in the adoption of cloud computing services.

Google Apps just got smarter: introducing the Apps Marketplace’s new EDU category

The education technology space has seen an explosion of new offerings in the past few years. What has been missing is a centralized platform for schools and universities to easily evaluate and utilize web apps. Today we are excited to launch an education category in the Google Apps Marketplace designed specifically to help schools and universities easily discover and deploy new web applications that integrate with their existing Google Apps accounts.

The new education category includes over 20 applications from 19 vendors ranging from learning management systems (LMS) to student tools and teaching aids – all of which integrate with Google Apps for Education. Each app can be accessed through single sign-on and the Google universal navigation bar and many offer deeper integrations that synchronize with Google Calendar and Documents.

This new education category will make it easier for schools to have more web apps at their fingertips, including popular existing apps such as Aviary, Grockit, and LearnBoost as well as the new apps launching today.



Learning Management
Now faculty can bring their classroom management to the cloud with apps such as:

• Haiku: an LMS that allows teachers to create media-rich class websites, give and auto-grade assessments, annotate assignments and interact online with students.
• LearnBoost: an all-in-one gradebook and lesson plan software for teachers that includes tools to visualize data and student performance.
• And other classroom management tools such as eduARC, Class.io, PlanbookEdu, ThinkWave SIS and Applane SIS, gradebooks such as Engrade and ThinkWave Gradebook, and assessment tools such as EduBrite and RCampus iRubric.

Learning Aids
Teachers can help student learn more effectively with web-based learning aids like:

• BrainPOP: an app that offers animated, curriculum-based content that enhances student learning in numerous ways, from illustrating complex concepts to reviewing before a test.
• DreamBox: a tool that helps students learn math through interactive lessons and gives teachers reporting dashboards to monitor individual student progress.
• And other teaching aids like Grockit, BuzzMath and LearnThatWord.

Student and Admin Tools
Administrators and students can tackle other education needs with even more tools:

• EasyBib: an automatic bibliography composer that helps students format sources quickly and accurately to cite in papers.
• Digication: an online e-Portfolio creation tool that helps students share and showcase their work and achievements online.
• And other student and admin tools like Aviary, Edutone Sakai Connector, Edutone Moodle Connector, Leveled Library and Rcampus e-Portfolio.

Thousands of universities, colleges and K-12 schools around the world with over 10 million users already deploy Google Apps in their classrooms. The applications we're introducing today into the new Marketplace education category are just the beginning. We look forward to expanding and strengthening our offerings as we continue to add new education tools, including web applications by Blackboard, Knewton and the Khan Academy already on the way.

To learn more about the education category of the Apps Marketplace – and hear directly from the developers of these applications – register to attend live Google webinars and Q&A on Wednesday, February 2nd.

Manage your school in the cloud with the Google Apps Marketplace
Featuring classroom management tools Haiku and LearnBoost
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
10:00 a.m. PST / 1:00 p.m. EST
Register here

Help students learn more effectively with the Google Apps Marketplace
Featuring web-based learning tools Grockit, BrainPOP, and DreamBox
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
4:00 p.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. EST
Register here

Posted by Dennis Troper, Director of Product Management, Google Apps Marketplace

Nothing but the web

This year cloud computing went mainstream, and the conversations moved beyond "this is a way to cut costs" to "this is a better way to run my business." While many IT vendors have now adopted (or co-opted) the term “cloud computing” to describe a wide variety of technologies, most don’t deliver on the true promise of the cloud. Hosting single-tenant server products in a data center is not cloud computing. Nor is requiring customers to install thick client software. These solutions lock-in customers to multi-year release cycles, leave them with the significant costs of managing client software, and expose sensitive data on insecure devices. In 2011, we are committed to moving beyond the current notion of cloud computing to bring customers to a world we call 100% web.

100% web
In a 100% web world, business applications are delivered over the Internet and accessed in a web browser. The applications and the data are stored centrally and are designed to be served from a highly scalable, secure and reliable multi-tenant infrastructure. Devices like notebooks, tablets, and smartphones are portals to the data that help people be productive from anywhere, at any time. Upgrades aren’t necessary to get access to the latest innovation, just refresh the browser. Businesses no longer own or manage servers and client software: they purchase integrated applications and development platforms from others, and now devote their valuable time to business logic and features that create competitive advantage.

We are investing in a variety of technologies so that companies can be productive with nothing but the web:

• Google Apps is the world’s most popular suite of web-based communication and collaboration applications, and includes email, instant messaging, calendaring, documents, sites, video sharing, Postini services and dozens more. We will continue to improve and expand our offerings to bring more powerful technologies to our more than three million customers.
• Google App Engine lets companies build their own applications for internal or external use and host them on Google infrastructure. This allows for faster and easier development, virtually no ongoing maintenance, and the ability to easily scale to meet capacity needs at short notice. App Engine already sees more than 1 billion page views per day from more than 150,000 active applications, and we will be launching App Engine for Business more broadly in 2011.
• Google Apps Marketplace provides the other applications customers need to build their business on the web, integrated with Google Apps and installed in a few clicks. The marketplace will continue to grow beyond its 250 applications and make it easier for businesses to find, evaluate, and purchase the best non-Google applications on the web.
• Android is one of the fastest growing mobile platforms in the world and designed to drive innovation and choice. Companies can now manage Android, iPhone, Windows Mobile, and other ActiveSync devices right from the browser. And the Android team is hard at work on a new version of the platform that addresses the unique aspects of tablet form factors and use cases.
• Google Chrome is an open source web browser developed to provide users with a fast, simple, and secure web-browsing experience with modern web applications. Chrome has become 300% faster in just two years, and adoption has tripled over the last year. This week we announced new features for Chrome to make managing enterprise deployments easy. Also, companies using older versions of Internet Explorer for their legacy applications can use Google Chrome Frame to access modern web apps that rely on technologies like HTML5.
• Google Chrome OS is a new operating system designed from the ground up for 100% web. By building an operating system that is essentially a browser, we can make computers faster, much simpler and fundamentally more secure. Last Tuesday, we announced the Chrome notebook Pilot program (apply to pilot) and Chrome devices for business will be available for purchase in 2011.

While many companies are able to jump right to 100% web, we understand that other larger businesses have substantial investments in legacy technology. So we’re also investing in solutions that bridge existing technologies to the world of 100% web:

• Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office allows people to continue to use the familiar Office interface (including Office 2003, 2007, and 2010), while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy. It will be available soon.
• Google Message Continuity is a very cost-effective form of disaster recovery that lets Microsoft Exchange customers leverage the reliability of Gmail to back up their servers.

100% web is a dramatic shift from how companies have traditionally purchased, deployed, and managed IT. But the more we talk with customers the more we realize that this is the change they’ve been waiting for. It is the ultimate extension of the cloud computing model, and it brings substantial benefits for companies that no other IT model can provide in terms of simplicity, cost, security, flexibility, and pace of innovation. If 2010 was the year of the cloud, 2011 looks to be the year of nothing but the web.

Posted by Dave Girouard, President, Google Enterprise

Widespread Private and Public Cloud Adoption

Cisco released the final installment of the Cisco Connected World Report, an international study about the behavioral trends of workers in accessing information anywhere, with any device, and the ability of information technology (IT) professionals to address their needs.

The latest results focus on data center, virtualization, and cloud computing trends, and evolving IT roles, in the context of increasingly mobile and distributed workforces.

The study found that global IT professionals are creating new job opportunities by increasing collaboration among teams in the data center, and adopting new technologies such as virtualization and cloud computing. But they’re also struggling to maintain security and data governance as employees demand more offsite access to networks and information.

Comparing Cloud Adoption Rates by Country
For example, across the 13 countries in the global study, 52 percent of the IT professionals stated they use or plan to use cloud computing, while much higher cloud adoption rates are predicted in Brazil (70 percent), China (69 percent) and India (76 percent).

Across the world, respondents rated the following as their top data center priorities for the next three years: improve agility and speed in deploying business applications (33 percent), better manage resource capacity to align demand and capacity (31 percent), increase data center resilience (19 percent), and reduce power and cooling costs (17 percent).

This report adds to the initial survey results released in October, which revealed that workers want flexible access to corporate information from any mobile device, anywhere, anytime, and to the results released in November -- which revealed disconnects in worker expectations around information access, IT policies and employee awareness of policies.

The latest survey results examine how IT managers are evolving their data centers and taking advantage of new technologies, while working to accommodate trends in the workplace like social media, device proliferation, video and an increasingly mobile workforce.

Summary of Cloud Computing Trends

• Cloud use today: Across the study's 13 countries, only an average of 18 percent of respondents are using cloud computing today, while an additional 34 percent plan to use the cloud.
• Top cloud users today: Brazil (27 percent), Germany (27 percent), India (26 percent), U.S. (23 percent) and Mexico (22 percent) top the list of countries that are already taking advantage of cloud computing, exceeding the average (18 percent) across all countries.
• Future cloud use: A large majority (88 percent) of IT respondents predict that they will be storing some percentage of their company's data and applications in private or public clouds within the next three years.
• Private clouds: One in three IT professionals said more than half of their company's data and applications will be in private clouds within the next three years. Private cloud adoption was predicted to be higher in Mexico (71 percent), Brazil (53 percent) and the U.S. (46 percent.)
• Timing for public clouds: Of those respondents that will use public clouds, one of every three (34 percent) plan to deploy within one year, and 44 percent predicted their companies would use public clouds within the next two years; 21 percent are expected to do so within two to three years.

Shared Vision for the Future of Hosted Collaboration

With the increased reliance on IT from business leaders, it's important for CIOs to understand the concerns of CEOs and the implications they may have on IT, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Business leaders see very uncertain times ahead in 2011, and they must defend growth despite falling business and consumer confidence," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012 -- substantively improving how companies collaborate is one example.

BT and Cisco have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services.

The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning has helped them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach.

BT and Cisco jointly addressed the ongoing transition to hosted collaboration, unified communications and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services, including the developing demand for IP telephony as a cloud-based service, at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010.

Collaboration: New Realities, Rules and Opportunities
Stephen Bruce, head of UCC and Mobility portfolios for multinational corporations at BT Global Services and Matt Rowan, manager of partner operations at Cisco, discussed the new realities, rules, and opportunities that stem from a cloud computing-based collaboration and unified communications strategy, including the implications of a utility-priced service.

Bruce said, "As more of our customers contemplate their end-of-life traditional telephony environments and look to embrace the cloud, they are obviously interested in the notion of moving their IP telephony applications into the cloud. The carefully planned transition to cloud-based IP telephony can help customers dramatically reduce upfront investment costs while accelerating the adoption of IP telephony and unified communications on a global scale."

Rowan said, "As businesses analyze their options related to the consumption of collaboration solutions, cloud models offer compelling value. We are seeing enormous demand for cloud based collaboration solutions. Customers are asking for a low risk, minimally disruptive transition, and I believe BT offers a solid answer."

BT, in collaboration with Cisco, announced its hosted unified communications and IP telephony service to business customers in the U.S. in June 2010.

The service allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organizations, using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies. BT can rapidly deploy services to both large and small sites, offering business customers significant savings as well as operational predictability.

The new Google Search Appliance - a bridge to the cloud

In the last year, businesses have started using cloud-based applications from Google and other technology providers at an accelerated rate. While many organizations still have information that resides in on-premise systems, more and more important business information today is living in the cloud, in collaborative tools like Google Apps—now used by more than 3 million businesses — and services like Twitter. Starting today, Cloud Connect for the Google Search Appliance lets workers search across both on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box, delivering more comprehensive results and improving productivity. We’ve also added a few other handy features that make it easier to collaborate and find information faster.

Cloud Connect for the Google Search Appliance
Cloud Connect displays relevant, personalized results from Google Docs and Google Sites alongside results from more traditional repositories, like file shares and content management systems. Easier access to collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and sites with Cloud Connect speeds up how quickly coworkers can complete projects. Cloud Connect also lets users search content from Twitter, as well as blogs and industry websites via Google Site Search.

For organizations such as Delta Hotels and Avago that have already deployed both Google Apps and the Google Search Appliance, the new Cloud Connect feature brings “universal search” to another level, with more accessible business systems and content now spanning from cloud to ground.

People Search
This new version also helps foster faster collaboration between employees with the addition of People Search, which makes it easy to find experts and contact coworkers who are related to a search query, right from the search results page. For example, a search for “field marketing” would return a list of field marketing team members alongside other relevant content. Organizations can index personnel information like department, interests, expertise and location, and there’s an LDAP connector to help get People Search up and running quickly.

Dynamic Navigation and more
Our new Dynamic Navigation feature allows users to drill down into search results based on search modifiers for their queries, and Active-Active Mirroring improves reliability by spreading search traffic across multiple boxes. Dynamic Navigation was a top user request and we’re glad to be able to add it. In addition, the Search Appliance now supports Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 content out of the box without the need for additional connectors.

As you move your business to the cloud, the Google Search Appliance’s new features can be an important bridge between on-premise and cloud-based systems, while enhancing employee collaboration. You can learn more about this latest release at www.google.com/gsa.

Posted by Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Enterprise Search

The Fundamental Power of Cloud Services

We live in a more connected and fast-moving world than ever before. Small business start-ups overtake established incumbents to dominate their markets with increasing speed. Developing countries leapfrog massive landline telecom investments and jump straight to mobile communications.

While our growing interconnectedness brings many benefits, it also sometimes means greater vulnerability and a heightened sensitivity to risk.

Increasingly we look to enabling technology to support both our personal and professional lives. As individuals, we expect instantaneous and ubiquitous access to communications, data, content, and applications.

We increasingly look to social media to inform our personal and business decisions. As business leaders, we expect technology to deliver cost efficiencies, improve customer experience, drive revenue growth, and foster innovation. At the same time, we expect constant availability and end-to-end security.

Evolving Beyond the Legacy IT Models
This combination of rising expectations and a rapid rate of change challenge traditional
approaches for information technology. Business cycles keep shortening, but business system complexity keeps escalating. Traditional information technology solutions are too often described as equal parts business accelerator and business obstructer.

A new approach is needed -- to free individuals and organizations from the constraints of traditional information technology. Many forward-looking executives now believe that Cloud Services are part of the answer and will play a central role in the next era of Business Technology evolution.

Cloud is a new computing paradigm. In Cloud, IT resources and services are abstracted from the underlying infrastructure and provided on-demand and at scale in a multi-tenant environment.

Cloud Services have several fundamental characteristics:

• Information technology, from infrastructure to applications, is delivered and consumed as a service over the network.
• Services operate consistently, regardless of the underlying systems.
• Capacity and performance scale to meet demand and are invoiced by use.
• Services are shared across multiple organizations, allowing the same underlying systems and applications to meet the demands of a variety of interests, simultaneously and securely.
• Applications, services, and data can be accessed through a wide range of connected devices (e.g., smart phones, laptops, and other mobile internet devices).

Cloud encompasses several variations of service models (i.e., IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS) and deployment models (i.e., private, public, hybrid, and community clouds).

In the coming weeks and months we’ll be sharing some insightful customer use case examples of where and how cloud computing services can be applied to deliver business-oriented benefits.

Getting public opinion on the cloud

We’ve seen quite a few state and local governments make the switch to Google Apps in recent months. Cities from Orlando to Los Angeles, state agencies in Kansas and New Mexico, and an ever-increasing number of counties across the country have all gone Google. These agencies have found making the move to Google a great way to cut costs ⚊ a top priority in these days of budget shortfalls ⚊ and to gain capabilities like seamless collaboration, “anywhere” access, and other benefits of cloud computing.

We were curious to find out what people across the country think about their local government’s adoption of new technologies, so we asked the Clarus Research Group, a non-partisan survey research firm based in DC, to poll 1,000 U.S. voters nationally to get their opinion on government technology issues.

The results are out today, and they show that 92% of U.S. voters believe “public agencies should make better use of new technologies to cut government spending and improve efficiency.”

That’s certainly how we feel here at Google, and we’re glad that a clear majority of polled voters also appreciate the need to invest in 21st century technology in the public sector.

The results also show people think email is a great place to start. When given a list of different technologies that could make a difference, three-quarters of those polled thought that “quicker and more efficient email systems” would make government workers more productive. Google email is fast and reliable ⚊ providing 99.9% uptime, and access from any computer or mobile device to allow government employees to be productive anytime, anywhere.

Government employees everywhere are getting more efficiency for less money with Google Apps. Bigger email inboxes and collaboration tools like video chat and shared documents are just a few of the tools within Apps that can make public employees more productive and collaborative.

Government IT staffs benefit from Google’s expert security team and processes, best-in-class disaster recovery at no additional cost, and a dramatic reduction in time and dollars spent maintaining and patching software & hardware. That is time and money that can be dedicated to more strategic priorities.

If you work for a local government agency, we’d like to hear from you. If you’re an interested citizen who’s part of the 92%, then ask your elected officials to take a serious look at new ways of computing that can cut costs while increasing capabilities. You can even point them to this website. You’ll be doing your part to equip your local officials with better tools to do their jobs, while saving (your) taxpayer dollars. It’s a win-win.

Posted by Dan Israel, Public Sector Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise

Google Apps and the cloud: Maximum economies of scale

Editor's note: This post is the last in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture. - Ed.

The first post in this series focused on faster access to innovation and last week’s entry described how Google Apps can drive higher reliability and security. This final installment explains advantages achieved from the scale at which the Google Apps infrastructure operates.

Maximum Economies of Scale
An Internet-scale cloud infrastructure achieves economies of scale that can produce tremendous cost savings. Rather than buying off-the-shelf completed servers, Google buys raw computer parts in massive quantities, and assembles custom servers with few unnecessary components. Not only do we save costs on hardware, we also minimize overhead by consolidating on a very small number of server configurations that can be managed in bulk globally at an extremely efficient ratio of staff to machines. On a per-user basis, these economies of scale allow Google Apps to operate at higher levels of efficiency than can be achieved by customers themselves.

Further cost savings are also made possible by applications that run in the browser. Not only can customers forgo licensing expensive client software, but browser-based applications also require much less administrative overhead than traditional software or “software plus services”. IT departments don’t need to deploy patches or upgrades for web-based applications, and since improvements roll out gradually and continuously instead of in large disruptive batches every several years, companies can also save on change management costs.

Cloud computing – hosted, web-based applications built on shared infrastructure – can achieve breakthroughs in the pace of innovation, reliability, security and economies of scale. As you consider alternatives to address your organization’s messaging and collaboration needs, it pays to understand how different technologies are actually delivered. Over two million businesses considered their own options and have truly moved to the cloud with Google Apps.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT


Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Google Apps and the cloud: Improved reliability and security

Editor's note: This post is the second in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture. - Ed.

Last week’s post kicked off our series on the advantages of Google’s cloud, and described how our infrastructure gives customers faster access to innovation than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and “software plus services”. Here, part two focuses on how Google Apps is designed from the ground up to provide higher reliability and better security.

Improved Reliability and Security
Through synchronous replication, data and user actions in Google Apps are mirrored in nearly real-time across multiple data centers. If one data center becomes unavailable for any reason, the system is designed to instantly fall back to a secondary data center with no user-visible interruption in service. For Google Apps customers, our recovery point objective (RPO) design target is zero, and our recovery time objective (RTO) design target is instant failover. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Groups, Google Docs and Google Sites have a 99.9% uptime guarantee, and our actual reliability has been significantly higher than this commitment. Attempting to replicate this level of reliability with on-premises or hosted technology is tremendously costly and complex. Even very large enterprises with state-of-the-art disaster recovery systems typically target a recovery time of one hour and accept the loss of one hour’s worth of data.

On the security front, Google’s large investments in physical and process-based security are passed on to customers. First, Google is able to hire many of the worlds leading security experts to protect our systems and conduct cutting-edge security research. Our data centers are hardened with many of the latest measures in security precautions, including biometric access controls and multi-tiered security perimeters. Furthermore, Google has implemented a multi-layered security process protocol designed to help keep customer data safe. Our processes have been independently verified in a successful third-party SAS 70 Type II audit to verify our confidentiality, integrity and availability of customer data. Finally, Google is able to efficiently manage security updates across our nearly homogeneous global cloud computing infrastructure, so customers aren’t exposed to known vulnerabilities until they install security patches themselves.

Browser-based applications also help keep sensitive data more secure. Unlike traditional software, when a user is finished using a web-based application, minimal data is left on the machine that could be compromised. Also, when employees can securely access their data from any browser, they’re less likely to store data locally on unsecured end-points like thumb drives. In a world where one out of ten laptops go missing in the first year¹ and 66% of workers report having lost a thumb drive², making data securely available from the browser and minimizing the amount of sensitive data stored on devices is an effective security strategy.

Next week I’ll conclude this series by sharing how Google’s economies of scale can help companies reduce costs and free up technology resources for higher value initiatives that can make businesses more competitive.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, April 22nd, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT


1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation & The Computer Security Institute’s annual Computer Crime and Security Survey, 2005.
2. “Thumb Drives? The New Portable and Convenient Way to Lose Data”, 2007.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Laying the foundation for a new Google Docs

Over the last year, we’ve been hard at work rewriting the infrastructure underlying Google Docs to take advantage of the latest advances in modern browsers. Our updated codebase will help us deliver richer functionality more quickly, and over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out a preview of the new editors.



New document and spreadsheet features

You shouldn’t have to give up any routine features when you switch to web-based applications, and we’re addressing many longstanding requests across Google Docs with this release that were not feasible with older browser technology. Documents support better formatting options like a margin ruler, better numbering and bullets, and more flexible image placement. Spreadsheets now have a familiar formula editing bar, cell auto-complete, drag-and-drop columns and more.

Higher fidelity document import

It should be easy to move files saved on your computer to the cloud, so we made our document upload feature much stronger. Imported documents keep their original structure more accurately, so you can spend less time adjusting files you move to the cloud.

Speed and responsiveness

Browser-based applications shouldn’t force you to compromise on performance either, and our new architecture is much faster than before. Working with very large spreadsheets is even snappy now. Web apps really can feel just as fluid as traditional software.

Faster collaboration

Collaboration has always been Google Docs’ forte, and the new codebase is letting us leap forward here, too. The applications support up to 50 simultaneous editors, and documents let you see other people’s changes character-by-character as they type. Finally, we’ve added multi-user editing to drawings too, so now you can build flow charts, schematics, and other kinds of diagrams collaboratively.

The new Google Docs editors will take advantage of faster rendering engines in modern browsers as well as new web standards like HTML5. As a result, we need to temporarily remove offline support for Docs starting May 3rd, 2010. We know that this is an important feature for some of you, and we are working hard to bring a new and improved HTML5-based offline option back to Google Docs. Please note that this change only concerns Google Docs. We will continue to support offline access for Gmail and Google Calendar. To learn more, please see our Help Center.

Over the next few days, users will be able to start creating collaborative drawings from the Docs list. For Google Apps customers with the control panel option set to “enable new pre-release features,” users will have the option to enable the new document editor in the ‘Document settings’ page, and activate the new spreadsheet editor with the “New version” link at the top of any spreadsheet.

These improvements to Google Docs are designed to help businesses like yours move to the cloud faster and be more productive than ever before. We look forward to hearing what you think.

To learn more about these new features, check out our on-demand webinar.

Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager, Google Apps

Editor's note: To learn more, check out the Google Docs blog for deep dives on the new editors for Documents, Spreadsheets, and Drawings. Original links to webinar registration removed on 04/23/2010.

Update (05/05/2010): We’ve received a lot of great questions about the new Google Docs editors in our forums, blog comments, and webinars. Check out this post on the Google Docs blog for answers to the most frequent questions.

Google Apps and the cloud: Faster access to innovation

Editor's Note: This post is the first in a three-part series on the benefits of Google Apps’ cloud-computing architecture.

“Cloud computing” has become a trendy buzzword, and some traditional technology vendors are even using the term though their solutions are still rooted in legacy architectures. In this three-part series, I’ll share how Google’s multi-tenant, Internet-scale architecture and browser-based applications produce three key advantages: the fastest innovation, improved reliability and security, and maximum economies of scale. Today I’ll focus on how Google’s innovation exceeds what’s possible with on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications, and “software plus services”.

Faster access to innovation for higher productivity
The web is the epicenter of innovation, and Google’s multi-tenant infrastructure is designed so we can push improvements to our entire customer base on short iteration cycles. We can deliver new functionality on a weekly basis, or faster, because our systems are able to distribute updates so efficiently. In 2009 alone, we launched over 100 improvements, and customers didn’t need to manage any upgrades or patches. In contrast, businesses tend to update traditional server software every five to seven years due to long release cycles from vendors and the cost and complexity businesses face implementing upgrades, especially when more powerful servers are required, like 64-bit hardware.

Browser-based applications are another key ingredient in our recipe for rapid innovation. When we launch new features to our web applications, users automatically get these improvements just by refreshing their browsers. Our mobile browser applications also get new features without software updates. With traditional technology and “software plus services”, client software is an innovation bottleneck. Even after back-end systems can support new features, users don’t get new functionality in those environments until the software on their computers and mobile phones have been upgraded, which can be an expensive and labor-intensive project.

Feedback and anonymous usage statistics from hundreds of millions of users in the real world also help us bring stress-tested innovation to business customers at an unprecedented pace. From our consumer user base, we quickly learn which new features would be useful in the business context, refine those features, and make them available to Google Apps customers with minimal delay.

Continuous innovation powered by the cloud has another advantage over traditional technology cycles: employees adapt to a continuous stream of manageable improvements better than they tolerate large, disruptive batches of change. Gradual iterations in bite-sized chunks substantially reduce change-management challenges. Conversely, employees are subjected to a painful re-learning cycle each time companies upgrade traditional software.

Dramatically faster innovation helps employees be more productive, but that’s not all Google’s cloud has to offer. In part two of this series, next week I’ll focus on how Google Apps can offer better security and higher reliability than on-premises technology, single-tenant hosted applications and “software plus services”.

If you’re interested in going a level deeper, we invite you to geek out with us on Thursday, April 22nd, when we’ll be holding a webcast to explore the advantages of Google’s cloud. Hope you can join us!

Geek Out on the Cloud-Based Infrastructure of Google Apps
Thursday, April 22, 2010
2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT


Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager