“The future of our products is less about having any specific vision for what you should be able to do in the product and is more about solving problems that users have,” Coleman told eWEEK. “Some [solutions] will eventually stick and those are the ones that become our new products or change the future or our products.”

As GMail continues to become an increasingly robust email solution, Google Apps productivity tools have officially attained enterprise-ready status. Google received a SAS 70 Type II certification, meaning that independent security analysts have evaluated Google’s technical process and determined that Apps controls are operating effectively.

Google’s commitment to creating and improving upon secure, innovative, intuitive applications benefits more than just their customers. In a recent blog post, Eran Feigenbaum, Google Apps Director of Security, admits “we use the very same services that we offer to our users for our own email, documents, project team sites and calendars.” ]]> http://blog.ltech.com/2008/11/13/apps-is-officially-enterprise-ready/feed http://blog.ltech.com/2008/11/03/27 http://blog.ltech.com/2008/11/03/27#comments Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:44:17 +0000 Kelly Glynn http://blog.ltech.com/?p=27

Last week, Google announced the release of its latest creation, Labs for Google Apps, a set of experimental tools for Apps users. Labs allows businesses and schools to try out freshly-created Apps features and provide feedback before the final release.

The concepts of experimentation and rapid adoption cycles are often frowned upon in enterprise technology. However Google is determined to change the way businesses view technological progress with Labs for Google Apps.

“Here at Google we believe that experimentation is a good thing - even in the enterprise space. Some of our best ideas have emerged from experiments.” says Apps Product Manager Gabe Cohen in his blog post on Labs for Google Apps.

Eventually the platform will be open to third-party developers to build applications for the many businesses using Apps.

For those concerned with the reliability of Google Apps due to several service outages in the last few months, Google announced a new 99.9% service level agreement for GMail and all other Apps features as well.

With the economy in poor condition, Google has the unique opportunity to move offline office suite users over to the less expensive cloud. Companies that have been bound to Microsoft and IBM for years may be difficult to sway, but if Google can prove that Apps is the innovative, reliable service that everyone needs, they may have a decent shot.

The relatively new concept of the cloud model makes some organizations wary. Up until recently, risk-averse companies and large established enterprises have seen little reason to ditch their trusted offline office suites and move their entire technical infrastructure onto the internet. But now, the economic recession and subsequent panic are sparking an interest in the lower costs of SaaS suites.

The cloud is now appealing to more than just small start-ups who can’t afford Microsoft’s expensive software. Larger companies are seeing the benefits of lower prices, the ability to defer costs, and added capabilities without added investments.

The IT world is not only recognizing cloud computing as a fast, cheap, capable solution, but also a strategic one. Research firm Gartner, which recently acknowledged Google as a leader in e-mail security, identified cloud computing as number 2 in their Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009. According to Gartner, the biggest benefit of the cloud is the “built-in elasticity and scalability” it offers.

As more proof that cloud computing is gaining popularity, Google Apps continues to slowly encroach on Microsoft’s territory. Vivek Kundra, Washington DC’s CTO, moved all of the District’s municipal employees to Apps after finding it to be a cheaper and more viable solution. For many, the readily available data, collaboration tools, and mobile access features of Google Apps are looking more attractive than ever.

While its too soon to tell if a mass adoption will ensue, we can at least expect to see many more companies giving the cloud some serious consideration.

The District’s 38,000 employees are making the switch from Microsoft Office to Google Apps. This summer, DC’s Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, signed a deal with Google worth an estimated $500,000 per year. As part of the contract, the District will drop the installed Microsoft Office Suite for Google’s web-based email and collaboration tools.

With the current state of the economy, everyone is looking for ways to cut costs. After studying Google’s cloud computing model, Kundra determined that its a significantly cheaper solution with the same powerful technology as Microsoft.

Although research agency Gartner reports that Microsoft still has 90%-95% of the office applications market, this switch marks an important win for Google. State and local governments are generally the last market to adopt new technologies, proving that Google Apps is quickly becoming a trusted office suite since its release in 2006.

This move positions Google as a growing threat to Microsoft.

Sources:
Google Apps Unseats Incumbent Microsoft Office in Washington, DC
Washington DC latest to drop Microsoft for web apps

With spam rates and security threats constantly increasing, e-mail providers must be able to define new strategies and invest in resources that will detect these issues. Gartner’s report evaluates multiple e-mail vendors on their ability to develop and execute an innovative plan.

Gartner divides the vendors into 4 quadrants: leaders, challengers, visionaries, and niche players. The leaders, which include Google, have the most complete vision and best execution. Gartner commends Google on their use of resources, easy-to-use interface, improved DLP dictionary capabilities, web security, and international presence.

Official Google Enterprise Blog
Register to view the report.

Many angry customers found the downtime unacceptable and doubted that Google would compensate them. However, in an uncharacteristic blog post, Google apologized to their users and ensured that they were listening to all of the disapproving emails, posts, and phone calls.

In order to make reparations for these system interruptions, Google is now providing customers with SLA credit for August, applied automatically to their account. Google is also determined to improve communications when outages occur. They are currently developing a dashboard that will provide system information, including a description of the issue, user impact, and regular updates on time-to-resolution. If your business requires more information, Google will release a formal incident report within 48 hours that describes the problem in business and technical terms, as well as steps being taken to solve the problem and prevent it from recurring.

Apps Premier administrators received an email Wednesday detailing the 15-day credit and Google’s commitment to keeping users informed, providing faster solutions, and minimizing future outages.

T-Mobile will be the first carrier to present a cell phone with the new Android software, which will make its debut as early as next month. The phone, referred to as the “Dream”, will be manufactured by HTC and rival so-called smartphones with a touch screen, a full keyboard, internet access, and a host of unique applications to choose from.

The platform, developed by a group of 30+ technology and mobile companies called The Open Handset Alliance, includes a mobile operating system, middleware and key applications. Google’s Android page provides documentation for developers to create their own mobile applications. The new Android software will cement Google’s presence in the lucrative mobile market.

With the increasing use of mobile phones as internet devices, Google expects their Android phones to eventually outsell PCs.

Watch for the HTC Dream in Fall 2008!

HTC Dream Site - Check out specs, comment in the forum, and sign up for notifications
Android Dream on YouTube - Live Demo from AndroidCommunity.com
“Google’s Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web” - Wired.com

Google announced an upgraded version of the Google Search Appliance with improved search quality, new features, and an index capacity of 10 million documents - all in one box.

Like previous models, the new GSA offers the same high-quality search experience, but its new simplified, scalable architecture eliminates the need for multiple servers, making it easier to deploy and maintain as enterprise content grows.

New end-user features include personalized results and email alerts, enhanced security elements, advanced biasing based on metadata, and results in 40 different languages.

The new version will be available early next month.

Google.com - Google Search Appliance New Product Features
Official Google Enterprise Blog
New Google Search Appliance on ZDNet

Google … announced 13 new education customers yesterday, including George Washington University, the University of Virginia and Indiana University.

Great news from our friends at Google! Google Apps for Edu is really taking off. We’ve had a deluge of orders from customers in the education space, from public school districts, to major universities.

Google Apps provides a tremendous value for educational institutions.  With a low total cost of ownership, and a great feature set, it gives organizations an easy and powerful way to service their students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Why are educational institutions great candidates as early adopters?  Look at the users, as my quote in the article refers to:

“We’re seeing interest in this space in general and specifically with Google Apps,” he said. “There’s a lot of excitement. … These are students that are used to Gmail. They love Google. They’re used to hosted services. They’re not corporate email users.”

If you would like to migrate, sync your directory, add single sign on, or otherwise need help with Google Apps, consider LTech - a trusted partner for education.

View some of our recent educational success stories here.

The disadvantages of the default search become more apparent as a user’s blog grows in size. Here are a few:

1. Database full-text searches are slow, and get worse as the database grows
2. SQL LIKE queries return all matches, not necessarily relevant ones
3. Results are returned without a true hierarchy of relevancy
4. Relevancy cannot be tweaked

I’ve released a new search plugin named ‘wpSearch’ which leverages the Zend Framework Lucene library, a port of the popular open source Lucene search library written in Java. wpSearch uses Lucene to build a ’search index’ of all of a user’s posts before the plugin is installed, and continues to add documents as posts are added to the blog. wpSearch overrides the internal search mechanism of Wordpress by hooking into its core, and placing its own results into Wordpress.

The result is that Wordpress never knows the difference, and your blog works the same as usual — except for the fact that now you have a fast and relevant Google-like search on your blog.

The underlying library that wpSearch uses, Lucene, is a proven tool in implementing some high profile search solutions. To name a few:

• Digg
• Akamai
• Overture
• Technorati
• HotJobs
• Epiphany
• FedEx
• Mayo Clinic
• MIT
• New Scientist Magazine

LTech has used the .NET port of Lucene to implement an enterpise job search for EmployOn, with great success. The .Net port is currently in use by the social networking giant MySpace.

wpSearch overcomes the default Wordpress search limitations.:

1. Lucene was made for full-text searching. Queries typically take place in under 50 milliseconds.
2. wpSearch uses it’s own PHP StandardAnalyzer, a component that allows searching to be very flexible (searches like “managed” match words like “manage”, unlike in Wordpress).
3. Results are returned with a logical heirarchy, with matches in a title placed higher than matches in post content.
4. What is considered relevant can be tweaked.

But to stop there would be selling wpSearch short. It supports a number of advanced search features, courtesy of Lucene:

• Wildcard searches
• Boolean searches
• Stop word filtering (English)
• “Fuzzy” searches (sounds like …)

Currently, wpsearch 1.5 has been released in the Wordpress plugin repository. A little more about wpSearch can also be found on LTech’s wpSearch page, and also at my development blog CodeFury.

So far, wpsearch has been well received, with some users writing in-depth reviews on it. One particular review was written by Patrick Cushing at EnterVenture. He wrote a piece highlighting some of the core strengths of wpSearch, with some side-by-side result comparisons which highlight the features that a blog without wpSearch is missing. The full review is at the EnterVenture blog.

wpSearch is currently installed on LTech’s blog, so you can see it in action. Just use the search box in the side bar to check it out!

The wpSearch 1.5.1 will include comment searching, along with a few updates to keep wpsearch compatible accross all blogs. Until then, check out the latest version at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpsearch/ and let me know what you think: katzgrau@gmail.com.