Google will reveal new communications features for Google Apps for Business users built on Google+ technology, we’ve learned just before Google I/O is set to begin. Read more »
Well, embrace is too strong a word, but Microsoft says it’s making it easier for colleagues and friends with different mail accounts to chit chat. Read more »
Salesforce.com’s Do is morphing into Do More with easy links to Google Drive, Dropbox, Harvest, Wufoo, Contactually and Desk.com Read more »
Dropbox wants you to know it’s serious about winning business users and has beefed up Dropbox for Teams admin capabilities to ease IT concerns. Read more »
Despite the inexorable move to the cloud, some companies cling to the idea that the risks outweigh the benefits. Dave Girouard, former President of Enterprise for Google, argues that the logic these skeptics use is, well, “insane.” Read more »
The Atlanta-based integrator will use its new funding to keep up with what it calls accelerating demand for cloud applications and to keep serving existing Salesforce.com and Google Apps customers. Read more »
Google’s Gmail service is down and up and down again, but why does that mean Chrome is getting crashy as well? Google, we really, really want to know! Read more »
Updated: Google reportedly earned $1 billion from Google Apps for Business last year. While that pales in comparison to Microsoft Office numbers, it’s still not chump change. Read more »
Google Apps for Business users need to be protected from their own downloaded apps, according to Waltham, MA-based CloudLock, which on Monday launched a firewall for just that purpose. Read more »
Cloud Sherpas has seen revenue from both its Google Apps and Salesforce.com businesses double in the past year. That seams to indicate that third-party VARs and integrators can make a living off low-cost SaaS applications — and that Google gets that it needs an ecosystem. Read more »
Welcome to the fast-growing world of work media, a class of social tools oriented toward the needs of enterprises. Their emergence is due to the shifting expectations of an increasingly social workforce and the sense that older approaches to work like email are arguably approaching obsolescence. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Nearly 95 percent of Backupify’s business comes from corporate users and 75 percent of that revenue comes from companies with more than 100 employees. That’s why the cloud backup company is formalizing an enterprise support and service program. Read more »
As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer showed off the company’s latest Office software Monday, he hit all the right marks — a touch interface, cloud storage, VoIP integration and social networking tie-ins. They had to. But a very different interface might spook current Office users. Read more »
Google is finally giving users the option to transfer their circles from one Google+ account to another, which is a big relief for anyone with a private Google+ profile and one connected to their Google Apps account. However, the account transfer process is a little tricky. Read more »
Google says that a company can see energy savings of 65 to 85 percent from moving their internal hosted IT services — from email to documents to spreadsheets — over to Google Apps. Read more »
Virtual working is only for professions with digital deliverables, right? Designers, coders and writers may be the first people who come to mind, but if you imagine companies that deal in the physical can’t benefit from going virtual, you haven’t talked to Fred’s Appliance. Read more »
New York City-based startup BetterCloud has raised $2 million for its quest to bring better business-oriented management, reporting and other capabilities to Google Apps. The funding comes from BetterCloud CEO David Politis and unnamed angel investors. Read more »
Of the dozens of meeting requests I received for this year’s Interop conference, the one I least expected came from Google. Interop is all about enterprise IT — networks, security, servers, stuff with gravitas. But in its own way, Google is becoming a serious IT company. Read more »
David Girouard, who led Google’s push into enterprise applications, is leaving the company for a startup called Upstart.com. An eight-year veteran with the search giant, Girouard led Google’s push to take on Microsoft in desktop applications and email. Girouard posted the news to Google+ Friday. Read more »
Appirio, which built its systems integration business in part by knitting software-as-a-service and legacy on-premises software together, netted $60 million in Series D funding led by General Atlantic, bringing total investment to $80 million. Read more »
Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After a long-running controversy, the Los Angeles Police Department will definitely not move to Google Apps. And that’s final.
The City Council voted to kill the proposed deployment of Google Apps to the LAPD although the city’s other 17,000 employees are still aboard. Read more »
Getting enterprise customers excited about Chromebooks can be an uphill battle – but for Google’s Rajen Sheth, it’s a deja vu. Sheth is known as the father of Google apps, and said at Net:Work Thursday that Google’s enterprise product was initially met with similar resistance. Read more »
Silk, the browser for Amazon’s new Kindle Fire, utilizes Amazon’s cloud. But don’t think AWS is the Kindle Fire’s only cloud connection. In a post on Tuesday, Pulse’s Greg Bayer explained how his company’s news-reading app actually runs atop Google’s App Engine Platform-as-a-Service offering. Read more »
Spanning is a backup service for Google Apps that’s completely hosted and run from Amazon’s web services. The idea of backing up one cloud service via another was intriguing enough that I asked Mike Pav, the VP of engineering at Spanning, how he does it. Read more »
If General Motors, a big Microsoft shop, ends up going with Google Apps, it would be a huge validation of Google’s productivity applications in the enterprise. Google Apps targets the Microsoft Office juggernaut, but has had trouble getting traction in big, corporate accounts. Read more »
Is cloud computing ready for government work? Not yet, but a new U.S. Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap draft sets out action items that government IT gurus say will speed up the adoption of cloud implementations that are safe and secure enough for government use. Read more »
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company was winning the battle for productivity applications in the cloud, and when it’s winning, it’s taking customers away from Google. And in doing so, he invoked a little bit of Charlie Sheen in showing his enthusiasm about network-based applications. Read more »
During VMworld this week, VMware introduced a new Dropbox-like application called Project Octopus that will let users safely store, access and share corporate documents. It all so sounded so promising, and then someone asked me whether it will actually get used. Read more »
Cisco said today it was buying a little-known collaboration software company, Versly for an undisclosed amount. Versly makes it easy to collaborate inside Microsoft Office products. This seems like an acq-hire, aka a large company buying small players for their skills. Read more »
Google Apps might not have many takers amongst the big boys of business, but the company is finding success with small and rural telecoms and Internet service providers, which, in turn, are offering Google Apps to their customers. Read more »
Google just announced it is ending its Labs program in an effort to focus more on its existing products, and a collective gasp went up around the Internet. My first thought was, “Oh my God, what will happen to my multiple inboxes and Auto-advance features?” Read more »
Google CEO Larry Page addressed a question about what Google’s plans regarding Android’s patent situation, but generally side-stepped the query, pointing to Android’s momentum before finishing with a modest commitment to the platform. It seems like a missed opportunity to signal support to manufacturers and developers. Read more »
GoDropBox is a third-party add-on for Google Apps that adds a public mailbox to your Google Docs account, enabling anyone with the appropriate link to upload files to your account. This is handy for web workers who would like to accept files too big to email. Read more »
Microsoft has now launched Office 365, its suite of collaboration and office tools that aims to take on Google Apps for Business. But with a product that costs more than Google’s offering and is coming much later to market, will Office 365 be a success? Read more »
In a blog post, Google has announced that it will soon discontinue support for older browsers in Google Apps. Beginning Aug. 1, Google Apps will only officially support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, on a rolling basis. Read more »
One of the problems with conducting so much work communication via email is that a lot of useful information ends up being locked away inside people’s inboxes. GrexIt allows Google Apps users to move specified conversations from their inboxes into a shared, searchable repository. Read more »
Keeping an email address book up-to-date is a fairly labor-intensive task. Kwaga’s WriteThat.Name, which works with Gmail and Google Apps, can automatically scan incoming emails for the contact information that’s typically contained in email signatures, and then update the contact database with that information. Read more »
![advanced delegation constituents[1]](http://gigaom2.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/advanced-delegation-constituents1.jpg?w=210&h=140&crop=1)
Ahead of the Google I/O developer conference this week, Google Apps reseller Cloud Sherpas is announcing some updates to SherpaTools, a companion product for Google Apps. The most significant change is an update to its Delegation features, providing greater control over permissions. Read more »
Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, in a conversation earlier this week, outlined Google’s cloud strategy and its long-term plans, and how it is different from other cloud providers including Amazon Web Services. He talks about Google’s two areas of focus – apps and big data. Read more »
