Posted by Jordan Pedraza, Google Apps for Education Community Manager

In 2010, Northwestern University, Brady Corporation, and Motorola Mobility came together as organizations using Google Apps for Education or Business to share best practices, showcase custom solutions with Apps Script and APIs, and discuss common issues. The initial meeting was so successful, these customers formed the Google Apps Northcentral User Group and organized several followup meetings for other regional enterprise and education Google Apps customers to connect with each other and share feedback directly with Google.

Since then, we’ve helped to launch additional Google Apps Regional Groups for colleges and universities, businesses, governments, non-profit organizations, and large K-12 school districts. We continue to hear more productive and cross-industry conversations, from Boise State and Genentech exchanging deployment tips in the Northwest Group, to SUNY IT and Ahold discussing migration best practices in the Northeast Group. And these discussions aren’t limited to talks about the transition to Google Apps; group members are also sharing creative and innovative uses of Google Apps: UNCG's Google Calendar mashup has inspired other organizations to adopt and customize Calendar with APIs more broadly for easier discovery of events.

We’ve already seen great communities with the K-12 user groups and now the trend continues for higher education, business, government, and non-profits. These regional groups join the existing K-12 user groups and are designed for Google Apps administrators and managers to network, learn, collaborate, and share resources through discussion forums, events, and webinars. While no industry is the same, we’ve heard from regional group members that it’s better to “flock together like birds of a feather” and share how they’re taking advantage of the tools and platform.

If you’re a Google Apps administrator and your organization is located in the United States or Canada, please check out the list below – as well as appsusersgroup.com – to find and join your group. International groups in Australia-New Zealand and Europe are also coming soon!

North America http://groups.google.com/a/appsusersgroup.com/group/northamerica
Mailing list for all regional groups in the US and Canada

Northwest http://northwest.appsusersgroup.com

US: Alaska, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming
Canada: Alberta, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Yukon

Southwest http://southwest.appsusersgroup.com
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah

North Central http://northcentral.appsusersgroup.com
US: Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin
Canada: Manitoba, Ontario, Nunavut

Southeast http://southeast.appsusersgroup.com
Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee

Mid-Atlantic http://midatlantic.appsusersgroup.com
District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia

Northeast http://northeast.appsusersgroup.com
US: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont
Canada: New Brunswick, Newfoundland & Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec

Australia-New Zealand http://australia-newzealand.appsusersgroup.com
Australia and New Zealand

Europe http://europe.appsusersgroup.com *
Europe

* Update 3/22: Due to recent feedback from Google Apps customers in Europe, we have decided to roll our initial UK-Ireland and Spain user groups into a larger Europe Users Group. We will establish regional aliases in the near future. Thanks to anyone who has reached out to us or shared feedback.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

A week ago the Google State and Local Government team and our partner SADA Systems were out in force at the National Association of Counties Annual Conference in Portland, Oregon. The conference provided a platform for over 2,000 county leaders and industry experts from across the nation to discuss innovative programs and technologies impacting county governments.

Our team was honored to moderate a session entitled “Counties Saving Money in the Cloud,” which featured three counties of different sizes using Google Apps for Government: Multnomah County, Oregon; Larimer County, Colorado; and Amador County, California. Leaders from these counties discussed their first-hand experience going Google, offering unique insight into the challenges they faced and the success they’ve seen. We developed a case study to recap the key points from the panel: Google Apps improves employee productivity while dramatically lowering IT costs.

In the evening, we had the chance to meet many more conference attendees at our tent in South Park (seriously, that was the park’s name). We’d like to extend a huge “thank you” to everyone who stopped by to say hello, play interactive games, make funny faces in our photo kiosk and pose for caricature portraits. It’s because of you that NACo 2011 was informative and fun!


To hear more from Multnomah, Larimer, Amador and other counties that have gone Google, visit our website.

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

Last week the Google Enterprise team participated in the 5th Annual Security Confab in Monterey, CA, from July 12-14. The Confab event brought together information security leaders from public and private sector organizations to discuss thought-provoking topics around information and cyber security issues.

At the conference, John Collins, Google’s Sr. Global Trust Product Manager, presented a talk entitled “Private Insecurities and Public Transparency.” John compared the attributes of public clouds and so-called private clouds in an attempt to dispel the myth that private clouds offer cost and productivity benefits without security concerns. In fact, the opposite is true: private clouds do not deliver the same benefits as public clouds, but they still require significant investment to secure and protect.

For more information about how we protect the data our customers store in Google Apps, visit our Google Apps Trust page. Many of the protections are highlighted in our security white paper and data center video tour. We take extreme measures to protect our users’ data and we are constantly innovating to develop new features and capabilities in these areas.

Posted by Wendy Wu, Google Enterprise Team

From big cities to small towns to suburbs, from forests to tundra to islands, Americans live in diverse habitats. No matter where we live, we all have county governments. Today, members of Google's government team are flying from Santa Clara County (home of our Mountain View headquarters) to Multnomah County in Oregon to talk to county leaders from across the country at the National Association of Counties Annual Conference, NACo 2011, from Saturday to Monday, July 16-18.

This year’s NACo conference is hosted by Multnomah County, one of our Google Apps for Government customers. Due to tight budgets, counties across the nation, like Multnomah, have been forced to look for innovative ways to save money while maintaining critical services.


Our team will moderate a panel session featuring three distinguished county government leaders who will discuss their experiences moving their email and workplace collaboration to the cloud. Please join us if you’ll be at the conference.

Counties Saving Money in the Cloud
Time: July 17, 1:30 - 2:45 PT
Location: Room 113 (level 1), Oregon Convention Center

Speakers:

• Sherry Swackhamer, Chief Information Officer, Multnomah County, Oregon
• Lew Gaiter, Commissioner, Larimer County, Colorado
• Jeff White, IT Director, Amador County, California
• Scott McIntyre, Director of State and Local Government, Google

Be sure to stop by our booth 601 to learn more about our technology offerings for governments. Even if you can’t attend the conference, you can visit our website for more information about Google Apps for Government.

We hope to see you there!

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.

Posted by Joe Kava, Data Center Construction & Operations Team

Back in 2009, we hosted our first conference on data center efficiency at the Google campus in Mountain View, CA. Colleagues from the industry joined us in sharing best practices and laying out the path to improved efficiency in large-scale computing infrastructure. In the past two years we’ve continued to work hard at improving our own efficiency, and we’ve been impressed by the advances others in the industry have made as well. Leaders in the tech sector have managed to achieve and surpass what seemed like stretch goals at the time.

Data center efficiency isn’t just for the big guys. Improving the energy efficiency of your facility – large or small – reduces your organization's total environmental impact. It also makes financial sense for computing infrastructures at any scale, as the most effective efficiency best practices are actually quite straightforward. Whether you run a facility of a hundred kW or a multi-MW data center, there are simple, immediate steps you can take to deliver rapid environmental and economic returns.

We’re happy to announce that we’re hosting a second data center efficiency conference, this time in Zurich, Switzerland, on May 24th. We’ll be gathering industry leaders together again to share and discuss the latest energy efficiency best practices. The agenda includes:

• Keynotes on data center sustainability
• Best practice case studies from Google and other leading organizations
• Practical implementation strategies for local cooling solutions and geo-independent approaches to efficiency
• Time for networking with peers, including a relaxed cocktail reception after the Summit.

Limited space is still available. Find out more and register to attend here.

The Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Computer Security Institute Annual Conference, CSI 2010, taking place in National Harbor, Maryland, from Tuesday through Friday, October 26-29. CSI2010 brings together security and IT professionals from around the world to discuss and share best practices in computer security, risk management and compliance. The event features keynote presentations, workshops, panel discussions and customer case studies. Google’s Adam Swidler will be presenting a session entitled “Is Your Organization’s Data Safer in the Cloud?” at 11:15 AM EDT on Friday, October 29.

If you'll be at the conference, please join us for Adam’s presentation to hear about information security, privacy, and data protection in the cloud from Google’s perspective. If you can’t attend the conference, please visit our website for more information about about the security and privacy of data in Google Apps.

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Apps team

Did you know that a user spends an average of just eight seconds on a website before deciding whether to stick around (Marketing Sherpa)? If you’re an e-commerce site, this means you have to be faster than Usain Bolt - the world record-holder for the 100m dash.

Next week, find out how Google can help you capitalize on those eight seconds and improve your online shopping experience. Visit the Google Commerce Search team at Shop.org’s Annual Summit, held in Dallas, Texas from September 27 - 29.

If your organization plans to attend the show, be sure to visit Google in Booth #120 and attend the Big Ideas session Wednesday at 12:45 PM featuring Nitin Mangtani of Google Enterprise, who will be speaking about search insights for today’s e-commerce technology.

The Google Commerce Search team will be joined by Product Search, AdWords, and the Google Affiliate Network. We can’t wait to show you the many different ways we can help your business.

Posted by Guillaume De Zwirek, Google Commerce Search team

This week the Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Information Systems Security Association’s (ISSA) International Conference in Atlanta, GA from September 15-17. The ISSA is a not-for-profit, international professional organization of information security professionals and practitioners. It promotes management practices that will ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information resources. This year more than 500 IT and security professionals will gather under this year’s theme of “Connect and Collaborate”.

Eran Feigenbaum, Director Security for Google Enterprise wil be delivering a keynote presentation entitled “A New Security Model in the Cloud” on Thursday, September 16th, at 12:40 PM.

If you'll be at the conference, please join us for Eran’s session. If you’re not going to be at the conference, you can find more information on the security and privacy of data in Google Apps.

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

On Thursday, August 12th, the Google Enterprise team will be participating in the inaugural Cybersecurity Summit at the CompTIA Breakaway 2010 Conference in San Antonio, Texas. The summit brings together leaders from the IT industry and government to discuss how to work together to mitigate the frequency and impact of cyber threats in the private and public sectors. Google will be participating in the panel discussion “Security in the Cloud” at 11 AM CDT.

If you'll be at the conference, please join us for the panel discussion to hear about Google’s cloud security efforts. Additionally, you can find lots of information about the security of our solutions for enterprises here.


Posted by Adam Swidler, Sr. Manager – Google Enterprise

As we just announced on the Google Australia blog, Google Commerce Search is extending its availability beyond the U.S. and U.K. to include Aussie retailers. With this launch, Australian e-commerce sites will be able to respond to the growing proportion of shoppers who turn to the web to research and purchase products – and unfortunately often have a hard time finding what they’re looking for.

Launching today at the Online Retailer Conference & Expo in Sydney, Google Commerce Search can now bring the same speed, relevancy, and ease of use that retailers like Smart Furniture in the U.S. and Chemist Direct in the U.K. have chosen for their sites.

If you’re an e-commerce company in Australia and won’t be attending the conference in Sydney this week, you can learn more by visiting the website or contacting us here.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Commerce Search team

This week the Google Enterprise team is excited to be participating in the Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit. From today through Wednesday, IT and business executives responsible for information security, risk management, compliance, and business continuity management will gather to discuss new technologies and strategies to better secure their organizations and reduce risk.

We're particularly excited to be joined by Chet Loveland of MWV and Brian Bolt from Boise State University for a panel on security and cloud computing. They discussed why their organizations chose Google Apps, and the steps Google takes to protect the security and privacy of their data.

On Tuesday, we’ll be presenting a review of Google Apps security and reliability, building on the content in our recently published Apps security white paper.

If you'll be at the conference, please join us for a session or stop by our booth to learn more about Google’s solutions for cloud security. If you’re not going to be at the conference, you can find lots of information on Google Apps here.

Posted by Adam Swidler, Sr. Manager – Google Enterprise

The Google Enterprise team is excited to be taking part in this week's Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, DC. From today through Thursday, the Gov 2.0 Expo brings together government and industry leaders from across the nation to discuss transformative technologies that can help support the mission of governments everywhere.

We're particularly excited that Dave Girouard, president of Google Enterprise, and Randi Levin, the Chief Technology Officer for the City of Los Angeles, will be sharing the stage for this event’s keynote. Titled "Cloud Computing Services: Finding a Solution for Over Budget, Understaffed Agencies,” this conversation, moderated by conference chair Tim O'Reilly, will explore Los Angeles’ decision to move to the cloud and adopt Google Apps – and what’s happened since.

If you’ll be at Gov 2.0, watch for Dave and Randi on the main stage at 8:50 a.m. EDT. Afterwards, stop by the Google booth to learn more about how Google Apps is helping government agencies of all sizes provide secure, modern collaboration tools to their employees, while at the same time allowing them to realize significant cost savings.

If you can't be at Gov 2.0 in person, we invite you to tune in live to Dave and Randi's presentation on the Gov 2.0 site (note: online registration required). Watch this space for more about Google Apps and the work we're doing with our government customers.

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

As we announced in February, next week we’ll be traveling to Washington D.C. to participate in America’s Small Business Summit, hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. On Tuesday, May 18, Google is hosting a breakout session where we’ll continue the discussion we kicked off this week on the ChamberPost blog. We'll also talk about the technology trends that are impacting today’s small business.

Joining us will be a panel of Google Apps customers, including one Google Apps Authorized Reseller, who will share their experiences about how they’ve put the power of the web to work for their business. You’ll hear directly from:

• Stephen Culp, Founder and Chairman, Smart Furniture
• Pete Hamm, Operations Manager, Free Range Studios
• Jim McNelis, Principal, Dito
• Steve Messere, Founder and CEO, Revenue Spark

The full Summit agenda is packed with valuable perspectives and interesting discussion topics to help support your business. We hope you’ll join us – and if you do, please stop by our booth and say hello.

P.S. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is offering a special one-day rate to attend the event. Check it out.

Posted by Shaluinn Fullove, Google Apps team

If your company runs a website, you already know the importance of search engine marketing and optimization. But are you confident that your website is providing the very best user experience possible? If you haven't added or improved your search function yet, you could be missing out on conversions, sales, and repeat visits.

Next week, we're hitting the road to help spread the message about Google Commerce Search and Google Site Search. Visit us at Search Engine Strategies New York, held March 22 to 26th at the Hilton New York. Stop by the Google booth (#1007) to ask questions and learn how to bring visitors to your site, optimize their experience, and convert them into loyal customers.

On Thursday, don't miss our lunch session on Increasing Conversions with Google Site Search Solutions. Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager on Google Enterprise, will explain how improving your site's search engine – whether you run an e-commerce or any other type of site – is key to stretching your SEM dollars and converting each and every visitor.

We'll have a few fun Google schwag giveaways too, so we hope that you'll join us. All conference registrants are welcome and no additional sign-up is needed.

Hope to see you next week in the Big Apple!

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team

While feedback and revision are crucial steps to successful writing, it’s not always easy to do in practice. Keeping track of revisions, deciphering edits, and arranging reviews can keep us from repeating this editing cycle more often.

The collaborative nature of Google Apps can help evolve the writing process with easy sharing and anytime, anywhere collaboration. Add in built-in reference tools, autosave and revision history, and ready-made templates, and Google Docs – part of the Google Apps suite – becomes a powerful platform for writing.

We’ve developed our first Google Apps Topic Review to highlight some of these features and stories from teachers in the classroom, and we shared and revised this paper using the same principles of collaboration.

If you’re attending this year’s ASCD Conference (held from March 6-8 in San Antonio, Texas) we invite you to hear presentations from Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps Education Edition customers, and Google Apps Education team members about other ways Google Apps can help in the classroom. View our teaching theater schedule and stop by to visit us in Booth #626.

For more information about how to start using Google Apps Education Edition at your school, visit www.google.com/a/edu

Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education team

Small business owners often ask us how Google Apps can help improve the way they work. We'll be sharing some answers in May when we join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at this year's America's Small Business Summit.

Every day, thousands of businesses of all sizes sign up for Google Apps to help save money, reduce IT hassles, and improve collaboration. For small business owners, Google Apps provides a familiar set of easy-to-use Google business applications with minimal setup and maintenance costs, so that you can stay focused on more strategic elements of running your business.

We hope that you'll join us at this upcoming summit, and, in the meantime, we invite you to take a look at how a few small businesses are using Google Apps today to help improve they way they work.



Posted by Shaluinn Fullove, Google Apps team

This year's Google I/O will play host to a number of sessions and events aimed specifically at helping Software as a Service companies integrate with and monetize Google Apps, including:

• Add Single Sign On to your app using OpenID
• Connect your app with Google Docs and Sites
• Learn how Google architects its own GWT applications for production
• GWT + HTML5 can do what?!
• Making Freemium work - converting free users to paying customers - VC panel

Plus:

• Learn how to acquire additional customers using the Google Solutions Marketplace
• Network with Google Apps Resellers and find new channel opportunities
• Network with other ISVs in the Developer Sandbox that are already selling to Google Apps customers

We are planning several more sessions that we'll be announcing in the coming weeks that you won't want to miss. We'll also be hosting a mixer event just for the enterprise developer community that'll take place just before the After Hours party at I/O.

Google I/O is our biggest developer event of the year, and it's also the best chance you'll get to learn about the technologies that can help you build a thriving business extending Google Apps. We hope you'll register today!

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead

As you may have heard from our announcement yesterday, registration for Google I/O is now open! This year's Google I/O will focus on building the next generation of applications in the cloud, using Google products like App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, and Google APIs, with particular emphasis on Android, Chrome, and Enterprise.

Here are just a couple of Enterprise sessions that are already listed on the I/O website (many more are in the works!):

• Making freemium work for you: VC panel
• Untangling Auth

We'll be adding much more Enterprise (and Google Apps) content to the I/O website over the next couple of months. For updates on new content, follow @googleio on Twitter.

Today's registration opens with an early bird rate of $400, which applies through April 16 ($500 after April 16). Last year's I/O sold out before the start of the conference, so we encourage you to sign up in advance.

Google I/O

May 19-20, 2010

Moscone West, San Francisco

To learn more and sign up, visit code.google.com/io.

We hope to see you in May!

Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Developer team

The holidays may still be wrapping up, but retailers around the globe are already thinking about the coming year. While final numbers for the 2009 holiday season are being tallied, early estimates suggest growth in e-commerce sales, which grew 15.5% over the 2008 holiday season – quite a contrast compared to 3.6% growth for the overall retail industry (see MasterCard Advisors Spending Pulse, reported in Wall Street Journal, December 28, 2009).

Here at Google, we're looking closely at how Google Commerce Search, our recently-launched retail-specific website search service, can help online retailers use search to improve the online shopping experience.

Next week, visit Google Enterprise at the National Retail Federation's BIG Show, held in New York, New York from January 10 – 13. If your organization plans to attend the show, be sure to visit Google in Booth #365, and in the adjacent Cyber Lounge, to learn how tools such as Google Commerce Search, the Local Business Center, and the Google Maps API can help you build a strong 2010.

Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Enterprise Search team