Clear skies ahead: The Weather Company forecasts success using Google Apps

Posted by Bryson Koehler, CIO of The Weather Company

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Bryson Koehler, CIO of The Weather Company, the parent company of The Weather Channel, weather.com and Weather Underground, the most popular sources of weather news and information on television and online. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Most people know The Weather Company from checking out the forecast on TV or from using our mobile app, but we actually do much, much more. Beyond our TV channel and online presence, we sell weather data to business and foreign governments, as well as sell graphic capabilities to local network affiliates. We’re a big, complex organization with a lot of smart people who need the right tools to do their work. It’s my job to make sure those needs are being met.

When I joined the company last summer, one of my first responsibilities was to get all our employees on the same email and collaboration platform. The Weather Company has grown quite a bit through acquisitions during the past year, leaving our 1,200 employees all over the world using a mixed bag of tools. Each business was still working as an independent entity, so getting everyone under the same technological umbrella was crucial to us moving forward.

The choice came down to Google Apps and Microsoft® Office 365. We knew there were strong allegiances to each platform within the company, so there was no clear winner at first. After taking a closer look at Office 365, though, it seemed like a set of individual tools rather than a fully integrated suite like Google Apps. On top of that, Google Apps’ single user licensing was far less complicated than Microsoft’s model. Ultimately, Google Apps was a better fit for our company.

About two months ago we rolled out Google Apps with the help of Google Enterprise partner, Cloud Sherpas. Though change management was definitely a large undertaking, we do feel that the switch brought the company together. It helped us untether people from the traditional corporate collaboration approach of searching through multiple versions and waiting as documents were passed from one to another - something I desperately wanted to do. The culture of our company and the IT department is changing, and Google Apps was a great catalyst to get that moving in the right direction.

We’ve only been live for a short time, but Google Apps has already changed how we work. Google Docs have caught on like wildfire, and people can work from anywhere as long as they have Internet. I see people bouncing around between their laptop, a tablet, their Android phone or whatever – it’s seamless. We’ve also started using Google Drive to replace personal Box and Dropbox accounts that people had been using to share documents, so we’ll have centralized control of our intellectual property. We’re going to roll out Google+ companywide to replace Yammer, although Google+ Hangouts have begun to spread organically. Our marketing, sales and PR teams all use Hangouts to meet, and one employee set up a Google Chromebox and a monitor to create a Hangout station in his office.

Google Apps has created a real sense of excitement at The Weather Company. People are really exploring and embracing it, and that’s exactly what I wanted to see. As we’re abandoning the traditional top-down IT department mindset, all I can do is provide a toolkit for people to work with. Google Apps gives them those tools and lets them work.

Improved Gmail search for Google Apps customers

Posted by Raviv Nagel, Gmail Software Engineer

At work and school, being able to find things quickly is important. So today, Google Apps customers will have access to autocomplete predictions in your Gmail search boxes to make getting the information you want faster than ever before.

When you start typing in the Gmail search box, you’ll now see predictions display. Those predictions are based on the content of your email as well as past searches and contacts. So, if you always look for messages from your business partner or the title of your current project, you won’t wear out the keys on your keyboard by repeating the same search. For example, you may now see your coworker named Anna, your past search of annual report and announcement from a recent email you received after typing "ann" into the search box.

If Anna is in your contacts, you’ll see a picture of her and any other contacts to quickly make sure you’re choosing the right person, such as someone at your company and not a reporter or competitor who has the same name.

These features will be available globally over the next few days to Rapid Release domains.

Google Compute Engine - Now Available to Gold Support Customers

Posted by Navneet Joneja, Product Manager

Google Compute Engine gives developers everywhere access to Google's computing infrastructure. Now you can sign up online for Google Compute Engine with the purchase of Gold Support; you no longer need an invitation or a conversation with sales to get access. We’re also further reducing prices for all instance types by an average of 4%.

Starting at $400/month, Gold support gives you a direct relationship with our experienced support engineers to help you get started or troubleshoot issues across the Google Cloud Platform products.

Since announcing Compute Engine, we’ve expanded geographic coverage, added new instance types, released many new features, and made improvements behind the scenes. Sebastian Stadil of Scalr wrote, in a recent review:

“Google Compute Engine is not just fast. It’s Google fast. In fact, it’s a class of fast that enables new service architectures entirely."

We’re inspired by the awesome projects being created every day with Google Cloud Platform and can’t wait to see what you create next. If you’re ready to try Compute Engine today, sign up today.

Pure and Proven Cloud: Gmail Availability in 2012

Posted by Venkat Panchapakesan, Vice President of Engineering

Millions of businesses around the world rely on Google Apps to get work done every day. So, much like keeping Google search up and running, it’s a top priority for us to make sure Google Apps is available whenever (and wherever) you need it. For customers using Google Apps for Business, Education or Government, we offer a 99.9% availability guarantee, with zero scheduled downtime for maintenance. In 2010 and 2011, the actual availability for Gmail was significantly better than this guarantee. This was true again last year. In 2012, Gmail achieved 99.983% availability while at the same time adding dozens of new features. This translates to an average of just over seven minutes of service disruption per month over the last year, and most users experienced no disruption at all.  

We’re proud of our track record, but we know our work is never done. All our products are built by people -- and because humans aren’t perfect, no technology is ever perfect either. We work hard to make sure any disruptions are rare, limited in scale and quickly resolved. And in the unlikely event something does go wrong, it’s important for our users to know. To that end, you can see the current status of any Google Apps service on the Google Apps status dashboard, a public website, at any time.

Quickoffice on your Android and iPhone is here

Posted by Mark Beaton, Quickoffice Product Manager

One of the easiest ways to share old files and collaborate with others is to convert them to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. However, not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. So to help, Google Apps for Business can already edit Microsoft Office files using Quickoffice on an iPad, and starting today they can do the same on iPhone and Android devices. From Word to Excel to Powerpoint, you can make quick edits at the airport or from the back of a taxi and save and share everything in Google Drive.

In addition to bringing Quickoffice to new devices, it’s also now easier to find and use your Drive files from within the Quickoffice app. Sign in with your Google Apps for Business account and your Drive folders view will now include Shared With Me, Starred, Recent and any subfolders.

And in case you didn’t know, iPad and iPhone users can open and edit Office files directly from the Drive app. Just open Drive and select the file, make edits using Quickoffice and save it back to Drive.

Google Apps for Business users can download Quickoffice right now from the App Store and Google Play. We hope this makes it easier to work from anywhere on any device.

Macomb County protects the American Dream of homeownership

Posted by Crystal Brenner, Administrative Assistant, Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Crystal Brenner, Administrative Assistant for the Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds. See what other organizations that use the Google Search Appliance have to say.

Last year, Macomb County set out to improve public real estate search, to help property owners reduce the risk of real estate fraud, and make it easier for Macomb County property owners to protect their property rights. Along the way we may have created one of the nation's best and perhaps one of the first high-tech real estate records search and fraud detection tools. We were inspired to act by a CBS 60 Minutes exposé uncovering crucial ownership documents for real estate throughout the nation that are often bogus or even nonexistent.

In the past, Macomb County property records were available on paper or online in an electronic format that only allowed searching on a few, limited fields, such as owner name or property description, indexed differently throughout the years. Inconsistent indexing is an issue for registers of deeds throughout the nation, and it points to the need for a search solution that can find stored electronic deeds with ease.

In partnership with Xerox, we set out to do better and help owners detect potential fraud. We scanned every Macomb County real estate record - millions of public records, from dirt to present day. Because we wanted an intuitive, familiar search interface that would let us look quickly through millions of documents, we immediately chose the Google Search Appliance.

Called the “Super Index,” we launched a public prototype in September 2012. The Super Index currently includes millions of pages of public Macomb County real estate documents, going back all the way to 1818. And each year, we’ll add more than 180,000 new documents.

Users can search the Super Index at no charge. What makes it “super” is that searches may now include all recognized text on the documents, including witness and notary names. Once an individual finds the documents they’re looking for, and reviews a thumbnail to be sure it’s what they need, we either provide a link or send a PDF file of those public documents for $6 per document.

One user said, “This is great stuff! Once again, the Macomb County Clerk/Register of Deed’s office is providing the public with a useful tech-savvy resource to gain easy access to public information, with the convenience [of access] from one’s home or office.”

For many people, owning a home is a key part of the American Dream, and we wanted to give our citizens in Macomb the power to protect that dream. We took bold action to combat fraud and educate homeowners about their rights and property. With help from Xerox and the Google Search Appliance, Macomb County is making the search for the American Dream a little easier.

Join us for a Google Hangout On Air on April 24, 2013 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST to see for yourself how the Google Search Appliance is making a difference in our city.

Second City Communications wins audiences with collaboration and Google Apps

Posted by Steve Johnston, Second City Communications

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Steve Johnston, president of Second City Communications, the business solutions division of the legendary improv theater company, The Second City, and our partner in yesterday’s April Fools’ joke. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

The Second City, the venerable Chicago comedy theatre known for its creative method and improvisation, is a far cry from a Silicon Valley start-up. Nonetheless, in a very real sense we’ve been in the “interactive” and “social collaboration” space for five decades. We believe in providing a great experience for our audience and are hardwired to innovate and attack convention whenever possible.

The Second City has been called the “Harvard of Comedy,” and our alumni list includes stars such as Alan Arkin, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Steve Carell and Tina Fey. Our business division, Second City Communications, brings the same audience-empowered approach to the boardroom, creating content marketing, entertainment and training programs for some of America’s best-known companies. You can see some of our handiwork on this blog.

Second City Communications has been using Google Apps for over a year. Apps provides the interactive collaboration with our clients that’s necessary to co-create compelling, engaging videos that enhance companies’ training communications. We begin by using Google Docs to get multiple companies brainstorming ideas around hot corporate topics such as ethics and compliance, as well as sales effectiveness. From there, we bring our special brand of humor into the mix. We then share scripts in Google Drive to get real-time feedback from clients, helping us make sure the videos resonate with employees and reflect real challenges in the workplace.

Because you can’t really get the full effect of a script without hearing it, we meet with clients over Google+ Hangouts. Our actors do fun “table read” sessions so clients can listen and react while we observe it all. Our clients make sure we talk the talk of their audiences and bring a whole new level of authenticity to the creative development process. We continue to create these videos, called RealBiz Shorts, with more than 250 Fortune 1000 clients, who use them to change behavior and transform company culture through smart comedy.

When you look at these training videos, you see something that’s not only humorous, but also anchored in reality. RealBiz Shorts get employees more engaged with existing programs. It’s like marketing for training! See for yourself.

It’s 2013, folks. New approaches for a new time. Google Apps plays a key part of our creative development process to build big ideas with our clients. It gives us vital tools to bring improv agility and nimbleness to enterprise collaboration, and helps us bridge the gap between comedy and the corporate world.

Funny thing is, it’s working. Beautifully.