In addition to the thousands of companies and schools that go Google every day, more and more non-profit organizations are choosing Google Apps to help remove the cost and complexity associated with traditional IT, which can often challenge the limited resources of 501(c)3 organizations.

In addition to the thousands of companies and schools that go Google every day, more and more non-profit organizations are choosing Google Apps to help remove the cost and complexity associated with traditional IT, which can often challenge the limited resources of 501(c)3 organizations.

Learn more about the special discounts available for accredited organizations with Google Apps for Non-Profits and read about how USA Water Polo made the switch to Apps and was able to provide 35,000 staff, volunteers, and players with improved email and collaboration tools while re-allocating costs toward funding for their players, teams and members.

Google Apps helps organizations of all kinds improve the way they work by minimizing on-premise hardware, increasing uptime, and making it easy for users to get productive fast. This is especially helpful for non-profit organizations, who can direct their focus away from IT maintenance and put their talents toward what they do best: doing good.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education and Non-Profit teams


Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Benjamin Doyle, Information Systems Administrator for Alta Planning + Design, a company that combines the skills of planning, design, landscape architecture and engineering to create bicycle, pedestrian, greenway, and trail projects for communities. With headquarters in Portland, Oregon, Alta has a total of 12 offices across the United States.

Benjamin talks about choosing Google Apps over both hosted and in-house Microsoft Exchange.

Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Benjamin Doyle, Information Systems Administrator for Alta Planning + Design, a company that combines the skills of planning, design, landscape architecture and engineering to create bicycle, pedestrian, greenway, and trail projects for communities. With headquarters in Portland, Oregon, Alta has a total of 12 offices across the United States.

Benjamin talks about choosing Google Apps over both hosted and in-house Microsoft Exchange.

Scalability, without complexity Alta has 60 employees and we’re growing rapidly. We knew we needed something that could scale up without bogging us down with decisions on hardware, upgrades, and maintenance. We also needed portability and easy collaboration because our employees are constantly on the go, visiting the communities we work with around the globe. We were pretty sure we didn’t want the headache and constant maintenance of an in-house system.

Our previous email system – provided free through our website host – couldn't keep up with our needs for reliability and ease of access. Messages were downloaded to individual computers, limiting remote access and making archiving near impossible. It also left us without a way to have a shared calendar solution accessible to all our users in all offices (many of us were already using Google Calendar), and it made sense to choose a service which so cleanly integrates calendars with e-mail.

Savings We compared hosted Microsoft Exchange, in-house Microsoft Exchange, and Google Apps Premier Edition – plus their associated operating costs – and Google Apps came out way below the other alternatives cost-wise, yet provided all the functionality we were after.

Google Apps was projected to save us about 62% in the first year over setting up an in-house Exchange server and 67% annual savings compared to hosted Microsoft Exchange. For a business with no prior communications budget to speak of, Google Apps was a huge advantage that provided great cost savings.

Many unexpected benefits Google Apps was virtually painless to implement, and it’s given us fast, reliable communication and collaboration. Spread out among 12 offices, there's not another solution on the market we know of that pulls together all the tools we need as well as Google Apps. We’re pretty much using the full gamut of capabilities: Gmail, Google's instant messaging, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Video and Google Docs. We use the web mail interface to keep things simple.

Communication via integrated voice the video chat was an unexpected boon for us – it’s widely popular for our network of offices as a way of quickly sharing information without having to pick up the phone. We were able to create a more reliable and accessible intranet with Google Sites than we could have done with other tools.

Being able to access our documents and other data from almost any browser is also great since we all travel so much. Everyone has access to mail and calendars with their mobile devices, and they can go from their workstation to a travel laptop seamlessly.

What’s great is that Google offers constant improvement and development. New features are introduced on an ongoing basis. Some of the extra features included in Google Apps aren't available with other services. I keep up on the new features by subscribing to Apps Update Alerts (RSS feed or email alerts). Because updates and improvements are implemented by Google, and not on on-premise servers, it's fewer "off hours" working hours for me.

Our IT budget has been able to shift more dollars into data storage and networking – money that would have otherwise been spent on a mail server and user applications. Plus, with Google keeping our mail and intranet secure and running with a 99+% up time guarantee, we have less to worry about and more time to spend on other important projects. Since our information is flowing quicker between users through a range of mediums, and our users have no trouble accessing communication and internal resources on the go.

- Benjamin Doyle, Information Systems Administrator, Alta Planning + Design

Posted by Serena Satyasai, The Google Apps Team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Earlier this year, we announced support for Rich Snippets in Google Site Search results. If you provide in-page metadata markup via RDFa, Microformats, or PageMaps, Google Site Search extracts the metadata and returns it as PageMaps in your XML results, so you can render this structured data in your search results. Rich snippets enable website owners to customize the user interface and expose images, ratings, authors and other interesting pieces of metadata with search results.
Earlier this year, we announced support for Rich Snippets in Google Site Search results. If you provide in-page metadata markup via RDFa, Microformats, or PageMaps, Google Site Search extracts the metadata and returns it as PageMaps in your XML results, so you can render this structured data in your search results. Rich snippets enable website owners to customize the user interface and expose images, ratings, authors and other interesting pieces of metadata with search results.

Today, metadata support in Google Site Search just got a whole lot better. We now provide the ability for website owners to use these metadata attributes and provide refinement options on the front-end.

For example, website owners can build a rich search interface that not only allows users to search on keywords but also refine the search results based on the author of the document, user rating or othermetadata attributes.

We've enabled a way for you to restrict your search results via use of a special operator. Let's say that you wanted to restrict the results to those results that were authored by a specific author, e.g., "typicaluser". We can do this easily by adding the following restriction in our search query: [economy more:pagemap:document-author:typicaluser]. This gives us exactly what we want – all of the documents with keyword economy and authored by "typicaluser".

We've also recently launched a Rich Snippet preview tool. This tool allows you to view not only the Rich Snippets markup recognized for Google web search, but also the additional customized markup that we support in Google Site Search. You can immediately preview how your web page will be processed after indexing, and whatmetadata attributes will be returned in PageMaps in your Google Site Search results.

For more information on Google Site Search, please visit Google Site Search.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search





When we launched Google Search Appliance 6.0 in June we introduced a brand new architecture, (GSA)n. The GSA now lets organizations search over a billion documents, and we are constantly looking to develop on (GSA)n even further. In that vein, our engineers have been working feverishly to build more capabilities and ease of use into the appliance. Today we're announcing more than 10 new features available on the GSA from Google Enterprise, including one that automatically improves results over time, the Self-Learning Scorer. Take a look here:


Self-Learning Scorer analyzes employee clicks and behavior to automatically fine-tune and improve its built-in relevance. For instance, if most users click on the fourth result for a given query, the GSA recognizes that and automatically boosts its placement – without any intervention from an administrator. Along with our existing and intuitive biasing features and Ranking Framework, this provides ease of relevance tuning.

Most enterprise search engines do three things: crawl, index and serve. With the new Self-learning Scorer, we're adding a new step to the mix: analysis. As the GSA continually serves up results, it's also learning to dynamically improve – automatically. This gives the GSA new self-improving intelligence, and adds a new step to the enterprise search cycle.


With this release, we're adding a new login feature, which provides a simple approach to securely mapping user credentials to the various back-end systems within an organization. Many larger organizations may have not one, but several 'single sign-on' systems, so this new universal login feature minimizes the number of logins for the user when performing an internal search across all company systems.

Today we're also expanding connectivity to a myriad of systems, including content management systems, file shares and databases. We are newly providing native integration for SharePoint out of the box, making indexing of SharePoint content 10x faster. Second, we are providing connectivity to Lotus Notes through Enterprise Labs. Third, we are expanding our support for file shares and databases, so organizations can connect to any file share or database in any format. The new GSA is built to be easier for users and admins – these connectors will make everyone in the office's life easer. We're also expanding the connectors program in our Enterprise Labs, live here.

These are just a couple of the product updates – you can learn about all the new features in this video too. Getting IT admins away from the tuning knobs and back to their real jobs will be a major benefit to our customers. More importantly, it will make employees across the company more productive. When internal search results improve, employees actually search more and find more information with which to do their work. You can read more about this on our blogpost, from a major US pharmaceutical company tracking the number of employee searches over time. After deploying the GSA, employees actually used their internal network significantly more – simply because it worked better.

Enterprise search isn't just about ECMs, connectors and security – it's about utilization. More relevant search results mean more employees utilizing the tools of their trade. Today's GSA update brings the search appliance into the realm of constant innovation – and self-improving intelligence. You can learn more about how the GSA adds the analytical step to the enterprise search cycle at GSA at google.com/gsa.

Posted by
Cyrus Mistry, Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search

Editor's Note:
We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Peter Herrmann, solution architect, Information Technology Department, at Mortgage Choice Limited. Peter led the development of the business case to switch Mortgage Choice to Google, and is project manager and tech lead for the organization-wide deployment of Google Apps. Peter has been working with Mortgage Choice for eight years and has been involved with IT strategy, consulting to internal business units, implementation, migrations, integration and lifecycle for many systems at Mortgage Choice.

Peter has a background in messaging and collaboration technologies and still remembers his delight in getting messages to flow (in 1992) between islands of Lotus Notes, cc:Mail,
MS Mail (Windows & Mac), Memo (a mainframe based email system) and MHS (from Novell) during a proof of concept integration he did for a large multinational.


Mortgage Choice, Australia's largest independently-owned mortgage broker, was established in 1992 and operates a franchise-based business model. We have over 1,000 users operating from around 350 locations across Australia.

The Australian mortgage broking industry has undergone a period of significant change and consolidation. In this challenging environment, the ability to scale both up and out while improving our business systems and resources, along with keeping a steady cost base, is critical to growing and strengthening our business.

In IT, we are constantly challenged by the ongoing overhead of installing, upgrading, storing, supporting and maintaining installed software across a geographically dispersed environment.
Prior to our transition to Google Apps, we diligently kept our users' software up-to-date and met system and service SLAs, but simply meeting our service obligations does not necessarily add value! At the end of the day, after buying, running and maintaining our infrastructure and software, our capacity to really add value through innovation was constrained by resource limitations.

By late 2008, with a newly reinvigorated IT strategy taking shape, the Google Apps platform was right in focus. We developed a business case for Google Apps, focusing on the benefits of simplicity (no installed software), choice (access anywhere anytime from any Internet connected device), scalability (growth with a variable cost base) and user happiness (great user experience from modern apps evolved from massive consumer driven input).

During mid-2009, Mortgage Choice ran an initial deployment of Google Apps (Mail, Calendar and Chat) for some 70 users across the country. We used Google Sites for FAQs, feedback forums and spreadsheet forms for polls to get regular user feedback. This was used to continuously improve our change management, communication, migration and support processes and collateral.

At completion of the initial deployment, 91% of users recommended we roll-out Google Apps to the entire organisation. The results also reinforced our IT strategy imperatives to "provide the business with a technology environment that is scalable, flexible, simple to use, leverages modern and emerging technologies and provides users with choice".

Editor's Note:
We're pleased to welcome guest blogger Peter Herrmann, solution architect, Information Technology Department, at Mortgage Choice Limited. Peter led the development of the business case to switch Mortgage Choice to Google, and is project manager and tech lead for the organization-wide deployment of Google Apps. Peter has been working with Mortgage Choice for eight years and has been involved with IT strategy, consulting to internal business units, implementation, migrations, integration and lifecycle for many systems at Mortgage Choice.

Peter has a background in messaging and collaboration technologies and still remembers his delight in getting messages to flow (in 1992) between islands of Lotus Notes, cc:Mail,
MS Mail (Windows & Mac), Memo (a mainframe based email system) and MHS (from Novell) during a proof of concept integration he did for a large multinational.


Mortgage Choice, Australia's largest independently-owned mortgage broker, was established in 1992 and operates a franchise-based business model. We have over 1,000 users operating from around 350 locations across Australia.

The Australian mortgage broking industry has undergone a period of significant change and consolidation. In this challenging environment, the ability to scale both up and out while improving our business systems and resources, along with keeping a steady cost base, is critical to growing and strengthening our business.

In IT, we are constantly challenged by the ongoing overhead of installing, upgrading, storing, supporting and maintaining installed software across a geographically dispersed environment.
Prior to our transition to Google Apps, we diligently kept our users' software up-to-date and met system and service SLAs, but simply meeting our service obligations does not necessarily add value! At the end of the day, after buying, running and maintaining our infrastructure and software, our capacity to really add value through innovation was constrained by resource limitations.

By late 2008, with a newly reinvigorated IT strategy taking shape, the Google Apps platform was right in focus. We developed a business case for Google Apps, focusing on the benefits of simplicity (no installed software), choice (access anywhere anytime from any Internet connected device), scalability (growth with a variable cost base) and user happiness (great user experience from modern apps evolved from massive consumer driven input).

During mid-2009, Mortgage Choice ran an initial deployment of Google Apps (Mail, Calendar and Chat) for some 70 users across the country. We used Google Sites for FAQs, feedback forums and spreadsheet forms for polls to get regular user feedback. This was used to continuously improve our change management, communication, migration and support processes and collateral.

At completion of the initial deployment, 91% of users recommended we roll-out Google Apps to the entire organisation. The results also reinforced our IT strategy imperatives to "provide the business with a technology environment that is scalable, flexible, simple to use, leverages modern and emerging technologies and provides users with choice".



Even now, as we roll out to the rest of the organization, we're seeing immediate benefits outside the original project focus of Mail, Calendar and Chat. Users are adopting other Google Apps, such as Google Docs, for collaboration in real time with co-workers and business partners. They're building forms based workflows for their business processes, and have used Google Sites and Google Video to deliver specific on-demand training websites and online manuals.

This innovation is taking place organically at the initiative of users and without the requirement for traditional IT involvement or assistance. Furthermore, it has come at no additional cost and at a pace chosen by the initiators.


Since we've "gone Google", we are seeing tangible benefits from adopting Google Apps across the organisation and we expect this to increase as our people - an increasingly mobile workforce - leverage the platform further in future.


– Peter Herrmann, solution architect, Mortgage Choice Limited


In August, we asked you share your your stories about why you or your company decided to "go Google" – in another words, switch to Google Apps or any of our other enterprise services. We were excited to see your tweets about going Google, feedback about our products, and even a few photos of our billboards.

Over 2 million companies and 20 million users have now gone Google with Apps, and today, we're expanding our messages to train stations, business publications, billboards, and airports in the U.S. as well as in the U.K., France, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. Check out the Official Google Blog to learn more about the latest in the "going Google" momentum and see a preview of our new global campaign.

If you haven't had a chance to tell us why your company went Google, we invite you to submit a short video to tell us your story, or let us know via Twitter using the hashtag #goneGoogle.

And if you need a bit of inspiration, check out what some of our current customers have to say about going Google:


Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps team
In August, we asked you share your your stories about why you or your company decided to "go Google" – in another words, switch to Google Apps or any of our other enterprise services. We were excited to see your tweets about going Google, feedback about our products, and even a few photos of our billboards.

Over 2 million companies and 20 million users have now gone Google with Apps, and today, we're expanding our messages to train stations, business publications, billboards, and airports in the U.S. as well as in the U.K., France, Japan, Australia, and Singapore. Check out the Official Google Blog to learn more about the latest in the "going Google" momentum and see a preview of our new global campaign.

If you haven't had a chance to tell us why your company went Google, we invite you to submit a short video to tell us your story, or let us know via Twitter using the hashtag #goneGoogle.

And if you need a bit of inspiration, check out what some of our current customers have to say about going Google:


Posted by Vivian Leung, Google Apps team

If you are actively considering Google Apps as part of your next-generation messaging strategy or just starting to learn more about cloud computing, you – and your boss – no doubt have questions about the technical details of moving into the cloud.

Whether you are switching from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino, you may wonder about what it takes to change your DNS and mail settings, and what to do to set up both POP and IMAP mail. You may also have questions about how to support your mobile device users, or end users who must use a local client such as Microsoft Outlook, or about directory sync tools, APIs and which migration tools and services best meet your needs. Above all, you want to avoid mistakes or pitfalls that could cost your company time and money.

The list of technical details and questions can seem overwhelming, but our customers tell us repeatedly that with advanced planning migration to the cloud can be accomplished quickly – and with minimal business disruption.

On October 22, we invite you to learn from members of our Google Apps Deployment Team. They work in the field, hand-in-hand with Apps customers, and have a wealth of experience, as well as some insider tips and tricks to help migrations to Apps go as smoothly as possible.

Migration experts Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy, and Marcello Pederson will host a live webcast, “Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration,” that will help you with the nitty-gritty details of moving into the cloud and answer your technical questions.

Our expert panelists include:

Jim Copeland Jim works with Google Apps customers on best practices for deployment and migration. He has been at Google for four years with a background in the legal, financial, and publishing industries.

Dan Kennedy Dan worked for over 10 years as a Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory administrator before coming to work with Google Apps customers via Google's acquisition of Postini. Dan specializes in large deployments where customers require interoperability between systems.

Marcello Pedersen Marcello works with Google Apps customers on a wide range of technical issues such as API usage, SAML/SSO implementations, and complex engineering questions.

Join our live webcast on October 22, 2009 to learn from our experts on the front lines who are helping customers with their Google Apps deployments.

Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration
Thursday, October 22, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m GMT

Register today.


If you are actively considering Google Apps as part of your next-generation messaging strategy or just starting to learn more about cloud computing, you – and your boss – no doubt have questions about the technical details of moving into the cloud.

Whether you are switching from Microsoft Exchange or Lotus Notes/Domino, you may wonder about what it takes to change your DNS and mail settings, and what to do to set up both POP and IMAP mail. You may also have questions about how to support your mobile device users, or end users who must use a local client such as Microsoft Outlook, or about directory sync tools, APIs and which migration tools and services best meet your needs. Above all, you want to avoid mistakes or pitfalls that could cost your company time and money.

The list of technical details and questions can seem overwhelming, but our customers tell us repeatedly that with advanced planning migration to the cloud can be accomplished quickly – and with minimal business disruption.

On October 22, we invite you to learn from members of our Google Apps Deployment Team. They work in the field, hand-in-hand with Apps customers, and have a wealth of experience, as well as some insider tips and tricks to help migrations to Apps go as smoothly as possible.

Migration experts Jim Copeland, Dan Kennedy, and Marcello Pederson will host a live webcast, “Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration,” that will help you with the nitty-gritty details of moving into the cloud and answer your technical questions.

Our expert panelists include:

Jim Copeland Jim works with Google Apps customers on best practices for deployment and migration. He has been at Google for four years with a background in the legal, financial, and publishing industries.

Dan Kennedy Dan worked for over 10 years as a Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory administrator before coming to work with Google Apps customers via Google's acquisition of Postini. Dan specializes in large deployments where customers require interoperability between systems.

Marcello Pedersen Marcello works with Google Apps customers on a wide range of technical issues such as API usage, SAML/SSO implementations, and complex engineering questions.

Join our live webcast on October 22, 2009 to learn from our experts on the front lines who are helping customers with their Google Apps deployments.

Geek Out on The Technical Details of a Google Apps Migration
Thursday, October 22, 2009
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m GMT

Register today.




Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.