WebKnowHow Friday, February 23, 2007; 07:02 AM
Google introduced Google Apps Premier Edition, a new version
of its hosted services for communication and collaboration
designed for businesses of all sizes. Google Apps Premier Edition is
available for $50 per user account per year, and includes phone
support, additional storage, and a new set of administration and
business integration capabilities.
Google Apps, launched as a free service in August 2006, is a suite of
applications that includes Gmail webmail services, Google Calendar
shared calendaring, Google Talk instant messaging and voice-over-IP,
and the Start Page feature for creating a customizable home page on a
specific domain. More than 100,000 small businesses and hundreds of
universities now use the service. Google Apps Premier Edition now joins
Google Apps Standard Edition and Google Apps Education Edition, both of
which will continue to be offered for free to organizations.
"Procter & Gamble Global Business Services (GBS) has
enrolled as a charter enterprise customer of Google Apps, a successful
consumer product suite now available to enterprises. P&G will work
closely with Google in shaping enterprise characteristics and
requirements for these popular tools," said Laurie Heltsley, director
Procter & Gamble Global Business Services.
"So much of business now relies on people being able to communicate and
collaborate effectively," said Gregory Simpson, CTO for General
Electric Company. "GE is interested in evaluating Google Apps for the
easy access it provides to a suite of web applications, and the way
these applications can help people work together. Given its consumer
experience, Google has a natural advantage in understanding how people
interact together over the web."
Google also today announced that all editions of Google Apps
now include Google Docs & Spreadsheets. In addition, Google Apps
now supports Gmail for mobile on BlackBerry handheld devices.
"Businesses are looking for applications that are simple and
intuitive for employees, but also offer the security, reliability and
manageability their organizations require," said Dave Girouard, vice
president and general manager, Google Enterprise. "With Google Apps,
our customers can tap into an unprecedented stream of technology and
innovation at a fraction of the cost of traditional installed
solutions."
Features unique to Google Apps Premier Edition include:
- 10 GBs of storage per user – Offers about 100 times the storage of the average corporate mailbox, eliminating the need to frequently delete email.
- APIs for business integration
– APIs for data migration, user provisioning, single sign-on, and mail
gateways enable businesses to further customize the service for unique
environments.
- 99.9 % uptime – Service Level
Agreements for high availability of Gmail, with Google monitoring and
crediting customers if service levels are not met.
- 24x7 support for critical issues – Includes extended business hours telephone support for administrators.
- Advertising optional – Advertising is turned off by default, but businesses can choose to include Google’s relevant target-based ads if desired.
- $50 per user account per year – Simple and affordable annual fee makes it practical to offer these applications to everyone in the organization.
In addition to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk and Start Page, all editions of Google Apps now include:
- Google Docs & Spreadsheets – With this addition,
teams can easily collaborate on documents and spreadsheets without the
need to email documents back and forth. Multiple employees can securely
work on a document at the same time. All revisions are recorded for
editing, and administrative controls allow organizations to define
limits on document sharing. According to custom analysis of
Nielsen//NetRatings MegaPanel released this week, 92 percent of users
of online productivity tools last October used Google Docs &
Spreadsheets, making it the number one product in its class.
- Gmail for mobile devices on BlackBerry
– Gmail for mobile devices provides the same Gmail experience – such as
search, conversation view and synchronization with desktop version – on
BlackBerry handheld devices for users of Google Apps. Gmail for mobile
devices joins a list of other mobile options for Google Apps and
BlackBerry users that already includes a Google Talk client and a
variety of calendar sync tools.
- Application-level control
– Allows administrators to adapt services to business policies, such as
sharing of calendars or documents outside of the company.
"When it comes to our email systems, our doctors don’t have the time or
the budgets to deal with managing technology or defending against
spam," said Andrew Johnson, chief information officer, San Francisco
Bay Pediatrics. "With Google Apps Premier Edition we don’t have to
worry about downloading the latest spam filters or navigating unwieldy
servers. This is where we let Google do what it does best, so we can do
what we do best – help our patients."
In addition to Procter & Gamble Global Business Services
and San Francisco Bay Pediatrics, other early adopters of Google Apps
Premier Edition include Salesforce.com and Prudential Preferred
Properties in the U.S., as well as Essilor and Mediametrie in France.
To provide more options and value to customers of Google Apps
Premier Edition, Google Enterprise Professional partners like Avaya and
Postini are developing a variety of solutions based on our APIs,
including email gateways, enhanced security, Google Calendar
synchronization, third-party integration with Google Talk, as well as
offering deployment, migration, and additional support services.
Google hosted applications are available in many local
languages, such as French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese
and Korean. Please visit http://www.google.com/a for details on the product, local availability, partners and customers.
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