How to become Gmail Ninja!

If you got 100 new messages, how long would it take you to get through them all? An hour? Five minutes? How would you find the important ones, reply to the ones that require an immediate reply, and mark the ones that you needed to take care of later? Would you use stars, filters, keyboard shortcuts, labels? What about Gmail Labs like tasks or canned responses?

Everybody has their own system for managing email, but some are definitely more efficient than others. Even if you only get a few messages a day, there are probably some simple things you can do to make it easier to get through your inbox and maybe even have a little fun along the way. We know time is valuable, so we asked lots of Googlers for their tips and tricks on how they make the most of Gmail, and we combined the best of these into a guide at www.gmail.com/tips, cheekily entitled "Become a Gmail Ninja." The tips are categorized into ninja belts (white, green, black and master ) based on how much mail you get each day.



For a handy reference that you can pin to your wall or keep on your desk, we even made aprintable version of the guide where all the tips fit on one page front and back. And for the first 1024 of you who want them, we'll send a limited-edition, laminated guide for free. Just fill out this form with your address. Sorry, we can only ship to addresses in the US. If you're not one of the lucky 1024, you can still buy a laminated guide at www.barcharts.com.



If you're already a Gmail ninja and have your own tips you'd like to share, let us know and we'll add the best ones to the online guide.

*Our lawyers asked us to make sure it was clear that your contact information won't be maintained longer than necessary to send you the laminated guide and that this offer is "void where prohibited and only while supplies last."

Update (11:59am): Well, that was fast. We've run out of the free laminated guides, but if you weren't part of the first 1024 people to sign up, you can still can buy them for $1.25 atwww.barcharts.com/gmail.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/so-you-want-to-be-gmail-ninja.html

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Tip: Check and reply from multiple email addresses in single mailbox in Google Apps (Gmail)

It's that time of year when students are graduating, and in many cases getting yet another email address to check — an alumni account — as a graduation present.

Whether you have an alumni address, a work account, or your own domain that you like to use, rather than logging in and out of multiple accounts, you can set yourself up so all your mail ends up in your Gmail inbox. And you can send mail from any of the other addresses you own right from Gmail as well.

There are two steps to make this happen:

1. Set up mail forwarding or fetching
Many email providers offer free auto-forwarding to other accounts. Log into your non-Gmail account and set your Gmail address as the forwarding target. If your other account doesn't offer forwarding but supports POP3 access, you can use Mail Fetcher in Gmail to automatically check your other account for new mail and download it to Gmail.

2. Set up custom "From:"
Gmail's custom "From:" feature lets you send mail with one of your other email addresses listed as the sender in place of your Gmail address. There's a good step-by-step for how to set this up in the Help Center, but the basics are adding the address you want to use and then verifying that it belongs to you. Once you have your custom "From:" set up, you can pick which address you want to reply from in the "From:" address drop down while composing messages.

P.S. If you're a recent grad and want more tips on how to use Google during this transition period, check out the Google for Students Blog, where we'll be posting more tips like thisweekly for the next couple months.

Posted by Joyce Sohn, Product Marketing Manager

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/06/tip-check-and-reply-from-multiple-email.html

Use Microsoft Outlook (Email,Contacts,Calendar) via Google Apps Sync

Over the last year, we've had a razor sharp focus on making it as easy as possible for businesses to deploy Google Apps. In the last few months you've seen some of the results, from offline Gmail to user directory synchronization to full Blackberry® interoperability.

Today we're excited remove another key barrier to enterprise adoption of Google Apps with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions.

Many business users prefer Gmail's interface and features to products they've used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, we've developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail's web interface to access their information when they're not on their work computer.

Key features include:

• Email, calendar, and contacts synchronization. For email, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which is much faster than IMAP or other methods.

• Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook's calendar or Google Calendar.
  

• A simple, two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Watch it work in this 3 minute video:

Here's what the IT execs at Genentech and Avago have to say about using this capability:

Three key service providers – NuVox, Netfirms and IKANO – have already begun offering Google Apps Sync. NuVox, a leading telecom provider in the Southeast and Midwest, sees "an incredible response to Google Apps from [our] customer base," says CEO Jim Akerhielm. "We’re excited that Google Apps Sync helps our customers stop running Exchange and spend more time focusing on their core business."

Netfirms, which powers 1.2m websites in the U.S. and Canada, is launching Google Apps to their customers in concert with Google Apps Sync. George Mitsopoulos, V.P. of DNA Mail (an IKANO company) says, "Google Apps Sync gives our customers even more options while minimizing our deployment effort. It's 'install, launch and you're ready to go.'"

If your business hasn't started using Google Apps yet, you can learn more about Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. If you already use Google Apps Premier or Education Edition, go ahead and give the plug-in a try.

Posted by Eric Orth, Software Engineer, Google Apps team
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/06/use-microsoft-outlook-with-google-apps.html

Google App Synchronisation with Microsoft Exchange

Google Apps Sync with Microsoft Exchange

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is getting more aggressive about eroding Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s dominance in the enterprise and taking away the software maker's business customers.

The stance was very apparent during a media event in San Francisco on Tuesday, where Google's enterprise group assembled a group of technology journalists and presented an update on its enterprise business.

The theme of the event was "going Google," and not only did Google invite several CIOs and IT directors to talk about their religious conversion from on-premises IT to Google-style cloud computing, but it also introduced new software for its paying enterprise customers to make "going Google" easier for Microsoft loyalists.

Google introduced Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, which allows Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for e-mail, contacts, and calendar data. Think of it as Microsoft on the outside and Google on the inside.

Dave Girouard, head of Google's enterprise group, hedged on whether Google would develop similar tools to integrate other Microsoft Office apps with Google on the back end. "Office has its role and it's a great set of products for a great set of things," he said. "But users ought to have more choice."

The choice Google chose to highlight was "going Google," and as might be expected, Google's chosen converts had nice things to say.

"We've had a very fruitful experience with Google," said Chris O'Connor, IT director at Genentech, one of the largest companies to switch to using Google Apps. "What started out as an experiment culminated in moving everyone in our company. We now see Google as one of our five strategic IT platforms."

Bob Rudy, VP and CIO at Avago Technologies, dismissed worries that giving Google control over so much of corporate IT might dilute the "secret sauce," the strategic value of IT. "My secret sauce is better, faster, cheaper, and more of it," he said.

Rudy later dismissed the issue of security, which remains a worry for many enterprises. "Security in the cloud is a nonissue for me and for my board," he said.

Jason Harper, VP of IT at Morgans Hotel Group, which owns the Clift Hotel, said Google Apps worked very well for his roaming employees. "The employees have adopted it very, very quickly and it has completely changed the way we work," he said.

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) enterprise business is profitable and growing, said Girouard. Google Apps, he said, counts 1.75 million businesses as customers, for a total of 15 million users. Google is managing more than 4,000 TB of e-mail for its Google Apps users. And it has dozens of large customers with more than 1,000 employees, he said.

As for revenue, he was less specific: several hundred million dollars. He declined to clarify the percentage of customers using the paid Google Apps Premiere Edition. At the same time, he insisted that the free Google Apps, which is limited to 50 user accounts, isn't a "fremium" play, an attempt to convert users of the free service to the paid one. Ads, he said, help pay for the users of the free service.

There are three main reasons that companies switch to Google, said Girouard: radically lower cost, constant innovation, and happier end users.

In terms of cost, Girouard cited a Forrester Research report published in January that found Gmail was about three times less expensive than a hosted version ofMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Exchange. In terms of innovation, he cited 68 features added to Google Apps in 2008 and 49 so far in 2009. Happiness is a bit harder to quantify, but Girouard insisted that switching to Google leads to happier users.

"The vast majority of people that you move into Google from legacy systems feel really happy about it," insisted Girouard.

And for those who find happiness in Microsoft's products, there's now Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. All of this might just sound like the argument Google has been making since 2004, were it not for customers like Avago's Rudy.

Rudy recounted a conversation he had with an Oracle executive that went something like this: "Get with the Google-Salesforce paradigm or I'm going to move off Oracle." Rudy, you see, is a fan of Google's ongoing software improvements.

Google Apps, said Girouard, "just gets better every week. ... That's very different from the classic IT world."

http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=217800401&subSection=Integration

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is a plug in that allows Microsoft Outlook to run on the Google Apps backend rather than Microsoft Exchange Server. End users can continue to use the familiar Microsoft Outlook interface for email, calendar and contacts as they transition to Google Apps.

Editions included:
Premier and Education Editions

Languages included:
Available worldwide with US English interface

How to access what's new:
You can download Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook at www.google.com/apps/get-outlook-sync.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/06/use-microsoft-outlook-with-google-apps.html

Two new spreadsheet APIs in Google Docs

New APIs in Google Docs:

- The following new Data APIs are now available in Google Spreadsheets:
- The Tables feed allows tables to be placed anywhere on the sheet, with multiple tables per sheet and column-based meta-data for each column in the table.
– The Records feed is a feed of rows within a table, called records, with stable IDs (moving the rows around will maintain the same row ID).

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages included:
US English

How to access what's new:
Click here to get started with the new Tables and Records Feeds in Google Spreadsheets.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2009/06/for-developers-two-new-spreadsheet-data.html

Benefits of Google Apps - Testimony from customers

Get next-generation communication and collaboration tools for less

Whether you’re looking to transition off your outdated, costly messaging solution, or just looking to complement your existing solution with more advanced collaboration tools, Google Apps Premier Edition provides your users with the next-generation tools they need to handle an increasing volume of information, stay in the loop while on the go, and communicate, share and collaborate with their colleagues, customers and partners. Google Apps offers a secure and scalable platform for communicating, sharing and collaborating anytime, anywhere.

Organizations can spend less time and money managing email and other IT services, and focus more on what they do best, whether that's teaching kids, creating award-winning products, developing creative advertising campaigns or helping non-profits organizations. But don't take our word for it — organizations from around the world have shared their success stories with us, and we think they tell the story best.

Enterprise

Capgemini IT services and business consultancy		Now that our agents have shaped Google Apps to the specific requirements of the contact center environment, they have the tools they need to deliver the highest levels of customer care on behalf of our clients. - Capgemini Customer Care & Intelligence Vice President Robbie Brillhart
Procter & Gamble Leading global CPG company with 135,000 employees		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. - Laurie Heltsley, Director, Procter & Gamble Global Business Services
GE Diversified industrial corporation		So much of business now relies on people being able to communicate and collaborate effectively. 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. - Gregory Simpson, CTO, GE
Google Organizer and access point for the world's information 10,000+ employees		We wanted to demonstrate that we believe so strongly in this product that we run our own company on it. Internal use of Google Apps should validate any requirements Google makes for business users. In addition, it will improve the product for customers of all sizes, since any features added by Google's engineers will benefit all users. - Douglas Merrill, Former CIO and Vice President of Engineering, Google
Salesforce.com Leading CRM software provider		With Google Apps, everybody is running the same copy because it all comes from a central server. That's a more secure and a more powerful way to run your business. Its not like that old software model where we have to wait years or even decades for the next version or the next upgrade or even the next product. The next version or next product at Google is sometimes available the next day or maybe even the next hour. - Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO, Salesforce.com
Prudential Preferred Properties Leading real estate firm in Chicago		One of the advantages that our company has seen from switching to Google Apps is just having a rock-solid email solution that our users love. Any time we can roll out any technology that is that simple for us to maintain and universally loved by our staff - that's a win in our books. - Camden Daily, Director of Technology, Prudential Preferred Properties
Mondadori Global publishing company		With Google Apps, our journalists can really work from everywhere in the world, they need only an Internet connection and good ideas. - Marco Mazzei, Editor in Chief, Mondadori
Interush Affiliate-based online advertising and marketing		As Interush expands globally, the need for effective communications between our affiliates became a priority. Google Apps provides multi-language support in both Japanese and Chinese where our primary base of affiliates do business. And Google Apps provides Interush affiliates with an opportunity to test and collaborate on a global scale, helping to ensure our leading edge in communications. - Marty Matthews, CEO, Interush
Essilor No.1 worldwide producer of ophthalmic optical products		Essilor pays close attention to trends in the IT marketplace: we created our intranet in 1995 and installed the Google Search Appliance in 2006 across our entire network. Today we clearly see two important trends: the rapid advance of collaboration, which places more and more importance on the office environment of every employee, and the consumerization of IT, the fusion of the technologies used at the office and in the home. On these two points, it is clear that Google Apps represents a significant advance and it is thus natural for Essilor to seriously investigate Google Apps. - Didier Lambert, CIO, Essilor
L'Oreal Leader in beauty products		L'Oreal R & D has decided to test Google Apps in order to optimize collaboration between its researchers. - Jean-Paul Beck, International Director of Information Technology
Nexans Global provider of cable and networking systems		Nexans, a world leader in the cable industry, is focused on intuitive usability, flexibility at all levels of administration, accessibility and collaboration throughout the world, securing our intellectual property, and maintaining cost control. Google Apps is a very interesting way to provide an innovative suite of products to our users to help achieve our objectives. I have personally used Gmail for the last 2 years, and I appreciate the quality of the service and the continuous solution improvements. By choosing to become an early adopter of Google Apps, Nexans will have the possibility to interact with the new solution and collaborate with Google to improve the solution to meet our future needs - a rare opportunity for such a product type. - Yves Trezieres, Corporate VP Information Systems, Nexans
Impelsys, Inc. Global content delivery and publishing company		As a global company that specializes in the delivery of electronic content and publishing services, rapid and efficient communication, within our company and with our customers is critical to us. Google Apps offers us the flexibility of communicating quickly and collaborating easily amongst our teams and with our customers -- regardless of location. In addition Google Apps offers Impelsys a total cost of ownership that is very compelling compared to the cost of owning the software licenses, hardware and the support people involved in maintaining that software and hardware. For us, Google Apps is the right solution at the right price. - Nizar Jamal, Chief Operating Officer, Impelsys, Inc.
Jump to section... Top Enterprise Small Business Education Government / Organization Family / Affinity group

Small Business

Takami Restaurant and food services		Google Apps lets us centralize and consolidate information, simplifying our company's internal communication process and giving us better control over the business on a daily basis. - Alejandra Cifuentes, Technology and Information Manager
Bravepoint Lakeview Prudential Theikos CDI Head Start		Google Apps lets us centralize and consolidate information, simplifying our company's internal communication process and giving us better control over the business on a daily basis.
The Huffington Post Online news and opinion		The reaction of our staff to Google Apps was overwhelmingly positive. Plus, ongoing maintenance is nil. - Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer
Hub City Media Software Developer		The drudgery of maintaining our own infrastructure is gone, which leaves us more time to generate new concepts and spend time more profitably. - Steve Giovanetti, CTO, Hub City Media
San Francisco Consulting Group Professional services		Our email services perform faster and are more available on the go...our collaborative work habits have definitely improved. - David Ewing, President, San Francisco Consulting Group
Nimble Books Publisher		Publishing is inherently a collaborative business, so we wanted a solution with collaboration baked in. When we saw Google Apps, we felt it would help us live up to our vision of being a nimble publishing company by shortening the time required for fundamental interactions like negotiating contracts and reporting on royalties. - Fred Zimmerman, CEO, Nimble Books
Abraham & Harrison LLC Online Relationship Marketing		Google Apps gives us a structured, integrated way to stay connected and collaborate. - Chris Abraham, President and COO, Abraham & Harrison
Counterpoint Consulting Indoff Both new and established companies turn to Google Apps to curb costs		With Apps, we can grow our staff as needed and avoid a commensurate increase in IT overhead and a lot of advance planning. - Markmann, Co-founder, Counterpoint Consulting
Indoff Office Products Distributor		The migration to Google Apps was very simple and painless, and that's exactly what we were hoping for. I foresee the collaboration tools in Google Apps growing in importance, as our sales partners start to use Google Docs to collaborate with vendors, customers, and folks here at corporate. - Shawn Faulkingham, Director of IT, Indoff
WBP Systems Software Developer		Google Apps are great. For every minute I don't spend maintaining something that Google now does for me (and does it better then I could have), is a minute I can spend developing one of our products or working on custom software for a client. - Ben Smith, Founder, WBP Systems
WaterFilters.NET LLC Water treatment products distributor Locations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri		A transition to a new business productivity software suite can seem overwhelming. However, Google Apps has very clear and thorough documentation that makes the process quite simple, and the benefits of the software will quickly make up for any time spent migrating. For our water filtration business, it has made an enormous difference in cost savings and productivity. We are reinvesting our savings in areas that are helping our water filtration business grow, and we are using the features of Google Apps to help us be more productive. And if we are the most efficiently-run water filter business, we can offer the best prices and features to our customers.
TeachStreet Online teaching marketplace Seattle, WA		We're platform agnostic (we have PCs, Macs and Linux machines), so Google Apps was the ideal solution for us. It was quick and easy to set up and we love how effortless it is to work at home, access email and calendars from phones, etc. Google Apps lets us move faster and make smarter, more collaborative decisions. The days of having to pay for more email storage (capped at ridiculously low storage levels for high costs), haggling with providers and sending documents back and forth are over. Give Google Apps a try!
CPApartner Outsourced Accounting Redmond and Seattle, WA		Google Apps is the best solution for sharing information with clients and team members around the globe, hands down. There is no better alternative! Google Apps replaced a technology-intensive Exchange implementation that was not nearly as flexible, responsive and feature-rich. Gmail, Talk, Calendar, Docs and Page Creator are all extremely beneficial to our diffuse organization and allow us to deploy to people instantly. We've seen dramatic workflow improvement, fewer IT hassles, cost savings, and less downtime. And the collaborative aspects are unbelievable! - Rick Rutherford, President
Power of Two Games Game developers		We're a starving startup. It's actually quite good: we have full control over our company, and we can decide what do do and how to run it. So when it came time to set up our office tools, we looked for the most inexpensive solution that met all our needs. That's when we found out about Google Apps for small business. Gmail is hands down the best email web interface I have ever used. Gmail was just the tip of the iceberg. Google Calendar totally rules. We gave a try to Google Docs and we were totally impressed. It's a web-based app, so we can edit the documents from any computer with web access; we can collaborate on the same document at the same time; exporting to a variety of formats comes in very handy when we need to send a document to somebody who is not using Google. It's encouraging to see these applications grow and get better week after week. We're extremely pleased with how Google Apps has been working for us so far. They fit our needs perfectly and the cost is right. We were able to set things up in about a morning and never have to fuss with it again. How good is that? We're happy to have these services available for free and being able to spend our time and money in what really matters: Creating a kick-ass game and getting it out the door.
MetalBuildingDepot.com Building design Seguin, TX		We replaced Outlook with Google Apps and have never looked back. Apps is always available, easy to administer and secure. The move immediately centralized, streamlined and simplified our entire messaging infrastructure. Now our business always has instant access to critical information with the advanced archiving and search functionality built into the service. - David Garcia, CIO
Skinnycorp Online community facilitator, parent company of Threadless Chicago, IL		At Skinnycorp we use the Premier version and love it. The extra disk space on Gmail is great, and the cost per user is not that much. We were in a position to migrate our email to a new email server. Our workforce was becoming more geographically stratified and diverse and we needed a solution that allowed us to communicate and share info without being physically close. We also needed a platform that would fit into our heterogeneous technology world. Nobody has the same computer, OS or usage pattern, so we needed something flexible. We tried Exchange, but it required us to fit into it -- that worked for about two days. Right when this migration was occurring, my boss, Jake, mentioned that he wished we could just use Gmail. So we did. I signed up for Google Apps, set it up in a couple hours (if that), migrated our users, propagated our DNS records, and BAM, we had his wish. Our implementation was painless. Everyone was much happier. Google Apps did everything we required and allowed us to be as flexible as we needed. The calendar and Gmail are amazing. They work very well together and allow all of our users to connect and interact. Google Docs is very helpful with coordinating documents and for storing docs and spreadsheets that we may need on the road or just away from our desks. The ability to use any client, to chat with other jabber users, to share with other people really makes us feel safe and fancy. We love that we are able to interact with other apps and solutions without impacting our day-to-day workflow. I can send someone a doc i created in Google Docs and they can modify it and send it back without worry. Our managed exchange product was about $100 per user per year, so our total cost of ownership for our email has gone down. We are able to give our data to Google, who handles the hard stuff - while we handle our business. Just do it. - Harper Reed, Life Changer
Certain Affinity, Inc. Game developer Austin, TX		The most substantial benefits of Google Apps are 1) a shared company calendar, 2) portable email, and 3) ease of use. It's hard to put this in more tangible terms, but these have had a direct impact on productivity and job satisfaction. The interface design is incredibly intuitive...the overall experience is awesome. For me, I no longer have to lug my laptop around everywhere I go. For the company, having a shared calendar has led to our being far more organized; this is especially important when we're coordinating business meetings and contract negotiations. - Max Hoberman, President
Integral Life Media and events company Louisville, CO		Once people get used to the search and sort features of Gmail, it's so easy for them to pull-up exactly what they're looking for -- we've saved hours and hours of time that we used to spend finding old messages. We've also probably saved lots of money because of the productivity increases we get using Google Talk to quickly communicate. The price, the up-time, the productivity increases and the reliability...I don't think I need to say why we appreciate Google Apps. - Robert MacNaughton, IT Manager
CORE10 Architecture Architecture firm St. Louis, MO		We appreciate most the accessibility from anywhere and the simplicity. I'm more connected outside the office and better able to keep in touch with clients. - Michael Byrd, AIA LEED AP
Hill House Products Wholesale electronics distributor San Clemente, CA		Since we switched to Apps, I haven't had to stay late once fixing someone's email or reloading a PC because of a virus. Google Apps has freed up my time as an IT professional to concentrate on the company website and hardware concerns. In addition, the owners travel often and used to call to have employees turn on their computers to check their email -- Gmail took care of it with an easier, more stable interface, for free. With Google hosting their email, they take a laptop with them and check their email from any location. Also, Gmail's filter catches almost all of the spam, and has made the threat of loosing emails and contact info disappear. It costs approximately $300 to send a salesperson out to a customer; if they do not have to return home between sales calls to check email, this is cut by at least $50 in time and gas costs, if not more. If we were running an Exchange server it would cost at least $500 to have the network admin set up the program, and at least $120 per hour each month to maintain it -- not to mention the time and money spent on backing up the data and taking the backup off-site. - Keenan Hill, Technical Specialist
SF Bay Pediatrics Medical group in San Francisco		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. With Google Apps 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. - Andrew Johnson, Chief Information Officer, SF Bay Pediatrics
Sea Change Investment Fund Environmentally responsible venture fund		The response of our users to the incorporation of Google Apps has been great. People are excited to do in the work context what they know and love in the personal context. It's very seamless for folks to switch over, in fact, there is no transition. - Jason Winship, Managing Principal, Sea Change Investment Fund
Eli Research Research provider in health care, legal and financial services industries		We're a flexible, fast growing company with users scattered all over the world in offices and working from home. Who is better equipped than Google to ensure uptime and universal availability from any browser, mail client, or even hand-held devices? Let's face it, beyond simply getting messages, email is all about being able to find the things you already have as they relate to ideas you are having now. For messaging to have a foundation based on search and tagging (labels) is an obvious evolution. Retrieval of messages on any topic becomes an easy, instant task even if you only have the smallest grain of an idea of what you are looking for. In traditional email, a good part of a user's day may be spent searching for background to support a current topic. The search-and-label based tagging scheme in Gmail is far superior to simple folders, since items can belong to as many labels as they apply to. Why move our internal email infrastructure to Gmail? Because I get all the upside of a huge scale upgrade, and I don't need to revise my budget or put extra equipment in my server rooms or add internal support to ensure uptime, or even teach users to use it. It's a natural. - Mike Campbell, Director of Information Technology, Eli Research, Inc.
Neev Information Technologies Technology consultancy		A year ago I was the primary system administrator for our company. We had been hit by DoS attacks twice when our server simply became unusable. There were times when the mail system would be down and we would not notice for a few hours, thinking its a quiet day :-) . Imagine if a small bootstrapped company misses even one email from a prospect who is looking to do business with them? What if your back up script fails and you loose most of your email archives? Worse, what if a hacker takes over your server, and uses it for spam? I have lived with these worries for two years before finding peace of mind. Not only does [Google Apps] save you time and stress, it allows you to concentrate on things you should be worrying about. - Saurabh Chandra, CEO, Neev Information Technologies, Bangalore, India
Drew George & Partners, Inc. Eco-friendly building consulting firm in San Diego		As a small and growing firm, we were looking for an easily scalable and affordable email and calendaring platform with minimal maintenance. Google Apps provides our employees with plenty of storage space, accessibility from different devices without synchronization, spam prevention and shared calendars. In addition, we are excited by all the new collaboration opportunities that Google Apps offers. - Drew George, CEO, Drew George & Partners, Inc.
RedOctane Video game and accessories publisher, creators of Guitar Hero for the PlayStation2		Until recently, we had been using a free email solution installed on one of our own servers. We decided to switch, and the transition went smoothly thanks to instructions that were easy to follow. Google's service offers more features and more space than other alternatives. Our old mailbox size was 10 mb, and we would constantly get "mailbox full" errors and bounced messages. No longer! Also, Google's webmail interface is the best one out there, which helps us access our email from anywhere, whether or not we're at our own computers. - Mike Doan, RedOctane
Travelstart Nordic AB Travel agency in Sweden		Google Apps gives our end-users fast, ubiquitous access to email and calendar from a simple yet powerful interface. The search features in Gmail are especially popular and more robust than other mail clients. Google Apps Premier Edition will save us 50% compared to the costs of hosting email ourselves and even more than using an outsourced Microsoft Exchange solution. Account management is easy and we don't have to worry about mailbox sizes or running out of disk. - Erik Bosrup, Travelstart Nordic AB
Rock Kitchen Harris Small advertising, design, PR and web design agency, in the United Kingdom		We used to have an old Windows 2000 box stashed under a desk, running our mail server. It worked fine for many years, but during the hot weather a few weeks ago, it just blew up. Luckily, we were able to get up and running with Google's solution quickly and with minimal disruption to our business. This service brings together a complete set of communication tools (email, IM, calendar), and we especially like how it lets each person choose the mail interface they're most comfortable with. Some people prefer a desktop client, whilst others use the webmail interface so they can find old messages really easily. - Paul Sculthorpe, Senior Web Developer, Rock Kitchen Harris
Allen Labs Small business providing consulting services to non-profits		We used to have our own server — around $2,000 for the hardware and $200 per month for rackspace and bandwidth. Plus my time to keep it up and running, which is limitless and completely free of charge (sort of) since it's my own business. Oh, how I love to sleep through the night without having the pager go off at 3am now! The best part is not having to hassle with all the regular maintenance of a mail server...patches, spam, backups, egads! I've recommended Google Apps to all of the non-profits that I donate my time to. - Jules Allen, Founder, Allen Labs
FantasticGreece.com Online travel agency in Greece		We are running an online travel agency and it is really crucial for us to have 100% e-mail availability. The loss or the delay of any e-mail might cause serious troubles to us and our customers. Using Gmail servers as our mail servers make us feel a lot safer. The spam filter is also doing a great job! Google's service is easy to set up and the basic functions that an ecommerce business uses, such as email, are easy to implement. I have already recommended Google Apps to my friends involved in other businesses. - Nikos Goulis, Managing Director, FantasticGreece.com
2night Entertainment Worldwide nightlife guide and social network, based in Guatemala		We had a privately managed mail server, which took time to update, maintain spam filters, patch antivirus software, and all the rest. Our webmail was really bad, and the Gmail interface is a great improvement. I like that Gmail only displays text ads, and that they're related to the topic of our emails. They're actually useful, rather than a distraction. Getting started with this service was very easy, by the way, just like the other Google products that I use. I have already recommended Google Apps to many other friends, and I'm planning to use it for the other domains that I manage. - Alejandro Pivaral, 2night Entertainment
VAI Ingdesi Industry Solutions Company		Google's service is way better than our old one! It's definitely had a positive impact on our business and I would recommend it to other small-to-medium size businesses. - Juan Sagasti, VAI Ingdesi
ebusinessware.com Financial services consulting		Google Apps was very easy to set up. Being able to change the logos and colors was important for branding. It's had a positive impact on our business as it has helped us focus our attention more on the business instead of running mail servers with anti-virus and anti-spam software. - Rajesh Abhyankar, Manager, ebusinessware.com
Metropolitan Group Social marketing firm		Google Apps for us means email reliability, great spam filtering and access to innovative collaboration tools that will surely enhance the pace at which we can do business. By keeping pace with Google we know we're keeping pace with leading-edge technologies that will help our organization communicate better. - Jason Rambo, Operations Manager, Metropolitan Group
Bio-Botanica Producer of botanical extract		The decision to move our in-house e-mail to Google Apps was based on cost savings and improved efficiencies including freeing up internal resources. It alleviates the need for our IT staff to install patches and perform security and virus updates. Users will now have increased storage limits for e-mails as well as being able to create and share corporate calendars. Our sales force will have worldwide access to their e-mail with the same features as the in-house program. - Michael Tagner, IT Manager, Bio-Botanica
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Education

Northwestern University Private university in Chicago, Illinois with 14,000 students		Our students approached us about a year ago, saying that we needed to improve our email and collaboration services. We actually had our student government tell us, 'we want you to implement Google Apps.' Higher education institutions have the opportunity right now to focus on their core competencies of education and of supporting true education. If other peripheral services -- communication services -- are being done by someone else in a best-of-breed fashion, why not take advantage? - Wendy Woodward, Director of Technology Support Services, Northwestern University
Abilene Christian University Private Christian university in Texas		Almost every technology decision we make involves tradeoffs, weighing the operational costs against the benefits gained. With Google Apps, the balance sheet is very lopsided. The benefits are tremendous and costs are few. - James Langford, Director of Web Integration and Programming
Arizona State University University in Tempe, Arizona with 65,000 students		Google Apps is helping Arizona State University become a highly flexible university that can provide extraordinary technology experiences for its students. Google's integration of webmail, instant messaging and calendaring is second to none. - Kari Barlow, Assistant Vice President, University Technology Office, Arizona State University
Besant Hill School of Happy Valley Small, private boarding school in rural California		Collaborative projects really make for an excellent educational experience, not only because students bounce ideas off each other and improve each other's writing skills, but because the process itself teaches them how to work well with others—a valuable skill for anyone.
Columbia Secondary School Public school partnered with the NYC Department of Education and Columbia University		Our technology and information systems are a huge selling point for parents who may otherwise have doubts about sending their kids to a brand new school. As a startup operation, drawing a talented and diverse student population has required that we create an impressive online edifice that preceded our physical existence as a school. From summer reading discussion forums to parent and student listserves and online interest groups, the strong, flexible, and user-friendly solution provided by Google Apps provided the glue to hold together our online community. - Andrew Stillman, Assistant Principal and Associate Director of Technology and Information Systems
Faculty of Management Studies Management Training school in New Delhi, India		Students are more than satisfied using the new system, and appreciate the increased email storage space. The school's management is happy with Google Apps, too, especially because it allows us to maintain the FMS brand identity by offering email on our own domain. - Faculty of Management Studies Secretary of Media Relations
Lakehead University University located in Ontario, Canada		Google is already a step ahead of its competition in converting email from being a conventional communication tool to being a robust, collaborative discussion tool. Other companies use three or more features to do what is accomplished by the one email application that is Google Apps. In addition, Google's track record is consonant with Lakehead's philosophy of innovative thinking and a nimble approach to adopt technology to enhance community experience. - Shahzad Jafri, CIO, Lakehead University
Linköping University Inter-disciplinary university in Sweden		The addition of Google Apps has meant much more to the university than just an email platform replacement. The Gmail capabilities alone would see the project deemed a success, but with the additional products, including Google Docs and Calendar, we have been able to incorporate it as a critical part of our student IT ecosystem.... In adopting Google’s Apps, we are not only aligning ourselves with a global leader in IT, we are also providing students with what they want. - Joakim Nejdeby, CIO
Thunderbird School of Global Management Leading international business school in Arizona		Google Apps provides larger storage, better internationalization, better spam filtering, and a better web interface than our previous solution. It has improved communications and email user retention. - Johan Reinalda, Thunderbird School of Global Management
San Jose City College Community college in the San Francisco Bay Area 10,000 students		We considered many options and choose Google Apps because of the quality of the products, the ease of implementation, and frankly because so many of our students already know and trust Google's search and communication tools. Google Apps has brought, and is continuing to bring, our whole campus community closer together. It's easier than ever for students and faculty to communicate with each other, and this aspect has a positive impact both in the classroom and around campus. - Michael John Renzi, Director of Finance and Administration, San Jose City College
Cambria-Rowe Business College Career training institute in Pennsylvania		Our previous mail solution was expensive and required constant maintenance, moving to Google Apps has meant a much better and more reliable service. It was easy to get started with Google Apps and it has been of great benefit to out students. I would recommend Google Apps to other universities, because it is easy to manage, there's an incredible spam filter, and it's easily accessible. We love the additional storage, and how we can customize the user interface with our school logo, which gives the product a nice touch for students. From an administration standpoint too, Google Apps is really easy to set up and manage. - Thomas Hoover, IT Director, Cambria-Rowe Business College
Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University Business school in India		Until Google Apps, we had been maintaining our own mail server that provided 2 mb email accounts to our campus community. With the amount of spam that was making it through our filters, our small inboxes were being choked on a daily basis. With Google, the spam filtering works much better and with 1,000 times as much storage per account, we don't have to worry about full inboxes anymore. The Admissions Director and the Dean are especially pleased with the improvement since they get a high volume of mail per day. Setup was simple, and being able to use our school logo conveys the message that this a truly a campus mail system, not just another email account. - Ankush Trakru, Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University
Wyzsza Szkola Biznesu - National Louis University (WSB NLU) Leading Polish business school		Google Calendar it is very unique tool which allows me to double check the time and venue of my lectures while checking my mails. - Kasia Radek, Google Apps Ambassador, WSB NLU
Manhattan Christian College Higher education university in Manhattan, Kansas		After several years of using other hosted solutions we needed to find a better service. We found Google Apps to be the best solution for our needs. It has better functionality than anything else we looked at, or have used in the past, and is extremely easy to use. Our students love it, and so do I! - Jeff Davis, Student IT Services, Manhattan Christian College
Victoria Junior College Junior College in Singapore		Google Apps Education Edition has been a disruptive technology for Victoria Junior College. It has helped transformed the college into a highly connected community with its innovative set of integrated features in email, instant messaging with VOIP, and online calendaring. The benefits are evident even from day one: no more bounced mailbox over quota messages, no more manual collation and updating of students' emails and non-delivery errors, simplified web administration, customizable filters and auto-notification, and many more. We are continually discovering effective and interesting ways of rolling out services to our staff and students. Without the need to worry about infrastructure management and upgrades, we can now devote more time to envision and enable collaborative experiences with technology in education. - Robert Yeo, Head of Information Technology Department, Victoria Junior College
Open University Malaysia Open and distance learning university in Malaysia		There is a detectable sense of confidence that at last the email system is world-class! We went out looking for better email services and the fact that Google Apps Education Edition came with email plus all the other goodies is, of course, added bonus. - Professor Dr. Ahmad Hashem, General Manager of Meteor Technology and Consultancy Sdn Bhd
Prem Tinsulanonda International School K-12 school in Chiang Mai, Thailand		I am the IT coordinator and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) teacher at Prem Tinsulanonda International School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. When I first took my position, we were in the middle of an email crisis situation and I got tremendous pressure to fix our constantly failing system. After considering all the very expensive email service providers out there, Google Apps Education Edition came to the rescue. Not only does Gmail provide us with excellent service, but Google Apps will be an extremely powerful addition to our ICT education program. - Michael Koronkiewicz, IT coordinator and ICT teacher
Politécnico Grancolombiano University in Colombia		Google Apps is hundreds of times better than our previous solution. Previously the space restrictions on our email service meant that it was not very popular with the students, but now with Google Apps, it is very easy to contact our students. The customization option has also been very valuable for our students, Google Apps now looks like a university service. - Alvaro Quiroga, Politécnico Grancolombiano
South East European University University in Macedonia		Our university has used Google Apps for a long time and we have found it very useful. We found it easy to customize Google Apps for our needs. Currently as a part of Google Apps we are using: Gmail, Google Chat and Google Calendar. We are planning soon to customize the Personalized Start Page to enable students to see a shared calendar for the academic year including news, events and so on. We found it easy to start using Google Apps specially using the advanced tools for creating user accounts. - Shkumbin Fida, IT Office, South East European University
Utah State University State university with over 23,000 students		We needed more than just a new email solution and we had to overcome the outdated 'not invented here' syndrome to help our IT staff understand that their focus should be on strategic enterprise solutions to help us reach our educational objectives, not just overseeing commodities like email. Had we not gone with the Google solution, we'd be looking at proposing a significant increase in student fees. This is not something anybody wanted to see happen. - Utah State University Associate Vice President for Technology Eric Hawley
Unochapecó: Chapecó Area Community University Community university in southern Brazil		We are one of the first higher education institutions in Brazil to fully integrate Google Apps to our own system. As an non-profit institution, we have a very low budget to meet our users' requirements. We couldn't keep up with the exponential growth of email users on our system, and were facing increasingly poor server performance. Google Apps provided the most reliable and affordable solution available, so now we can offer world-leading technology to everyone in our community, changing the life of thousands with a fast, solid suite of web applications. And we have saved about US $150,000 on equipment, a very significant savings for a medium-sized non-profit organization like ours. - Unochapecó Support Analyst Sergio Tschá Wanderley
Lutheran High School Private high school in Orange County, California		Our old systems could not keep up with our increasing need for teamwork in the global educational arena. When we have staff interacting with online students in Tennessee or putting together coursework for the California campus, they need to be able to share calendars, chat online instantly and work seamlessly together on documents regardless of whether they are on the road, visiting schools or recruiting in China...Basically, people are missing out on a great thing if they don't implement Google Apps. - Orange Lutheran Director of Technology Gary Nolan
Central Piedmont Community College Community College with over 70,000 students		In less than 24 hours, more than 30 million messages were migrated to Gmail with all folder structures maintained through the Google tagging interface. The Google team has been extremely responsive and the migration has been a huge success for the college. With Google Docs, groups of students can work together, retain versions of documents as they progress and access their information at any time and place—it's quickly transforming the learning experience. - Malik Rahman, Chief Information Officer
Hofstra University Private New York University with over 8,000 students		The nature of college computing is rapidly changing. Fixed site computers in labs and classrooms are de rigueur, but connectivity is the new 'must' in the lives of students weaned in a virtual world. [...] The response from the university community has been extremely positive because we are now partnering with cutting-edge technologists who understand what we're trying to do to provide the latest, most innovative technologies available today. - Roy B. Roberti, Director of Information Technology Planning, Hofstra University
Jump to section... Top Enterprise Small Business Education Government / Organization Family / Affinity group

Government / Organization

The Nonprofit Technology Network Membership organization for professionals focused on nonprofit technology		The Nonprofit Technology Network, is an agile, fast-paced, and small nonprofit organization with staff spread across the country. NTEN needed a suite of productivity tools that would meet its organizational business needs, as well as the individual needs of its staff. Google Apps provides NTEN with a enterprise-level knowledge and communication system at a very low total cost of ownership, while giving its fast-moving staff robust collaboration and communication tools to effectively do their jobs. Additionally, as the membership organization of nonprofit IT professionals, NTEN needs to be a model in the nonprofit community in its IT use. Leveraging cost effective, on-demand applications like Google Apps is critical for us to share data and knowledge across the organization. - Katrin Verclas, Executive Director, NTEN
East Bay Community Recovery Project Nonprofit organization providing local health related services		How do Google's services compare to our previous solution? Vastly better. Microsoft Outlook is clunky and temperamental and hard to support from an IT standpoint. Switching to Gmail has reduced the number of IT calls from users and hugely simplified our backups. It has enabled staff to access their email off-site, increasing their productivity. It has freed up IT staff time to work on database development and other infrastructure support projects. I am an IT consultant for non-profits, and I always recommend it to clients, unless their internet access is unreliable. - Daniel Heath, Non-profit IT Consultant, Giant Rabbit LLC, for the East Bay Community Recovery Project
The Women's Safe House Nonprofit organization benefiting victims of domestic violence		We had email through our former ISP, but it looks more professional to use our own domain name - it improves our branding and our professionalism. This will hopefully trickle down to more money to help victims of domestic violence. This service was the best thing I could have imagined. It is so easy to use, and so complete for our needs. I am so happy to have it. And it was easy to get started with Google Apps. I am a volunteer coordinator who randomly ended up with the IT tasks, and I got through it with no issues. I have told high level IT people what I have done and they have been very impressed. One consultant who tried to sell me his mail server services now recommends Google Apps to his clients. - Kat Montiegel, Senior Manager of Volunteers and Communication, The Women's Safe House
Center for Educational Design and Communication Nonprofit organization which does print design and web development for other nonprofits		Google Apps is making it easier for us to organize and share information among staff, and to have it available even while traveling or working from home - which is very useful. The webmail interface and integration is much better than the clunky and problematic service we used previously. We recommend Google Apps because it's free and we love the functionality. Most of the organizations we work with are underfunded, so the 'free' is important. - Laryn Kragt Bakker, Senior Designer, Center for Educational Design and Communication
Orphans of Rwanda Nonprofit organization focused on university education for children in Rwanda		We use Google Apps with our domain constantly, as well as the calendar to schedule events. It has been very useful! It is definitely making it easier to communicate and share information. - Lyudmila Gorokhovich, Project Manager based in Rwanda, Orphans of Rwanda I just want to echo Mila's enthusiasm. Google Apps has really been amazing. I work here in the US, but most of the team is in Rwanda. Google Apps - Google Docs, Gmail for our domain, and the calendar - has made communicating and working together on two different continents so much easier! Plus we work hard to make sure that most of our donors' contributions go straight to the kids we work with, so getting all of this for free has been fantastic! - Oliver Rothschild, Co-director based in the US, Orphans of Rwanda
Mercy Corps International emergency relief and sustainable development organization		Mercy Corps is a humanitarian NGO with field offices in more than 35 countries - our mission is to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Google Apps provides a number of features and functions, making it a superior solution for our communication needs in the field. Key features for us include storage, security and vulnerability protection, tagging and searching, automatically shared contact lists, and supported languages. From the perspective of end-users, Google Apps hits the sweet spot of simplicity and functionality. And the administrative control panel for configuring services and managing users is similarly easy to learn and use by field offices; this is essential for lessening the burden on HQ IT staff. We recommend Google Apps to organizations that are looking for well-designed, highly available tools that are easy to administer and support. - Doug Carter, Network Administrator, Mercy Corps
Idealist.org Online hub for non-profits and volunteers worldwide		Idealist.org is a project of Action Without Borders that facilitates connections between individuals and institutions that are interested in improving their communities. We have a staff of 60 in seven different locations, so coordination is a constant challenge. We started using Google Calendar throughout the organization a year ago, and it has made a huge difference. We then started using Docs and Spreadsheets, and again, the ability for people in multiple locations to work on the same document simultaneously has been a big benefit. I would heartily recommend Google Apps to any organization where people need to coordinate schedules and documents. Its applications are very easy to learn, the interface is friendly and beautiful, and the whole thing is free, so at the very least it's worth a try. - Ami Dar, Executive Director, Action Without Borders
Commercial Real Estate Institute Association of commercial real estate professionals		I find Google's services better and more cost-effective than my previous service. It was very easy to set up and we have found it valuable to brand the site as our own, using our logos and colors. Our members are happier with the service than our previous provider. - Steven Stern, Commercial Real Estate Institute
Green Power India Organization focused on global environmental awareness and sustainability		How do Google's services compare? Don't compare chalk and cheese! Google is way ahead. Gmail is far ahead in terms of storage, spam detection, archiving, customization and value addition. I never knew what my regular customers looked like, now that I see their picture every time I correspond with them bringing a new dimension to our communication. Earlier I communicated with an address, now I communicate with a name and a face; this is much better! I would recommend Google Apps to anyone - it brings convenience, consistency, compactness and color to an otherwise drab formal setup. Google has changed the whole dimension of online communication and documentation. Its akin to the introduction of the GUI (graphical user interface) - its added a whole new dimension to the way we use the web. - Chandan Singh, Green Power India
Diputación provincial de Burgos Local government in Spain		We are a local government authority in Spain, providing services to all the citizens in our county. We were having problems with the reliability of our mail system and the visibility of the information. Our goals were to increase the availability of our services and to facilitate the collaboration between our staff. Google Apps help us achieve our objectives by simplifying the mail search and the organization of the information with the simplified collaboration tools such as the Google calendar. Also, this hosted solution will allow us to reduce the costs for maintenance and support. - D. Vicente Orden Vigara, President of the County Council, Diputación provincial de Burgos
Regione Veneto Regional government agency in Italy		We started a pilot project using Google Apps . The project is aimed to evaluate its effectiveness in comparison with the other messaging platforms currently used by Regione Veneto. The test is particularly focused on the implementation of a highly customized messaging service for agencies, municipalities and government bodies that we serve with our eGov innovative ICT projects. Regione Veneto is a big and complex organization that could significantly benefit from features like the huge capacity made available by Gmail without the need for large investments in added storage, application servers, front-office extension and back-office maintenance. - Gianluigi Cogo, Director Information Systems, Regione Veneto
Swedish Police National police service in Sweden with 22,000 employees		The Swedish Police are interested in Google Apps Premier Edition because we want to see how this new innovation and distribution model can increase organizational productivity and decrease costs. - Per-Ola Sjöswärd, IT Architect, Swedish Police
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Family / Affinity group

River City Church Jacksonville, FL		I saved a great deal of money on Exchange licenses and countless hours maintaining my Exchange server. I love the Gmail interface and the archive/search function. - Timothy Wright, IT Director
Kirkwood Meadows Community site		It was super easy to get started with Google Apps, it's been the best experience of all public hosts. Google Apps has improved group communication and public communication. I would definitely recommend it! - Bryan M. Griffith, IT Manager, Kirkwood Meadows
Popmonkey.com Photo site		Gmail and Google Calendar are amazing. I've actually switched a business I work with to Google Apps as well and we haven't looked back. Using Google Apps has had a very positive impact, being able to access email from anywhere, and especially from any platform, has revolutionized the way we work. Gmail is the first web app that actually can compete with native applications. Most importantly for us, we've achieved geographical redundancy which is is difficult to do in other settings. I would absolutely recommend Google Apps! - Jules, popmonkey.com
Gelderman.org Online information service		Compared to our old service, Google's services are far, far better, now we finally have one centralized system for e-mail. It was easy to set-up, the tutorial pages really helped. The logo and colors have certainly added value, the users recognize the colors and logo's and thus feel more familiar with the system. Other systems were too expensive to even consider. I would recommend Google Apps especially for starting companies, this is a great way to get their e-mail in order. Keep up the great work! - Otto Gelderman, Owner, Gelderman.org