While it was great to get a sense of the amount BetterCloud has grown and achieved in the last year, a few things about I/O remained constant – the sense of community and the inspiration I always come away with.

Community

Am I guilty of sprinting to get into the epic three-hour keynote on the first day of I/O? Perhaps. Did I record the near stampede on my Google Glass? Maybe. Do I regret either? Not really.

During the keynote, Google launched Google Music, a likely Spotify killer, completely redesigned Google+ with new lightweight photo editing capabilities, introduce a new unified communications platform in the form of Hangouts, astonished the audience with a Maps overhaul and handed out 6,000 Chromebook Pixels – the high end proof of concept browser based laptop.

At I/O, there’s no better place to share your love of everything Google and it’s fun to be in an environment where everyone simply “gets it.” Google Glass was everywhere, everyone knew immediately how to use the Pixel and those still using iPhones received some dirty looks. Since BetterCloud builds for and on the Google platform exclusively, I/O in a way provides me with the reassurance that we’ve made the right choice. We’re all in with Google and every year, I/O provides us with even more reasons why.

Inspiration

While I/O is about highlighting Google’s innovation and its world class engineering team, Google also makes a point of emphasizing how important the ecosystem of third-party developers and partners is to the success of the company – in fact Larry Page made sure to reiterate this several times during the keynote. Page also emphasized the amount of work still left to be done – saying that we’ve only achieved 1% of what’s possible and that too much energy is spent focusing on competition and not enough on innovation.

It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day of running a business and sometimes this keeps you from looking at the bigger picture. I/O reminds you that there’s always more you can be doing – more features to develop, more efficient ways to solve certain problems, a better way of utilizing customer feedback.

Adding to the awe inspiring keynote, informative sessions and abundant product demos, I find that what inspires me the most at I/O is speaking with customers, partners and fellow ISVs face to face. Seeing how far companies have come in the past year and where they’re headed is inspiring. And even with all of the technology surrounding you at I/O, there’s simply no better substitute than the face to face interactions and meetings you’re able to have with people from all over the world.

I’m looking forward to next year!

In 1982 Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig opened Zingerman’s, a traditional Jewish deli, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The popular deli served as the starting point for Zingerman’s now expansive community of eight businesses, known as the ZCoB, all located in the Ann Arbor area. While franchising the original deli would have been the obvious option, Zingerman’s founders opted instead to grow the business by developing new independent organizations, all rooted in the local community.

Now, the eight different businesses work together as one organization, but are managed by different partners. Together, the businesses are home to more than 650 employees and include the original deli, a bakery, a creamery, a catering business and more. Zingerman’s was named The Coolest Small Company in America by Inc. Magazine.

Deprecating a Dying Exchange Server

A company like Zingerman’s that isn’t afraid to do something different, went searching for alternative options to a dying Exchange server in 2008. According to Elph Morgan, Zingerman’s IT Director, the company was “looking at an upgrade every five years and we had an inkling that there was something better out there.”

The distributed nature of Zingerman’s team, the sheer amount of data the company produced – it took more than 24 hours to backup data – and inconsistency across interfaces (at home, on mobile devices and in the office) ultimately left Zingerman’s searching for an Exchange alternative.

Choosing between hosted and cloud-based options, Zingerman’s opted for the latter as the company was spread out over several different locations. In terms of cloud-based options, “Google was at the top of the list,” so Zingerman’s rolled out the suite to their internal service department and asked the beta testers to play around with Google Apps for about a year and half to ensure the suite addressed Zingerman’s needs.

Google passed the test with flying colors and the company moved their entire staff to Apps in 2010. Zingerman’s chose not to give employees the option of Outlook Sync and instead moved exclusively to the web interface. “This took a lot of internal education,” noted Mr. Morgan, but the team was ultimately able to transition.

Zingerman’s initially rolled out Apps for Mail and Calendar, but now actively uses Drive as well. ZCoB pushes its employees to use Google Docs for collaboration, noting that it’s simply the easiest way to work together – now there are over 26,000 Google Docs across the entire user base.

Firmly on Google Apps for more than three years, Zingerman’s is still loving the suite. “As a food business, we have high turnover” noted Morgan, “so having something where we can easily shut down and create new accounts with the same licenses is perfect.”

Managing the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses with FlashPanel

To manage Google Apps across eight different businesses, Morgan and the IT department use FlashPanel in the following areas:

Reporting

FlashPanel’s in depth reporting tools help Zingerman’s optimize the use of Google Apps accounts. Specifically, the IT department runs the inactive user report and sends results about every two months to different company managers. Managers then encourage inactive users to fully utilize the account. “If we don’t see a change in usage behavior, we’ll trim the account,” noted Mr. Morgan.

Inbox Delegation and Google Group Management

Zingerman’s uses FlashPanel’s inbox delegation feature to transition information when an employee departs as well as for shared accounts – like the “Support at Zingerman’s” email address.

And FlashPanel’s group management tools enable the company to quickly and easily make changes to groups in bulk.

Google Drive Tools

As noted, Zingerman’s employees have collectively created upwards of 20,000 Google Docs. To view these docs and how they’re being shared, Morgan uses FlashPanel’s Drive tools, which provide a comprehensive look into the Google Drive account of each user.

I sat down with Saul Chrem, the CEO of CloudWare360, a leading reseller in Latin America, to find out more about his organization.

Company: CloudWare360
Location: Latin America
Market Served: SMB, Enterprise
Website: www.cloudware360.com

BetterCloud: When was your organization founded?

CloudWare360: January 2010

BetterCloud: What led to the founding of your company?

CloudWare360: We wanted to be a part of the technological shift to cloud computing. We named our company “Cloudware 360” because we have a 360 degree approach to cloud computing. We care not only about technology, but have a strong focus on the user side – education, change management and adoption.

BetterCloud: How has the market changed since you started as a Google Apps reseller?

CloudWare360: Cloud computing has become mainstream – we don’t have to explain what it is anymore. There’s also been a proliferation of small / midsize partners so we’ve had to develop different strategies to differentiate and scale our business.

BetterCloud: Does your company have a certain speciality – Industry? Location? Size?

CloudWare360: We’re focused in Latin America and have projects spanning from Mexico to Chile. We started our company focusing on large enterprises and Government, but now we have a whole division dedicated to SMB. We also have a team dedicated to app dev and complex integrations, which allows us to take on large, complicated projects.

BetterCloud: Can you tell us one thing about your company we wouldn’t find out from your website?

CloudWare360: We’re in the process of updating our site (the current site has been up since we founded the company). So if it’s not clear from our website, we’re extremely passionate about what we do – we breathe, sleep, walk and live thinking about how to improve our business as a whole.

BetterCloud: What is your favorite FlashPanel feature? Why?

CloudWare360: For an IT admin, enforcement of email signatures. For partners, all the information the reseller console gives us to better understand our customers’ use of Google Apps.

BetterCloud: What do you hope to see from FlashPanel going forward?

CloudWare360: More tools for the partner to engage with the customer.

BetterCloud: What do you hope to see from Google Apps in the future?

CloudWare360: More of what they’ve been doing recently with core product improvements.

BetterCloud: Favorite cloud service your company uses, other than Google Apps?

CloudWare360: FlashPanel, RunMyProcess, ZOHO Projects

BetterCloud: What’s the best thing about working at your company?

CloudWare360: Being part of a great team that grows and evolves every single day.

BetterCloud: Why should someone looking to ‘Go Google’ work with you?

CloudWare360: We have a very deep understanding of what’s needed to create successful projects and we’re able to achieve a high adoption ratio, resulting in better ROI for our customers. We were also recognized as the 2012 LATAM Deployment Partner of the Year by Google.

For more information on all of our partners, visit flashpanel.com/partners.

In addition to churning out common reports found in the Google Apps Admin Panel like audit logs, email and Drive quotas and login activity, FlashPanel also reports on information far beyond what is available natively in Google Apps – specifically around Google Drive sharing, Gmail settings and more. We’ve also added handy tools like Canned Reports and the Report Builder, which give IT admins unmatched customization and visibility when it comes to reporting on a Google Apps domain.

Canned Reports

Canned reports in FlashPanel provide quick links to commonly requested reports. In the application’s canned reports section, you’ll find more than 20 ready-made reports for users, groups and org units and Drive and Drive policies.

After selecting the desired report, select “Run Report” at the top of the screen. You’ll then receive a brief message allowing you to name the exported spreadsheet. Once you click, “Yes, proceed” FlashPanel will begin to process the requested report. When the report has finished, you’ll receive an email alert notifying you that the report is ready to view. You’ll find your report in the body of the email as well as in your Google Drive.

Report Builder

Unlike FlashPanel’s canned reports feature, which provides pre-packaged reporting information, the report builder allows administrators to build custom reports in FlashPanel, which allow them to extract the exact information they need from their Google Apps domain.

Admins can choose from hundreds of filters, attributes and search operators to tailor a report to their needs. Custom reports can also be saved and accessed from the Canned Reports tab to run again at a later date. The saved report will appear under the “My Reports” section on the Canned Reports home page.

To view FlashPanel’s updated reporting engine, you can log in or install FlashPanel now. And to get a full overview of the new updates, please join us next Wednesday, May 15 for an in depth webinar detailing the new reports builder:

How to Generate Custom Analytics Using the Report Builder
May 15, 2013
Register Here (Americas / Europe) 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM EDT
Register Here (APAC) 7:00 – 8:00 PM EDT

Southern Roots

BetterCloud has always had two homes, one in New York City and the other in Atlanta. We knew from the beginning keeping the offices and teams connected would be a challenge, but after more than a year and a half of working at both ends of the east coast, we’ve maintained our groove. Our dev team calls Atlanta home while Marketing, Support and our leadership team have established BetterCloud’s headquarters in the Big Apple.

Atlanta has always had a special place in my heart – I graduated from Emory and spent 7 years working in the city before moving back to New York. Atlanta has incredible engineering talent, great schools, restaurants and culture, but the city’s underdeveloped VC scene has caused too many good technologists and entrepreneurs to leave the city…but that’s all changing.

Building the Atlanta Tech Community

While Atlanta hasn’t seen the same kind of growth that cities like San Francisco, Boston and New York have experienced, the city has managed to churn out successful tech companies, especially in the enterprise and business to business arena. Companies like MailChimp, Pardot and SecureWorks are all born and bred in Atlanta, proving the region can produce innovative, industry leading tech companies. And now, with the establishment of David Cummings’ Atlanta Tech Village, the area has the backbone it’s been missing to create a true technology community.

Cummings is taking it upon himself (and his wallet) to personally revive and grow the tech scene in Atlanta. ATV, located in Buckhead, sits in a 100,000 square foot building and is designed to service tech companies in the area. ATV provides not only space for your desk, but an actual community where entrepreneurs can learn from one another to build Atlanta into one of the nation’s top startup centers.

The early success of the Village and corresponding community events show that people were eager for someone or something to step up and provide the support the area’s tech scene needed. Ultimately, ATV and the community and companies that spring up around it are going to put Atlanta on the map as the southeast’s foremost technology hub. And we’re proud to call the Village our home in the south.

As for BetterCloud itself, we’re doing our part to grow Atlanta’s tech community and will continue to invest as our presence expands. We’re proud to have participated in an Atlanta Startup Village meetup, we recently sponsored an Eco Hackathon at Clayton State University and will be holding regular customer user groups for Atlanta-based FlashPanel users – the first took place this past February. And, most importantly, we’ll be tripling our team this year.

From bottom left clockwise: BetterCloud office opening party, renovation plans for ATV, team meeting, BetterCloud ATL bowling night, FlashPanel user group, Atlanta Startup Village.

Opportunities at BetterCloud

A huge part of our early success comes from the deep talent that exists in the Atlanta metro area – BetterCloud’s engineers come from Georgia Tech, Georgia State, University of Georgia and Georgia Southern. And our location in one of the country’s fastest growing cities has helped us recruit talent from all over the country and world.

We’ve built a great team in Atlanta and are always looking to add talented new members. Our engineers specialize in Java, GWT, CSS, Maven and GIT and we’re constantly improving our application with new functionality and improvements on a weekly basis.

If you’re interested in joining our team, you can view all of our current openings here.

At last year’s Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference, I had the opportunity to preorder Google Glass. As a huge Google fan and the CEO of a company that focuses 100% on Google, preordering was a no brainer (as it was for pretty much everyone else at the conference). After placing my order, I was handed a small rectangular piece of glass engraved with the number 328 and that was it for 10 months.

Over the next ten months, I read countless articles and heard endless speculation about Glass, but the details were scarce as to when the product would actually be ready for “explorers” (the beta tester group). Finally, after patiently waiting almost a year, I received the following email, which instructed me to set up a fitting appointment and select the desired Glass color. After consulting my wife and team and browsing dozens of photos online, I opted for the original, charcoal.

The Unboxing

Last Thursday, I made my way to Google’s Chelsea Market location to finally pick up Glass. To help document and participate in the experience, I brought along my wife, Jessica. We were greeted by two Googlers, handed a special ‘Glass’ badge and taken to a somewhat empty loft space. There were only three other fittings while we were there and the whole experience was extremely personal. After being fitted for Glass, a Googler took an hour to train me – making sure to explain the navigation, voice commands, how to take a picture, a video, start a Hangout and so on.

It’s obvious that Google wants to make sure that the first group of explorers is prepared not only to use the product, but to explore its myriad possibilities and evangelize for Glass. The entire experience, from the fitting to the training and even the location and Glass themed snacks were carefully executed.

In addition to the personalized training I received when picking up Glass, explorers are also given excellent support. When I ran into a problem while using Glass this weekend, the ticket I submitted Saturday night was resolved Sunday morning with an invitation to call for more personal support should I continue to have the issue.

Google has really invested in the user experience end to end.

The Experience

As for actually using Glass, I’ve never experienced anything like it. The glasses are light yet seem to be very durable and the piece of glass is in the perfect spot (not in your line of sight, but not too far where you have to strain). When you put Glass on, you first see the time and then the words “Ok Glass.” After saying these ‘magic words’ you’re given a list of possible commands: take a picture, get directions to, hangout with and more – it feels like peering into the future.

This video of Taylor Gould, our Marketing Director, pretty much sums up a standard reaction to trying Glass for the first time.

Navigation

When Glass was first announced, I thought the navigation would be completely voice activated, others thought Glass would be controlled by eye motions (and others still thought Glass would just read your mind).

After actually receiving Glass though, I learned that the right side of the frame is basically a track pad that gives you a lot of flexibility in terms of navigating the device – you can click, double click, swipe forward, swipe back and swipe down to control Glass.

While my training at Google helped me to fully understand the navigation, it’s a bit more difficult for users who are just trying on the frames to comprehend. I’ve found a great way to train people on my own is showing the simultaneous screencast on my Android’s screen. This allows me to see what the wearer is seeing, therefore helping me to walk them through the experience.

Google Hangout

For me personally, the Hangout feature is one of the most amazing experiences. The fact that I’m able to see someone right in my eyesight without having to hold a phone or sit in front of a computer is amazing. What’s more is that the person I’m speaking with can actually view surroundings from my point of view. This type of video chat could be applied in so many different ways.

Directions

Directions are another valuable component. I think Glass could easily take the place of both GPS and smartphone directions. Rather than walking around looking at a phone, where you have to stop frequently or worse, bump into other pedestrians, Glass provides a more seamless experience for getting where you need to go.

Glass in the Real World

Walking around New York City this weekend wearing Glass was surreal. I loved seeing the different reactions and after letting about 20 people try it on, everyone’s experience was different – my 70 year old Italian barber was astonished, he had a huge smile on his face and was actually speechless, an 8 year old kid was by far the quickest to learn the navigation and an experiment with Google Directions and a taxi ride almost ended in catastrophe.

Over the course of the weekend, I was stopped about 10 more times on the street by complete strangers. Everyone wanted to know if these glasses were the real deal, if they actually work, could they try them and so on. Of course there were also the strange looks and glares (obviously from those who hadn’t been reading up on the device) and I received a few text messages and calls from friends I hadn’t heard from in a while all wanting to test out Glass.

While Glass isn’t meant to be used at all times – think of it more like a phone that you only look at when you need to make a call, take a picture or check something specific – the product is definitely going to come in handy. While there are definitely hundreds of ways to use the device, in the most immediate future, I think Glass will have a huge impact on the way I travel. The ability to find directions, get the weather, take pictures and Hangout with family and coworkers all without picking up my phone or laptop is huge.

It definitely takes quality time with Glass to get used to the navigation, tethering it to your phone and using voice commands. Some of the people who’ve tried Glass on for a short test seemed frustrated and almost gave up, but once I spent five to six hours straight wearing Glass, it became almost natural to wear the device.

Glass in the Future

While Glass is by far the most innovative piece of hardware I’ve encountered, there are definitely some hurdles ahead.

First, Google has to set a reasonable price point. Many people are saying that the components to make Glass cost around $200. I think if Google can set the price point somewhere around the price of an iPhone, they could gain broad adoption relatively quickly.

But even before a lower price point is established, Glass will likely be one of those technologies that spends a number of years in the developer community and with early adopters before becoming mainstream. Jack Dorsey said yesterday that he can’t picture everyone walking around wearing Glass now, but did you really think everyone would be as attached to their iPhones when the device was first launched? I certainly didn’t think my dad would be and now he doesn’t go anywhere without it. I can definitely see this occurring with Glass.

Second, there’s of course some tweaking to do with the actual hardware. In less than a week since I received Glass, I’ve already heard several requests like the need for a left eye version and something that works with prescription glasses (there’s an alpha version in the works that’s currently being tested). Google will also need to work on achieving longer battery life.

Third, Glass needs more third-party applications. Heavy integrations with native Google+ features show what’s possible, but now its time for third-party vendors to step up to the plate. We’ve already seen the first versions of both Path and the New York Times apps and just imagine how useful something like Yelp’s monocle feature will be when it’s integrated with Glass. The same way you say “Ok Glass: Take a picture,” I can imagine using Google Places or Yelp to say “Ok Glass: What is the best Indian restaurant around?”

Or how about “Ok Glass: Show me my Instagram feed.”

A year or two out, you could foresee using Glass in place of GoPro for extreme sports and even further down the line, one might expect augmented reality and facial recognition to become integral to the Glass experience. I actually spoke with a company that is planning on testing Glass with EMTs. The idea being that a doctor could see the patient through the EMT’s “eyes.”

And even further down the line, why not put the Glass technology into a contact lens?

The possibilities really are endless – Glass is truly a technology game changer. Expect to see a whole industry crop up around it – add ons, cases, lanyards, apps – Glass is the new iPhone.

Employees:

Since its founding in 1985, Clearwing, a Milwaukee based production company, has helped some of the nation’s largest brands and best known performing artists create, implement and produce top of the line audio and visual displays.

Whether it’s renovating the audio system at ASU’s Wells Fargo Arena or designing and building the Miller Lite branding effort at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium, Clearwing has proven itself as a leader in the entertainment production industry.

Migrating from GoDaddy to Google Apps

Three years ago, Clearwing decided to migrate from GoDaddy email services to Google Apps. According to Patrick Doran, Clearwing’s IT Manager, who joined the company this past November, “Google Apps is built rock solid.” By migrating to Apps, Clearwing would no longer have to worry about email quotas, reliability or spam filtering. Most importantly, the company loved the “overall ease of use and integration among Google products.”

Google Spreadsheets in particular have transformed how the company coordinates major production events. “Team members collaborate and build out spreadsheets for each client and event to coordinate everything,” Doran notes, “I can’t do anything but speak volumes for how awesome Google’s spreadsheet functionality is.”

In addition to Google Spreadsheets, Doran sees the use of Google Calendar, Groups and Drive grow every day.

Securing Google Drive with FlashPanel

After joining the organization this past fall, Doran went searching for a tool to manage the company’s growing use of Google Drive. He quickly found FlashPanel and implemented the application immediately.

Google Drive Security

“I love FlashPanel’s ease of management when it comes to Google Drive,” said Doran, “the ability to supercede what documents are being shared with whom is crucial.”

Doran saw the true value in FlashPanel’s Google Drive features when he needed to gain access to a privately shared document owned by an operations employee that could not be reached. Through FlashPanel, Doran was able to gain access to the document and change its sharing settings to give other Clearwing employees access.

While Clearwing doesn’t have a huge concern around security, Doran regularly monitors how documents are shared outside of his organization to ensure sensitive information is not shared improperly.

Email Signatures

In addition to FlashPanel’s Google Drive features, Doran utilizes the application’s email signature tool. Prior to installing FlashPanel, Clearwing’s marketing department had to email every employee whenever a new email signature design was introduced. Users would have to manually implement the new email signature, which usually led to many disparate versions.

Now, with FlashPanel, Doran is able to automatically implement email signatures across the entire company. “This feature has really helped streamline the entire process.”

As Doran becomes more familiar with FlashPanel, he plans to utilize the application’s shared contacts feature to create a company wide directory.

Jim McNelis, Dito CEO

Whether you’re looking to go Google, need help with user training or are searching for software that allows your company to get more out of Google Apps, a reseller can help! BetterCloud partners with 20 of the world’s top Google Apps resellers to provide our growing customer base of 17,000 organizations even more value.

Last week I sat down with Jim McNelis, the CEO of Dito, a leading North American reseller, to find out more about his organization.

Company: Dito
Location: Manassas, VA
Market Served: SMB, Enterprise
Website: www.ditoweb.com

BetterCloud: When was your organization founded?

Dito: May 2007. We started offering Google Apps to our customers after deciding to use Google’s business solutions ourselves.

BetterCloud: What led to the founding of your company?

Dito: We initially started out providing web design, hosting and email to small businesses. As time went on, we realized the big opportunity, and more importantly, where we had the most fun, was helping customers adopt Google Apps. So, by the end of 2008, we decided to focus there exclusively.

BetterCloud: How has the market changed since you started as a Google Apps reseller?

Dito: When we got started in May 2007, cloud computing was still a mythical beast to most businesses, and those who knew of it didn’t have much confidence in it. The first iPhone had just come out. Android and Chrome didn’t exist yet. Google Apps was mostly useful to small businesses who were looking for a simple email solution. Fast forward to today: cloud computing is mainstream. Almost everyone has a smartphone. Android and Chrome are the number one products in their respective categories. Our mobile networks are able to handle a lot more bandwidth. These and other factors add up to a recipe for success in the Google Apps ecosystem. If you are a business and you aren’t adopting cloud-based solutions, your business is probably going to be obsolete in the next 3 years from a technology standpoint. The power of the cloud has been realized, and Google is leading the way.

BetterCloud: Does your company have a certain speciality – Industry? Location? Size?

Dito: I used to cringe at this question. Dito is a 100% distributed workforce…and we are all over the U.S. We don’t have an HQ. We started out working with very small businesses, and still do to this day, but we’ve also worked on some of the largest and most strategic Google Apps deployments over the last 5 years.

We have teams for SMB and teams for the Enterprise, to serve customers of all sizes. It may seem like we lack focus with this approach, but in fact, by working with so many different organizations of all shapes and sizes in over 15 countries prior to defining ourselves, we’ve gained expertise and hands-on experience in specific industries.

Now I would say we work really well with businesses in the Construction and Trades, Manufacturing, Real Estate, Media, Professional Services, High Tech and Hospitality verticals.

BetterCloud: Can you tell us one thing about your company we wouldn’t find out from your
website?

Dito: We have four “Ditomites” (that’s what we call ourselves) who are going to be Google Glass Explorers in the very near future! Yours truly included. We’re geeks at heart and are very excited!

BetterCloud: What is your favorite FlashPanel feature? Why?

Dito: Templated email signatures rock! It makes it very easy for admins to set the signatures for individuals, groups or all users.

BetterCloud: What do you hope to see from FlashPanel in 2013?

Dito: More reseller functionality that will allow us to better serve our mutual customers.

BetterCloud: What do you hope to see from Google Apps in 2013?

Dito: More innovative ways to communicate and collaborate in the workplace!

BetterCloud: What are your company’s plans for 2013?

Dito: To continue to expand our knowledge and experience working with Google’s enterprise solutions.

Last year we expanded into Google’s Cloud Platform program, this year, we are working with their Geospatial tools, namely Google Maps Coordinate. We’ve also come to understand all the third-party apps available to Google’s customers fairly well, and are continuing to sharpen our expertise around emerging web-based business solutions.

It’s a really exciting space that I personally find very interesting. I even built a Trello board to showcase some of our favorite web apps that integrate with Google Apps: http://tiny.ditoweb.com/webapps

BetterCloud: Favorite cloud service your company uses, other than Google Apps?

Dito: Personally, TripIt. Being a frequent traveler, TripIt makes it really easy to keep track of my hotels, flights and plans when I’m on the road.

Company-wide, probably UberConference for teleconferencing or Trello for project management and tracking ideas.

BetterCloud: What’s the best thing about working at your company?

Dito: Doing what we love – helping people adopt and leverage awesome tools for the workplace. It’s a team effort even though we’re spread out. We like working with each other and our customers. Google Apps really makes this possible.

BetterCloud: Why should someone looking to ‘Go Google’ work with you?

Dito: We are experienced and friendly. We are highly adaptable to our customers needs and go above and beyond to ensure their success with Google Apps. We care about what we do and aim for lasting relationships with customers.

For more information on all of our partners, visit flashpanel.com/partners.

This post details what the new Admin Console means for Google Enterprise and includes our take on the new design as well as an in-depth look at the new Admin Console. To navigate this post, use the following links:

• The New Admin Console
• What This Means for Google Enterprise
• What We’ve Learned from these Changes
• Exploring the New Admin Console

The New Admin Console

Since Google Apps’ launch in 2006, the Admin Console has been a point of both contention and necessity, offering tools to manage a Google Apps domain, but hiding that functionality beneath layers of unnavigable interface. While Google notes that the new Admin Console does not add any new functionality, it does give Google Apps administrators an easier way to manage their domains thanks to a revamped designed. Key elements of the redesign include:

• More intuitive, cleaner navigation – Surfaces clear categories of features in an easy to navigate format
• Customizable dashboard – Gives administrators the ability to place their most commonly used features front and center
• Design – New iconography and layout makes the Admin Console easier to navigate and understand

Google’s reimagined Control Panel comes a year after another major Cpanel update, the new dashboard, which at the time of its release was a telling sign of things to come. Users will notice that the new Control Panel is now more in line with the look and feel of the new dashboard (and Gmail’s updated UI, released in 2011). Google also released Chrome for Business just this week, which gives administrator more than 100 policies for administering Chrome across their organization. While Google continued to add functionality to the Cpanel, there was no efficient way of organizing that functionality. The Control Panel overhaul alleviates that problem.

What This Means for Google Enterprise

Since Larry Page’s move to CEO in 2011, Google has made a concerted effort to redesign and unify all of its products. While the main focus so far has been consumer facing applications like Gmail and Drive, today, Google’s enterprise customers get to reap the rewards.

The Control Panel overhaul not only shows an increased focus on design, but signifies Google’s growing investment in and commitment to enterprise-specific products. Last year, Google reportedly earned $1 billion in revenue from its enterprise suite – a large enough haul to make the Mountain View giant take note.

While revenue is one excellent key indicator of success, it’s also clear that Google Apps has picked up considerable adoption and brand recognition in the past few months alone – recently Malaysia’s entire education system went Google. And though Google Enterprise has yet to receive the respect products like Gmail, Android and Chrome garner, we’re confident that the Enterprise cloud will be instrumental in attracting new users to these consumer facing products over the coming months and years.

What We’ve Learned from these Changes

Google clearly put a lot of thought, resources and research into this redesign (we actually participated in one of the UX tests), and we think that these changes will be validated over the coming months as more organizations move to Google Apps.

We are excited to leverage some of Google’s learnings as our management and security tool, FlashPanel, continues to evolve. Our product team has heard from customers that customization is a high priority and Google’s update confirms it.

We’ve noticed across our customer base of tens of thousands of organizations that the Google Apps suite is leveraged in different ways. For instance, some of our administrators are focused exclusively on Google Drive security while others have to on and off board so many employees every week that they’re more focused on our user provisioning and deprovisioning tools. Look for us to incorporate heavy customization into FlashPanel in the future.

How These Changes Affect FlashPanel

Google’s continued focus on the enterprise is a good sign for all parties in the ecosystem (resellers, ISVs and customers) and validates our efforts since launching FlashPanel last July. Our administrative tool goes above and beyond the Control Panel by giving administrators the tools they need like: task automation, Google Drive security, bulk user profile editing, standardized email signatures, email monitoring, inbox delegation, shared contacts and much much more. But we’re not content to stop there, in the next few months, look for us to add:

• Calendar Resource Management
• Google Sites Visibility and Control
• Streamlined Custom Reporting

As always, we’ll continue to listen to our growing customer base to add the features and functionality that truly makes managing Google Apps easier.

Exploring the New Control Panel

Dashboard

Here’s a quick view of what the dashboard looks like in the new Control Panel:

As you can see, there’s a much greater emphasis on simplicity and also customization. You can even click “More controls” at the bottom of the dashboard to add more services that you want to have quick access to from the dashboard (see below).

Google’s also featuring the ecosystem prominently by placing links to “Find a Partner” (links to the Enterprise Partner Search portal) and the Google Apps Marketplace on the right hand side. You have the notifications center in the top right hand corner, although this isn’t persistent through the entire new Control Panel, it seems to show only on the dashboard.

Overall, the new dashboard is simple, sleek and can be customized to fit the specific needs of any company, which is very important. These are big improvements over the previous Control Panel.

Users

Here’s a quick look at the new user profile view, with the top-left navigation menu open:

You can see that the new user profile surfaces important stats like number of Docs, email quota and last login at the top of the profile. From the user profile, you can quickly see which services are enabled (although you can’t turn them on or off), and you can edit the user’s profile information.

In the top right corner of this same page, you’ll see options for taking more actions on the user. Here’s what this menu looks like:

Left-to-right, these are: Reset password, Add user to group, Rename user, Change org. unit, Help and Settings.

These are probably less common actions for most administrators to take, yet they still need to be easily accessible, and they are. We think this is a great example of how Google thought through the user experience of the new Control Panel.

One process that still seems a little strange, however, is adding users to Groups. From the new user profile, you can click “Edit group membership” on the right hand side of the profile.

When you click this link, you land on a page that shows a list of Groups in your domain. This page has been redesigned as well.

But that page is not aware of how you got to it. In other words, it doesn’t know that you’re trying to add a particular user to those groups, so in essence you start over. First you select the group that you want to add the user to, and then in the top left corner you select “Add Users to Group” and you then select the users. This part is an improvement, as you couldn’t take that action in the old Control Panel, but the frustrating thing is that you still cannot add a user to multiple groups at once (which you’ll almost definitely need to do when a new employee starts). To do that, you will need to use a third-party management tool like FlashPanel.

Google Apps

From what we can tell after our quick analysis, this is sort of a combination of the Users > Services and Settings > Services views in the old Control Panel. You can control access to particular services from this view (like you can in Users > Services), but you can also control the particular settings of the service (like you can in Settings > Services).

The user experience for this part of the Control Panel has changed quite a bit. There’s much less of an emphasis on Org. Units, which tells us that a majority of Google Apps customers must not be using Org. Units. For example, when you load the Google Apps page, you don’t see the list of Org. Units shown on the right-hand side in the above screenshot. You have to click on the filter icon to show that list. Also, the process for turning services on/off for a particular Org. Unit is quite different. You click into that Org. Unit in the right-hand list, and then you can select which services you want to act on, THEN you turn them on/off (rather than clicking each one).

Company Profile

This section is pretty standard, but the redesign makes editing company information much more intuitive.

When you click into these different sections, an overlay will appear on the right-hand side of the screen and you can edit those particular details, without navigating to an entirely new screen. It’s a nice update but no huge changes here.

Groups

We already talked about this quite a bit so I won’t rehash it too much (this is already a long review), but in general the Groups interface has gotten a UI refresh but no additional functionality, except the ability to add a user to a Group from the Group list view.

You can see, for example, that when you click into an individual Group, it’s really the same “add user” screen from the old Control Panel, just re-skinned in the new Control Panel look.

I think that most admins whose organizations use Groups extensively will still choose to manage their Groups either in the Groups for Business interface, or using a 3rd-party tool like FlashPanel, as they have in the past. But for a smaller organization that’s just getting up and running, it’s nice to bring a few more Groups management features directly into the Control Panel.

Drive & Docs

You can see on the Drive overview page (accessed by clicking through to the “Google Apps” list), that once again it’s a more simplified, focused look and feel that brings key elements to the forefront.

If we had any activity on this domain, you would also see some key stats at the top of the page. Those four icons represent (from left to right): Active users in the last 7 days, % of users active, # of docs created, # of docs shared.

Then if you want to edit any of the more granular settings, you can click into any of the list items and an overlay will fly out on the right hand-side, where you can make those edits. This user experience is pretty consistent throughout the entire new Control Panel.

Conclusion

As an organization that’s 100% committed to the Google Apps ecosystem and has essentially bet our business on the fact that Google will continue to invest in the enterprise, we’re extremely excited about this update.

What are your thoughts on the new Control Panel? We look forward to hearing everyone’s take on this over the coming weeks.

Employees: 900
Founded: 1987
Industry: Nonprofit
Website: www.conservation.org

Conservation International was founded in 1987 in order to alter the way society thinks about conservation. Rather than focusing on keeping places “intact as relics of the past,” CI works to ensure people can live in harmony with nature. By building on a strong foundation of science, partnership and field work, CI “empowers societies to responsibly and sustainably care for nature, biodiversity and the well-being of humanity.”

Since its founding, the DC-based nonprofit has empowered communities around the globe to make conservation a part of their livelihoods and has formed critical partnerships with companies like Patagonia, Starbucks and even Wal-Mart. By working with some of the world’s largest corporations, CI is helping to make conservation a critical part of the business model. Conservation International has also helped governments in Costa Rica, China and beyond make conservation a core component of national policy.

CI believes that every person deserves a healthy environment and through its work, Conservation International is helping to make this a reality.

Staying Connected Around the World With Google Apps

Last year, restrictive mailbox storage and skyrocketing costs left Conservational International looking for a better way to manage mail and productivity tools. “It was either upgrade our Exchange 2003 server to 2010 or look for something else – we took that opportunity to look for something else,” said Alexandre Dinnouti, CI’s Director of IT. The organization ultimately chose to evaluate both Google Apps and Office 365.

“Office 365 offered the typical plans – E1, E2, E3 or E4, but with Google Apps you either have the entire suite or you have nothing. The pricing plans were unclear and ultimately, choosing 365 over Google Apps would have extended our enterprise agreement with Microsoft – something we wanted to get out of,” explained Leo Pineda, CI’s Senior Director of IT. “There also wasn’t a great answer from any of the Microsoft resellers on how to proceed,” added Pineda.

Conservation International ultimately decided to go with Google Apps, with the help of Cloud Sherpas, a leading Google Apps reseller. “We have offices in 40 countries and even those with low bandwidth can readily access Apps,” said Pineda. Now with Google Apps fully implemented, Google Talk and Google Hangouts have become key to collaborating with colleagues around the globe.

Going Beyond the Control Panel with FlashPanel

Looking for a better way to manage users and secure Drive documents, CI’s IT team led by Dinnouti and Pineda chose to install FlashPanel. According to CI, the following FlashPanel features give the organization “tools and access the Control Panel can’t.”

Google Drive Security

Now that CI is using Google Drive, the ability to share has never been easier. While Drive’s one-click sharing makes collaboration easier, it also makes it easier for employees to share something improperly. “Better safe than sorry,” said Pineda, who uses FlashPanel’s Drive dashboard and auditing features to view how and with whom documents are shared. “We want to be proactive,” Pineda added, noting that CI will occasionally reach out to a user to alert them to improper sharing.

Email, User and Group Tools

Apps Butler

CI has rolled out Apps Butler to give employees an easier way to access the staff directory. Best of all, Dinnouti says, “With Apps Butler, users can access the directory from their mobile phones,” something key to CI’s field employees.

Inbox Delegation

The organization also uses FlashPanel’s inbox delegation feature noting that “it’s much easier to delegate an inbox through FlashPanel than changing a user’s password or walking a user through the setup process.”

User Provisioning and Deprovisioning

CI’s IT team appreciates FlashPanel’s user provisioning and deprovisioning workflows, which make it easy to onboard or offboard employees, reassign document ownership and more.

Group Management

Lastly, CI manages Google Groups using FlashPanel’s group management features claiming the interface in FlashPanel is far better than the Control Panel.