App Awareness Month – DomainWatch

This post is part of App Awareness, our month-long series where we spotlight a different Google Apps Marketplace application every day in April. This week we’re focusing on admin tools that help make Google Apps domain administrators’ lives easier! The applications we chose to highlight demonstrate excellent integration with Google Apps, and we either use and love the product or know a lot of other people who do. Have a favorite Marketplace app of your own? Tweet it to @bettercloud.

DomainWatch – Security and Compliance for Google Apps

App Awareness Month is about showcasing the best-in-breed apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, so we thought it appropriate to include our own! DomainWatch, an enterprise class security and compliance tool for Google Apps, was launched this past November and has been installed by hundreds of domains thus far.

DomainWatch gives organizations large and small the confidence they need to operate completely in the cloud. The tool is particularly useful during employee departures, when document ownership must be transferred in bulk, after part-time consultants leave a firm or during the rollout of Google Docs in order to survey usage trends. And DomainWatch gives admins and senior executives visibility into domain activity on a day-to-day basis, providing on-going Google Docs security and peace-of-mind.

After setting up sharing policies for your Google Apps domain, DomainWatch runs automatic domain-wide scans and surveys for any sharing policy violations, storage consumption, overflowing trash bins, Calendar subscriptions and even common Site theme usage. After the scan is complete, super administrators receive a comprehensive email including vital information uncovered during the scan.

In addition to domain scans, DomainWatch includes an easy-to-read dashboard, a comprehensive policy editor that allows admins to set sharing policies on a per user and asset type basis, security detective allowing bulk reassignments for asset ownership and domain trends, which show how asset sharing and usage changes over time.

Google Apps Integration

DomainWatch has an extremely deep integration with Google Apps including, Docs, Sites, Calendar, Groups, Contacts and User Provisioning. Heavy integration makes domain scans truly comprehensive, delivering more value and security to domain admins.

The high level of protection provided by DomainWatch allows large organizations to fully embrace the cloud without fear of unwittingly sharing sensitive information outside of their Google Apps domain.

Why We Like It

DomainWatch is not only a truly comprehensive security tool for Google Apps, but it’s also a great representation of the mission of App Awareness Month – to showcase third-party applications for Google Apps that have robust integrations with the platform’s native features.

We’re working everyday to make DomainWatch a better product and nothing helps more than customer feedback. To share product suggestions and concerns, contact us at info@bettercloud.com.

You can install a 7-day trial of DomainWatch or the full version, which starts at $8 per user/year, through the Google Apps Marketplace.

To request a demo please visit our site.

Stay tuned for more of our favorite Apps in the Google Apps Marketplace!

Can you guess tomorrow’s app?
Hint: This app helps you backup your data in the cloud!

About App Awareness Month

At BetterCloud, we’ve seen first hand the impact Google Apps can have on a business: extreme cost cutting, streamlined management processes, enhanced collaboration and mobility and much more.

During our time as an independent software provider focused 100% on the Google Apps platform, we’ve interacted with thousands of organizations using Google Apps and we’ve discovered one common trend: knowledge and awareness of third-party applications that extend and enhance Google Apps is extremely limited.

This April, we’re devoting the BetterCloud blog to educating Google Apps users on the wide array of applications available for Google Apps today. These products not only enhance native Google Apps functionalities, but bring a diverse range of services from CRM, to expense management, process and systems management and more to your Google Apps environment. More importantly, adding these applications to Google Apps allows you to retire expensive legacy software licenses and creates a more cohesive organization.

Disclaimer: The companies appearing in this month-long series have not been contacted nor consulted regarding their inclusion. Our choices are based solely on reader suggestions and our experiences with the applications.