“We are excited to recognize Cloud Sherpas as the Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year,” said Mark Hodgson, Google’s Head of Global Partner Programs. “The company consistently delivered excellence in our partnership throughout 2011.”

At Google’s annual...

Cloud Sherpas Named ...

Cloud Sherpas Named ...

Eran Gil, Cloud Sher...

Cloud Sherpas Named ...

Since 2008, Cloud Sherpas has grown to become one of the world’s top cloud service providers. We have the largest number of Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists of any Google partner and have migrated over 1 million end-users to Google Apps.

The past year was certainly eventful for the Sherpas! During 2011, we grew revenue nearly 300% from 2010, acquired a handful of successful cloud service providers around the world from San Francisco to New Zealand, and signed deals with enterprise clients across varying industries such as Lamar Advertising, Tait Communications Ltd. and Wyoming Medical Center.

“The Partner of the Year award from Google is important because it validates the role of the channel in helping businesses succeed in the cloud,” said Douglas Shepard, CEO for Cloud Sherpas. “We hear repeatedly from clients that they need the services of Google experts to fully leverage the platform, collaborate more effectively and grow their businesses. We are proud to be recognized as the Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year, and we look forward to continuing our strong relationship with Google and Google Apps users in 2012.”

We are very proud to have been awarded this distinction for 2011, and we are thankful for the opportunity work with Google Enterprise. We look forward to delivering leading cloud technology to customers across the globe. Here’s to a great 2012!

See our press release here.

For decades, privacy polices for companies across all industries have been written by long-winded attorneys with a penchant for obtuse legalese that’s often so confusing it’s impossible to discern their actual meaning. Confusion is compounded when the scope of such policies reaches across several products or services. As a result, most of us simply check the “I accept” button without knowing what exactly we’re agreeing to.

By announcing the consolidation of its privacy policies this past Wednesday, Google boldly undertook the challenge of being one of the first major corporations to embrace what’s likely to be a trend in 2012: Simplifying and streamlining the way corporations — large and small — communicate corporate policy to their customers.

By simplifying their privacy policies across multiple products, Google is signaling to users that it is not an organization that hides behind tomes of legal jargon that bury the true message of the privacy policy. On the contrary, Google is proactively making it easier for consumers to understand and even modify their privacy settings, right down to editing/deleting web browsing history.

Executives at Google have worked aggressively to publicize the changes to its policies in order to educate its customers and, more importantly, to encourage its customers to educate themselves in the complex interactions that make up their online footprint. In fact, starting yesterday, Google customers may have noticed screen pop-ups at login that call out the change and provide links to additional information.

The updated privacy policy helps to provide clarity around the privacy process and makes it easy for customers to opt out of certain sharing settings. For example, Google provides its customers with tools to monitor the information they share (see the Google Account dashboard and the “incognito mode” option in Chrome). The new privacy policy allows customers to more easily understand — and change — the way they share information with Google.

FAQ for Google Apps Customers

What does the new privacy policy mean for current Google Apps customers?
Vice President of Google Enterprise Amit Singh said that the main privacy policy does not affect current customers. Enterprise customers using Google Apps for Government, Business or Education have individual contracts that define how Google handles and stores their data. As always, Google will maintain their enterprise customers’ data in compliance with the confidentiality and security obligations provided to their domain. The new Privacy Policy does not change contractual agreements, which have always superseded Google’s Privacy Policy for enterprise customers.

Does this mean that my information is now public?  
No. Google will not make any data that was previously private public.

Does this mean that my Google Apps for Business/Government/EDU and my personal GMail are connected or have access to each other?  
No. All of your Google accounts remain completely independent of each other, and no data is shared between them.

If I don’t want my search history integrated into my profile history, what can I do?  
You have a several options. You can disable web history in your Google Account privacy dashboard or you can simply log-out. You will know when you are logged in by the presence of your user name in the upper right corner of the screen.

Where can I get more information?

• Google Policies and Principles
• The Next Web: Google’s New Privacy Policy Won’t Affect Enterprise Customers like the Government
• Ars Technica: What Google Knows about You and How to Tweak It

Today our guest blogger is Jason Kirkland, Technology Projects Manager for the City of Lewisville, Texas. Jason is recognized by Google as a Government Transformer for his innovative usage of technology to improve information sharing among city staff.

As part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, the City of Lewisville in Texas offers a small community atmosphere with all of the urban amenities. We are always looking for ways to improve our community and the lives of the people who call Lewisville home.

The City is constantly evaluating its IT infrastructure and services to increase efficiency and effectiveness and reduce costs. One area of focus was email and calendar which were provided to our users via Lotus Notes along with a separate Blackberry server to sync mobile devices. After a thorough analysis of cloud-based solutions from various providers, we decided to migrate to Google Apps for Government. The migration not only reduced costs in software license and server maintenance, it also brought robust functionalities for our staff to collaborate better and be more productive. Employees automatically access the most current version of Google Apps, eliminating the need for software patching and upgrades. There is no more confusion caused by the various versions of software people are using. They are also able to gain mobile access to emails, calendars, and documents from virtually anywhere with Internet access.

Google Apps is also more reliable and customizable than the other cloud solutions we evaluated. It provides API access for our developers to harness and integrate with other internal systems. I created an online GIS Map using Google Spreadsheets, Google Maps, and Google Fusion Tables that allowed us to turn a static paper map into an electronic one that is interactive and easy to use. The City is even using Google Video to store and share footage of our water and sewer systems so that we can easily access and analyze this data. For less money than what we previously paid for system maintenance alone, we get much more than just an email and calendar replacement!

Google Apps implementation partner Cloud Sherpas made our migration a smooth process. During a two-week period, we migrated all of our 644 users from Lotus Notes to Google Apps.

The examples above are few of many, and surely more will come as our city continues to use Google’s products to simplify processes from project management to police dispatch. I am honored that Google recognized me as a Government Transformer. With the right tools, my colleagues and I can collaborate and communicate more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

Having been in IT for nearly two decades, however, I know security generally isn’t their forte. So let’s begin dissecting Tony’s article:

“When I share an email or a document with a colleague and ask for their confidentiality, I trust that they won’t share the information with others.”

When sharing a document with Google Docs, users don’t have to “trust” that someone isn’t going to share it. The organization’s administrator and the document owner have all the necessary controls enable safe sharing. As you’ll see, Google’s sophisticated, yet easy-to-use visibility options and sharing settings provides document owners far greater control sharing documents in the cloud than they would have otherwise collaborating via email attachments.

Tony’s first misrepresentation:

“If a user is working in a Google Apps domain, their files adopt the domain’s security setting, by default, whether those settings are private or not, so Google Apps users may be sharing or publishing documents without knowing they are doing so!”

Google Apps administrators can configure how users within their organization can share their Google Docs (documents, presentations, spreadsheets and drawings). Most of our customers choose to allow sharing outside their organization — that’s a key feature — but some administrators may choose to disallow sharing outside their organization. To address Tony’s misguided point above, administrators can also set the default visibility level for new docs. Out of the box, Google Docs are set to Private.

He also says:

“Google Docs allows users to specify who they want to share a document with online, yet users cannot apply any security settings to the document. Other users can download and share it any way they wish.”

Simply not true. Document owners can choose exactly how they want to share a document. First, they choose a visibility option for the document. Documents can be set to Private, where only specific people can access it, or shared more broadly, using the options Anyone with the Link or Public on the Web.

When Documents are Private and shared with specific people, document owners can grant collaborators different permission levels. Collaborators may be given permission to edit a document, or they can be granted read-only access or comment-only access. Document owners can also prevent users from downloading the document.

Google Docs Sharing Settings

Furthermore, document owners can choose to grant editors the ability to share the document with other people, or they can limit the sharing permissions.

Most importantly, because all of the content and sharing permissions are stored in the cloud — not on individual user desktops — administrators have the ability to review, audit, and even modify sharing settings and history globally without having to worry about local issues concerning “My Documents.” Sharing rights can be revoked by the user in real-time without the need for help desk or technical support. And, as with all Google Apps, the security features work on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and other platforms — not just Windows 7.

Tony then goes on to describe Microsoft’s granular sharing controls:

“Information Rights Management (IRM) is similar to Digital Rights Management for documents and information. With IRM, users can restrict rights to content and prevent authorized recipients of restricted content from forwarding, copying, modifying, printing, faxing, or pasting the content. Via IRM, Windows users can even prevent restricted content from being copied with Print Screen.”

What's next? Are you going to limit smartphone use to prevent employees from taking "screenshots"?

Even with these very specific levels of control, someone determined to steal data can take a picture of their computer screen using one of today’s many ubiquitous cell phone cameras and share it with the world via an email or web post. As with all security technology, there needs to be a balance between over engineering a solution and maintaining usability. Our customers tell us Google Docs provides that balance.

Finally, Tony admits:

“Information Rights Management requires certain on-premises investments. It is not for everyone. Larger organizations often take the time to implement and benefit from IRM. Should this interest you, customers can establish IRM settings for Office 2010 and Outlook 2010 using Group Policy, while SharePoint customers have the choice of managing security via a LiveID or through a Rights Management Server.

This may be the largest point of differentiation between Microsoft’s solution and Google Apps. We don’t feel that only large businesses that want to make large investments in on-premise equipment should have enterprise-grade security. It is interesting to see that Office 365 is not mentioned in Microsoft’s blog post, as IRM requires on-premise servers and integration.

Clearly we have a dog in this fight. Since our inception over three years ago, Cloud Sherpas has helped migrate over 1 million users to Google Apps, none of which had previously invested in Microsoft IRM. Today, every single user we’ve migrated benefits from the robust enterprise-class content security features in Google Docs on each and every one of their documents. No Google Apps user must endure the complexity or expense of an IRM system to ensure document security.

On the contrary, Google is regularly investing in the area of security and privacy and delivers new features like two-factor authentication and new advanced SSL security techniques to customers at no additional cost and without the need for on-premise hardware or software.

Simply stated, we believe Microsoft’s model for sharing and collaboration is broken. Once a document is sent as an attachment, the recipient has the choice to do whatever they want with the file. Microsoft Office isn’t based on centrally managed content; documents are created and edited locally on end-user machines. Microsoft’s Information Rights Management seems like a lose-lose proposition as documents aren’t any more secure and collaboration is strongly hindered.

Microsoft’s blog post ends by asking, “Is securing documents and email important to your organization?” Of course it is. For organizations that value collaboration and group productivity, Google Docs provides a flexible security model in use by millions — whether you’re a small business or a large corporation — without any on-premise investments.

Chromebooks and Google Apps are two sides of the same coin representing Google’s 100% Web vision for the future of enterprise computing. Already, over 200 million people use the Chrome browser, and over 4 million companies have adopted Google Apps. In addition to our Google Apps migration services, Cloud Sherpas is now offering a range of Chromebook deployment services to help businesses make a smooth and cost-effective transition to Chomebooks.

“Chromebooks represent a big opportunity for organizations that have already Gone Google with Google Apps,” said Chris McGarry, Vice President of Strategic Solutions.  “For the first time CIOs can deploy, manage, store and secure all users, data, applications and infrastructure in the cloud, from a Chrome-based device. That’s a powerful statement, with major cost and efficiency benefits. Our unique ability to guide clients through this process will ensure they get maximum value for their Chromebooks investment.”

And for the few things that can’t be done through the web, desktop virtualization infrastructure (VDI) can provide access to desktop apps. To make the process of launching a virtualized application easy, Cloud Sherpas co-developed an open source Chrome extension in conjunction with Ericom and SecureAuth that gives Chromebook users secure, one-click access to virtualized applications, like Internet Explorer 6 or Adobe Photoshop, all from within the Chrome browser. Furthermore, customization of this Chrome Extension software is free to customers that purchase their Chromebooks from Cloud Sherpas.

Chromebooks are a faster, easier, and more secure way to bring your organization all the benefits of the web. Chromebooks are lightweight and fast-booting, provide all-day battery life and contain built-in security. Click here to learn how Cloud Sherpas can help you deploy Chromebooks for your organization, or fill out the form on the right-side of the screen to be contacted by a Cloud Sherpas sales representative.

Like many users of Google Apps, we have been eagerly anticipating the arrival of Google+ for Apps and are excited that it is now live…and at no additional cost to Apps users. Whether you’re already a poweruser of Google+ or are taking your first look, we want to offer our early impressions to help orient you to the new offering and potential business use cases.

Why? First and foremost, because our mission is to serve organizations who are evaluating or have already adopted Google Enterprise technology. At the same time, we believe that the introduction of Google+ into the enterprise is another significant step in the evolution of Google Apps as a complete, web-based productivity suite.

Google+ is not the first product to address the business social graph. It is, however, the first social networking solution for organizations with native integration to the world’s leading online messaging and collaboration service. This uniquely positions it to realize the great promise of the enterprise social network—to become a vital connection to the heartbeat of your organization by delivering real-time insight and access to the people, information and activity that make it go.

As any Gone Google organization knows, we may expect a steady, iterative stream of new product features and enhancements consistent with that vision in the weeks and months to come. That said, Google+ for Apps is a compelling service worth exploring today.

So where do you start?

Enabling Google+ for your Apps domain will require both administrators and end users to follow a few simple steps. See the Official Google Blog announcement for more information and these rollout tips for additional guidance including an email template for communicating with your users.

Once the service is activated and your users are online, here are a few suggestions for breaking the ice:

• Lead the Way – Like any social network, the value of your organization’s Google+ graph will hinge on the contributions of leaders and other influencers. Do your part to foster a lively, substantive conversation by seeding Google+ with quality content and responding to posts. Wondering what to share? Remember Zappos founder Tony Hsieh’s acronym for Tweeting, “ICEE.” It applies to any social channel and stands for 4 goals: Inspire, Connect, Educate, Entertain.
• Complete Profiles – Encourage users to add photos and biographical detail to their profile. Particularly in larger organizations, it will help users to connect and understand how a colleague’s background may be relevant.
• Create Circles – Google+ gives the user the option to share with everyone in their domain. In order to more effectively direct communications to departments, project teams or other groups, create Circles. Circles are similar to distribution lists and specify the audience to whom a post will be shared. Each user’s Circles taxonomy is unique to their personal instance of Google+, but a Circle (e.g. “Marketing Team”) may be shared with another user (e.g. a Marketing colleague) so that the other user may copy it.
• Share Multimedia – Since its consumer launch, Google+ has been praised as an intuitive and high quality multimedia-sharing service. Utilize this functionality not only to share articles, videos and other content intended to inform your co-workers, but also to share photos from visits with customers, social functions and other team activities that illustrate the life and successes of the company.
• Host Hangouts – Hangouts leverages Google’s instant messaging, videochat and Docs functionality to provide multi-party videoconferencing, screen sharing and collaborative editing. For access to the full Hangouts feature set, users must elect to preview Hangouts with Extras when launching a Hangout. Hangouts may be used to host internal meetings and webinar-style live video conferences with partners, prospects and customers.
• Leave it Open – Leave Google+ open in a browser window or tab throughout the day. Instead of checking Facebook, your users can now get their social fix and track company, partner, customer and industry news with Google+ for Apps.
• Get Mobile – Check out the web-based interface or native Android and iPhone apps and stay connected on the go. I personally prefer the native apps.

We hope that these suggestions help to jump start productive usage of Google+ by your organization. As you consider the possibilities of Google+ for your organization we encourage you to develop a structured change management program to support a successful adoption that sticks. For more information about how the Cloud Sherpas team can help your team get social with Google+, fill out the form to the right.

Today’s guest blogger is Ed Nettles, Vice President and Director of IT for Lamar Advertising. Founded in 1902, Lamar Advertising operates over 150 outdoor advertising companies and 63 transit companies, reaching driving audiences. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

In 1902, when Charles Lamar and J.M. Coe decided to dissolve their business partnership, a coin toss was used to divide their assets: the Pensacola Opera House and the Pensacola Advertising Company, the small poster company created to promote the Opera House. Mr. Lamar lost the toss and was left with the less-lucrative poster company. A few years later the Opera house burned down, but that little poster company has grown into Lamar Advertising, one of the largest advertising companies in the U.S.

Prior to Google Apps, we were using Microsoft® Outlook for employees in the field, and Microsoft® Exchange for the employees in our corporate office. With this setup we were constantly facing three problems: data vulnerability, lack of reliable mobile access, and a constant need for IT maintenance.

We had employees saving Microsoft Outlook data in multiple locations, making us vulnerable to data loss and discovery requests that we couldn’t comply with. Microsoft Exchange limited our employees’ ability to get their information when out of the office. Employee smartphones couldn’t sync with calendars or contacts and while employees could get new messages on their phones, they couldn’t see emails older than a few days. We felt like once our employees walked away from the office, they walked away from their work. Even in the office, our email lacked stability so the IT department was constantly dealing with issues. We needed one centralized way of storing and managing our data so that we could provide a better service to our users, provide the business with better security and let our IT department get out of the business of managing email.

We considered upgrading to the latest version of Exchange, but the benefits of the cloud – access from anywhere, increased storage, better security- were too important to ignore. Once we decided that we were going to move to the cloud, Google Apps was the clear choice. Google Apps was affordable and many employees were already familiar with Gmail. Because Google Apps is web-based employees can work and easily collaborate anywhere, any time, making us much more productive.

Cloud Sherpas, the Google Apps reseller we’ve worked with, has been extremely helpful, deploying Google Apps to over 2,400 email users without any major hitches. We now have over 4 terabytes of data in Google Apps. That would have been too resource and cost intensive to build and maintain on our own. With Google Apps, we know our data is safe in the cloud we don’t have to continue to build out our IT infrastructure as we grow.

We’re just getting started with Google Apps, but already employees have started embracing the benefits of its collaborative features; we’ve already seen over 10,000 Google spreadsheets created in just a few months. With so many of our employees working in remote offices and on the road, the ability to access their information anywhere has greatly improved productivity. We know that this is just the beginning and we’re looking forward to seeing the impact Google Apps can have across the business.

Google App Engine —
A Deep Dive with Google’s
Tom Derfus & Eric Morse

August 23, 2-3pm ET

Register here

Google App Engine enables you to build and host web apps on the same systems that power Google applications. App Engine offers fast development and deployment; simple administration, with no need to worry about hardware, patches or backups; and effortless scalability.

Join Google’s own Tom Derfus and Eric Morse on Tuesday, August 23rd from 2-3 PM ET to learn more about hosting your applications in Google’s enterprise-ready cloud.

Also joining the call will be David Hardwick, Cloud Sherpas’ Director of Application Development. David will share common use-case for the platform, including business process improvement, Lotus Notes/Domino application migration and multi-tenant, scalable applications.

6. Collaboration

Office 365 was built on a retrofitted platform (Office 2010) in which collaboration was an afterthought. This lack of collaboration  integration is certainly apparent in Office 365’s functionality within both the Excel Web App and Word, as the collaboration experience is disjointed and lacks real-time updates.

7. Maintenance

Because Office 365 is constructed on the legacy platform of Office 2010 and continues to store data and software on the desktop, Office 365 requires software upgrades, patching and unknown hours of wait time for end-users while maintenance is completed.

8. Sociability

Office 365 is based on the Office 2010 platform, which was developed long before social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter took hold. It therefore comes as no surprise to us that Office 365 offers little in the way of expected social interaction such as video for all users regardless of pricing plan.  Furthermore, since Office 365 suffers from the legacy client-server architecture as previously mentioned, the ability to integrate web-scale social services will continue to be highly limited.

Google knows that sociability is the foundation of collaboration. Innovative features, such as integrated chat and commenting in docs, bring familiar tagging and online social interactions to the Google Apps suite. Google has exhibited proven success in the social arena, as creative, social and media apps such as Picasa and Blogger work flawlessly within the Google Apps system to bring social enhancement to professional collaboration.

9.  Innovation

Because Office 365 is built on the framework of Office 2010 (on Windows servers), meaning that Microsoft will need to update its entire platform every time a new feature is added, it is unlikely that Microsoft’s “cloud” endeavor will be updated any more frequently than the traditional Microsoft Office suite. Microsoft released zero new features  in 2010.

10. Value

All in all, Google Apps offers incredible value. For $50/user/year, businesses receive an exceptional suite of tools without having to maintain, patch or upgrade. Google Apps offers a true cloud solution while Office 365 only mimics it.

1. Price

The least expensive option in Office 365 is $6/user/mo, and this baseline subscription is only available to businesses fewer than 50 people. Furthermore, this subscription at $6/user/mo. does not include many platform essentials such as Office Web apps, which are required to take advantage of anywhere-access cloud capabilities within the suite.

Though Office 365 does tout their cost-effective $6/user/mo base plan, what they don’t say is that this plan is only available to a select number of people who will eventually find they need to pony up more cash to be able to use the suite in the way it was intended.

Once prospective users get past the initial $6/user/mo pitch, they’ll see that Office 365 offers four main pricing plans with options for add-ons. The plans and add-ons can be mixed and matched, resulting in dozens of plan options that can become unmanageable and, quite frankly, confusing.

Google Apps offers a straight-forward pricing scheme: $50/user/year. With this $50, users receive everything they need to be able to effectively and efficiently operate within the Google platform. Google Apps does not require any desktop software (unlike Office 365) or add-ons to function effectively and efficiently. When users purchase Google Apps, they know they’re receiving everything they need, and will not need to upgrade or purchase pricey add-ons in the future.

2. Extensibility

Because Office 365 is built on top of a legacy client-server technology, third-party or internal applications cannot be securely integrated.  This proprietary attitude will hurt Office 365, as Microsoft must be trusted to create all applications that users need.  Most organizations realize that email is the lifeblood of how office knowledge works, and there are strong needs to programmatically integrate this content with other systems within the organization.

Conversely, Google’s commitment to standards-based protocols, open data formats, and world-class security allows the Google Apps Marketplace to provide hundreds of integrated applications that can be instantly provisioned to your domain. Google Apps administrators can browse the Marketplace to find exactly what their domain needs, be it CRM, social collaboration or enhanced management tools such as SherpaTools, the #1 ranked admin tool in the Google Apps Marketplace.

3. Security

Office 365 is a hybrid cloud.  Information is stored in data centers and on local devices using legacy client-server technologies. As a result, information is all stored locally on users’ machines, and as such, administrators have little control over the data being lost, stolen or corrupted. In addition, all this user software must still be licensed, installed, patched, and upgraded on a constant basis.

Google Apps offers a true cloud model, and with this model comes the inherent security of the cloud. Google’s multi-layered security strategy keeps information safe at each stage of data storage, access and transfer. Data will never be lost because a user’s hard drive crashed, a computer was stolen or onsite data was compromised by fire or floods. Keeping your data in the cloud means keeping your data safe— 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

4. Mobility

Office 365 was designed to work primarily with Windows desktops.  As a result, its integration with other devices including iPhones, Androids and Blackberrys is poor. The so-called “cloud” solution lacks easy-to-use browser-based interfaces and is all together inaccessible from tablets. Office 365 requires plug-ins and software that make it virtually impossible to create a unified user experience across multiple platforms.

Google Apps has only one requirement: a modern browser. Whether you’re on your home laptop, work computer, cell phone or even tablet, the Google Apps user experience remains consistent. Google Apps is accessible from almost any device including iPhones, Blackberrys, tablets and, of course, Android devices.

5. Reliability

Because Office 365 is Microsoft’s first “cloud” venture, the reliability of the platform is still unknown. Furthermore, Microsoft does not make their uptime statistics available to the public and does not factor planned maintenance and outages into their promised 99.9% uptime statistic.

Google does include planned maintenance and outages into their 99.9% uptime promise and makes statistics public through the App Status Dashboard, which details all outages lasting more than 10 minutes.

Furthermore, Google recently announced on the Official Google Enterprise Blog that uptime in 2010 was 99.984%, which is less than seven minutes per month. This number contrasts greatly with Microsoft, as Exchange users experienced more than 300 minutes of downtime in 2010. Google’s transparency and proven reliability keep 3 million businesses happy on Google Apps.
You can view Cloud Sherpas’ uptime here.

Note: Supporting information for Reason #5, including the link to the Official Google Enterprise Blog, was added on July 20.

Check back soon for our next 5 reasons for choosing Google Apps over Office 365 later this week.