3,000 IT Pros (Serving 300,000 Workers) Now Using SherpaTools Application as Google Apps Presence Grows in Enterprise Market

ATLANTA, GA – May 11, 2010 – Cloud Sherpas, a leading Google Apps Solution Provider, today announced an upcoming premium feature set of its SherpaTools application for Google Apps admins. One of the “Original 50” apps in the Google Apps Marketplace, SherpaTools extends the IT management capabilities within Google Apps. While in beta, SherpaTools has remained free for all Google Apps domains. The company will continue to offer a free version of the product, and will soon introduce a paid version as well. However, companies that buy their Google Apps licenses directly from Cloud Sherpas will continue to receive the premium features at no cost.

The new, premium features in SherpaTools help enterprises protect and preserve end user data. Google Apps admins can now delegate access to fellow IT staff, such as help desk workers, without providing the company’s master username and password credentials. Using a dedicated pin number, a help desk worker can reset an end user’s password, for example, but he or she would not have access to a broader spectrum of employee data. The Access Control List feature is a significant addition to SherpaTools. Particularly for larger companies, limiting access to employee data is a critical security measure.

An equally valuable new, premium feature in SherpaTools involves the ability to quickly and easily preserve the data assets of terminated employees. In general with Google Apps, all of an employee’s data assets (spreadsheets, presentations, emails, etc.) are deleted once he or she is removed from the system. Admins get around the issue by suspending rather than deleting a user from the system. The admin then goes into the employee’s account and manually removes/archives/reassigns the data files they want to keep. This is time-consuming and highly discretionary process, leaving companies exposed to the loss of potentially valuable data. With SherpaTools, IT admins can automatically delegate all of a terminated employee’s files to his or her manager or another user in the system. This saves time and helps to ensure that important data is not lost.

Since launching in March, approximately 2,100 businesses have signed up to use SherpaTools. These companies serve nearly 300,000 workers. Among the 2,100 businesses, over 250 have at least 100 workers; 50 have over 1,000 workers; three have more than 10,000 employees; and two have upwards of 30,000 employees. Many of these are global deployments.

“SherpaTools success is consistent with the rise of Google Apps in the enterprise,” said Michael Cohn, founder and VP of Marketing and Product Management at Cloud Sherpas. “Large, global businesses realize the significant cost and performance benefits associated with Google Apps. Likewise, they want more IT admin functionality. That’s where SherpaTools comes in. We’re 100% focused on making life easier for Google Apps admins. We think SherpaTools is a great fit for the largest companies and busiest IT pros.”

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations, but sophisticated IT departments need more management functionality than Google offers “out of the box.” SherpaTools addresses this need by providing Google Apps administrators with more flexibility in the way they manage end-user profiles and settings, shared contacts and groups.

Using SherpaTools is easy. Google Apps administrators can easily add SherpaTools to their domain through the Google Apps Marketplace (http://bit.ly/SherpaTools). Since SherpaTools relies on Google Apps as the OpenID identity provider, users don’t need to create an account or remember a new password – they simply log in with their existing Google Apps credentials.

SherpaTools is the only cloud-based application to extend Google Apps’ IT management capabilities. The application works with Premier, Education and Partner editions of Google Apps. For companies licensing Google Apps from Google rather than Cloud Sherpas, there is a fee to use SherpaTools’ Premium edition. The cost is based on the size of the organization.

About Cloud Sherpas
Cloud Sherpas (www.cloudsherpas.com) is a cloud computing systems integrator and application developer. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and leading Google Enterprise partner, we have migrated hundreds of thousands of users from legacy, on- premise messaging systems to Google Apps and Google App Engine, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. SherpaTools for Google Apps (www.sherpatools.com) enhances the functionality and ease-of-use of Google Apps for both administrators and end-users and is available in the Google Apps Marketplace (http://bit.ly/SherpaTools).

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Leading Google Apps Solutions Provider Also Secures Series A Financing, Accelerating Company Plans to Migrate Enterprises to Google Apps Platform

ATLANTA, GA – May 3, 2010 – Cloud Sherpas, a leading Google Apps solutions provider, today announced the appointment of Jon Hallett to Chief Executive Officer. Hallett takes over for founder Michael Cohn, under whose leadership Cloud Sherpas achieved profitability. Cohn remains with Cloud Sherpas as Vice President of Marketing and Product Management. Cohn was responsible for focusing Cloud Sherpas on Google Apps before a formal reseller program existed. In two years he and his team helped hundreds of thousands of enterprise employees move to Google Apps by selling the licenses, migrating users and enhancing the usability of Google Apps through Cloud Sherpas’ SherpaTools product.

Hallett steps in to accelerate Google Apps enterprise adoption and to help Cloud Sherpas’ achieve its growth targets. He brings a background in IT services and on- demand infrastructure, and extensive experience raising capital and scaling businesses. Hallett will focus on increasing revenue, profit margin and customer orientation, while extending Cloud Sherpas’ leadership position in the Google Apps channel market.

In related news, Cloud Sherpas completed a Series A financing round. The funding event, to which investors oversubscribed, netted Cloud Sherpas around $1 million. Hallett’s personal investment vehicle Hallett Capital was the lead investor. Hallett’s appointment occurs at a time of remarkable growth for Cloud Sherpas. Over 1,800 organizations representing more than 500,000 employees now use Cloud Sherpas’ products and services. Customers span every geographic region and vertical market including manufacturing, retail, state and local government, real estate, healthcare and technology. Underscoring the company’s commitment to customers, 100% of clients renewed their Google Apps license at the time of their annual renewal date.

Cloud Sherpas’ success mirrors that of Google Apps. The platform, which brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organizations, is used by over two million businesses as a substitute for products from Microsoft, IBM and others.

Hallett is a technology industry veteran who founded or led multiple successful consulting, SaaS and managed services companies. Prior to Cloud Sherpas, Hallett was Executive Chairman at Northridge Systems, a provider of collaboration solutions to large and midmarket enterprises, where he helped architect a company strategy that led to market-leading growth and profitability; he remains chairman of the board. Previously, Hallett was an independent board member and CEO advisor at Vocalocity, a fast- growing VOIP-centric SaaS company; he continues to serve as an independent director. Hallett also was a company director and turnaround executive at IT solutions firm mindSHIFT Technologies, where he helped drive 400% improvement in revenue while taking the company to positive cash flow. Earlier he held executive management positions at AppNet (acquired by CommerceOne) and was CEO at NMP, a consulting, SaaS and managed services company, at which he returned over 20x invested capital to his institutional investors.

“We have aggressive plans to expand our national footprint and help more companies realize the cost and productivity benefits of Google Apps,” said Hallett. “The additional capital allows us to accelerate these plans, including continued development of SherpaTools and other vertically oriented products so companies can more fully leverage Google Apps. The market opportunity couldn’t be more exciting as we are seeing some of the largest GroupWise, Notes and Exchange loyalists abandoning their on-premise solutions for the cost and feature benefits that Google Apps provides. I look forward to helping them take advantage of the platform, and to leading Cloud Sherpas in its next phase of development.”

About Cloud Sherpas

Cloud Sherpas (www.cloudsherpas.com) is a cloud computing systems integrator and application developer. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller and leading Google Enterprise partner, we have migrated hundreds of thousands of users from legacy, on- premise messaging systems to Google Apps and Google App Engine, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. SherpaTools for Google Apps (www.sherpatools.com) enhances the functionality and ease-of-use of Google Apps for both administrators and end-users and is available in the Google Apps Marketplace (http://bit.ly/SherpaTools).

Cloud Sherpas is eager to announce the next major release of OffiSync! A longtime Cloud Sherpas partner, OffiSync 2.0 boasts a one-of-a-kind Microsoft Office to Google Apps extension tool that enhances Office with the cloud collaboration capacities of Google Apps. We proudly affirm that this is a must-have for all organizations on Google Apps that still use Office for various or specific purposes. If you’ve already heard about OffiSync and/or you’re looking to download, the newest version was released this afternoon and is available for download here.

The most significant upgrade from the previous version of OffiSync is the new, real-time co-authoring feature. Every time a collaborator saves his document in Word, you can see the change in your Word document in real time as well.

Other new/improved features include:

• Support for any file type: OffiSync now supports Docs’ ability to store files of any type. What this means for Office users is that you can chose to store your Office documents in their native format without “converting” them to Google Docs format. This is ideal for preserving some of the advanced formatting that Docs doesn’t support.
• Improved Google Sites Support: OffiSync automatically detects all the Google Sites you have access to and lets you edit those files. You can even create new Google Sites from within Office.
• OffiSync Task Pane: A sidebar panel for Office that shows collaborators, recent documents, documents starred in Google Docs, recently shared documents and more.
• Improved Integrated Search: The new version includes improved integrated Google Search/Google Image Search functionality, available from the toolbar.

For those of you seeking a more detailed explanation for how OffiSync actually works, their demo video is really helpful, and we’ve made it available here. Below, we’ve highlighted some of the key functionality points for you.

As before, OffiSync users will see in their Microsoft Word, Excel, or Powerpoint toolbars an additional tab for OffiSync. From this toolbar within Office, you can browse your Google Docs and even your Google Sites. And much like in Gmail, within your OffiSync browser, you have an integrated search bar that filters through your files stored in the Google cloud, and you can then open them within Office.

Conversely, OffiSync’s integrated “Save As” button allows you to save files from Office into Google Apps. Users can even create a folder for Google Docs from their OffiSync toolbar in Office. Furthermore, from Office you can then add collaborators who will be able to access the file via Google Apps.

Lastly, when you save a new file in Office with the intent of putting it in Google Apps, you can specify whether or not you want to preserve Office’s formatting instead of allowing Google Apps to convert it into a Google Doc, Spreadsheet, etc. So now there is no fear of losing formatting or more complex functions, such as Macros or Iterations, when you upload any file into Google Apps.

This release of OffiSync is especially timely considering the significant updates that Google has made to Docs. This feature is especially timely now, considering Google’s new updates to Docs that, among other improvements, include higher fidelity document imports and increased speed and responsiveness.

With OffiSync 2.0, users can experience a seamless increase in collaboration and productivity between Microsoft Office and Google Apps. It truly integrates two environments into one, and you can see for yourself by downloading the new, free version today!

We’re excited to announce that SherpaTools for Google Apps, the new IT management application from Cloud Sherpas, has been added to the Google Apps Marketplace™, launched this evening.

As revealed by Google, the Marketplace is an online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services. Over two million Google Apps users can now easily discover, purchase and deploy integrated business applications, including SherpaTools.

For Cloud Sherpas, the Marketplace is a great way to reach customers. As an original member of the Google Apps reseller program, we can tell you that IT managers and business users absolutely love the communication and collaboration capabilities provided by Google Apps. We’ve migrated tens of thousands of users to Google Apps and the community is very hungry for products that extend the platform’s rich tool set.

SherpaTools is a terrific example. The application provides IT managers and business users with previously unavailable admin and corporate directory functionality. Thus far the response has been tremendously positive. It doesn’t hurt that SherpaTools is the only 100% free, cloud-based IT management add-on to Google Apps.

For Cloud Sherpas, this is just the beginning. As more companies embrace the cloud, Google Apps will grow in popularity, and products like SherpaTools will ride the wave. For now we’re pleased to be joining “a rich ecosystem of integrated apps that work seamlessly with Google Apps,” as noted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise. We look forward to helping more companies realize the productivity and cost-savings associated with the use of the Google Apps Marketplace.

Cloud Sherpas was featured today on the Google Apps developer blog! We shared our experience building SherpaTools for Google Apps on the Google platform and detailed our use of Google Apps APIs, Google App Engine, Google Web Toolkit, and other Google technologies. Check it out — read “Building Applications on top of Google Apps.” Hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting together the technical details.

Cloud Sherpas to host Webinar featuring OffiSync, ScheduleOnce and SherpaTools

On Thursday, December 10th, Cloud Sherpas will be hosting a webinar featuring OffiSync, ScheduleOnce and SherpaTools, three must-have add-ons to Google Apps. This is an exciting opportunity for both end-users and administrators of Google Apps to learn about ways to enhance their Google Apps experience.

Sign up here to reserve your spot!

The webinar will open with a brief presentation of the first SherpaTools module for Google Apps, Directory Manager. This tool from Cloud Sherpas allows Google Apps administrators to easily manage the User Profiles and Shared Contacts directory in Google Apps. We will then hear from the leaders of OffiSync and ScheduleOnce who will speak and answer questions about their solutions. OffiSync offers a best-of-both-worlds functionality platform between Microsoft Office and Google Docs, and ScheduleOnce is a meeting scheduler for Google Apps that streamlines the scheduling process and finds common meeting times quickly and efficiently.

If you’re a Google Apps administrator, or if your business or organization has adopted Google Apps, don’t miss this great opportunity to learn how you can do more with Google Apps. Sign up today!

Cloud Sherpas to host webinar on migrating enterprise messaging and collaboration to the cloud

Businesses are responding to the value proposition of Google Apps in a big way. According to a tweet by Dave Girouard, President of Google Enterprise, more than 5000 businesses signed up for Google Apps last Thursday alone!

For those of you Novell GroupWise users considering the switch, we welcome you to join our webinar on Thursday, December 3rd from 2:30-3:30pm EDT. During this one-hour event Cloud Sherpas will share our specialized approach for migrating GroupWise enterprises to Google Apps. You’ll also hear Jay Kenney, CIO of Lincoln Property Company, tell his story of migrating his GroupWise users to Google Apps, and have an opportunity to ask questions. As a business executive or IT professional of your organization, you don’t want to miss this webinar — reserve your spot today.

Update: The slides from the GroupWise webinar are now available:

A new platform that delivers enhanced management and end user features to organizations that have #gonegoogle

As Cloud Sherpas continues to help businesses and organizations adopt Google Apps, we have found that many customers, regardless of location or industry, request a common set of additional management controls and end user features for their Google Apps environment. Until now, the response to most of these inquiries was that organizations had to develop custom applications that work with Google APIs to achieve their goals.

Today Cloud Sherpas announces the start of a beta program for SherpaTools for Google Apps, a new platform that enhances the functionality and ease-of-use for administrators and end-users. Delivered as a service and requiring no installation or updates, we invite Google Apps administrators to signup for the beta program, free of charge, and instantly take control of their domain.

The first module in SherpaTools is Directory Manager, which today enhances an organization’s ability to effectively communicate by granting administrators greater autonomy and management control over both User Profiles and Shared Contacts. Coming soon is an automated bot that retrieves data from your directory from any device connected to Google chat. Also on the horizon is a Compliance and Reporting module that will provide scheduled reports, automated alerts and powerful privacy and content sharing controls.

SherpaTools is the easiest, most cost-efficient way to extend Google Apps in your organization. The suite addresses many common use-cases to provide a more user-friendly and self-directed Google Apps experience. Take one of the limited spots in our beta program and see for yourself the benefits of SherpaTools for Google Apps.

To view a quick, 3 minute video overview and to learn more about SherpaTools for Google Apps, please visit www.sherpatools.com.

Download Leaving Lotus event materials

Thank you to everyone who came out for Leaving Lotus last week. Your interest and participation at the event is a clear indication to us of the growing demand for alternative solutions in the enterprise. We’d also like to thank Google for hosting us and Binary Tree and Ferris Research for their substantial contributions.

Members of the audience represented organizations with 250 to 5000+ users, and businesses drove in from all over the Southeast. We had some great conversations with CIOs and IT leaders about why they’re seeking alternatives to Lotus Notes/Domino and how they could take the first steps in considering a migration to Google Apps.

If you’re thinking about Leaving Lotus, Cloud Sherpas would be glad to help you evaluate, deploy and support Google Apps for your business. Give us a call, we’re here to help.

Download the event materials

In response to your feedback and comments

All,

Thank you for your feedback to our last post. We are thrilled that through the use of blogs and twitter, we can engage the community in a nearly real-time conversation. What I find odd, however, is the fact that a leader of another large company can call for the “eradication” of Lotus Notes to his partner community, but it was David Hoff’s “Top 10 Reasons I Left Lotus Notes for Google Apps” that sparked the ire of the Lotus Notes faithful. We clearly hit a nerve here and wanted to take an opportunity to respond to some of the feedback.

First of all, let me say that Cloud Sherpas is made up of several former Lotus Notes Professionals. In my previous role with a large Fortune 100 company, I was responsible for the implementation, support, and day-to-day management of a 30K Lotus Notes and Domino user base. I actually helped that company migrate to the cloud right before I joined Cloud Sherpas. In any case, I too was once very proud of the Lotus brand going back to version 3.0c. However, I write to you now on this side of the divide because I have seen, acknowledged, and experienced what the cloud and Google Apps can provide for each of your organizations.

The time has now come for all of us to be thought leaders for our respective organizations. Are we really so unconditionally committed to maintaining the status quo and defending our on-premise messaging infrastructures? Knowing what you know now, if 10 years ago, you or your organization had the option of either pursuing the cloud or advancing the brand of your on-premise infrastructure, wouldn’t at least some part of you be extremely tempted to forgo your moral obligations and chase innovation?

For many years, the Lotus community has adeptly provided reliable, robust ways to deliver messaging and collaboration to users across multiple platforms. In the early days, Lotus was quick to develop Lotus Notes support for OS/2, which provided a true multitasking platform. With the acquisition from IBM, Lotus began pioneering support for the 64 bit platform on the AS400 and its associated stability, long before the Intel platform even dreamed of addressing memory beyond the 32 bit limit. When it became clear that Linux was ready for the data center, again, IBM and Lotus embraced the platform and released full support for the domino server.

Recently, IBM Lotus has even dared to dip a toe in the SaaS water. In January, IBM announced that Bluehouse is now “LotusLive”. We applaud this endorsement of the cloud model. However, this service still lacks the basic ability to provide browser-supported email (iNotes). At this point, it seems IBM is just attempting to host versions of its on-premise software in IBM data centers. This lack of a multi-tenant architecture and scale is clearly reflected in the pricing and feature set.

Aside from the fact that a browser offering is still not available, businesses cannot even purchase the product unless they commit to 1,000 seats. Furthermore, the purchase price is a massive $162/user (yes, this includes the software license for the client). This is more than 3x the cost of the entire Google Apps Suite, and users are subject to a host of limitations, not the least of which is a 1 GB mail file (versus Google’s 25 GB). We are citing these figures from the LotusLive signup page at https://www.lotuslive.com/pricing/notes.

Regardless of what side you are on, we can all acknowledge that, from time-to-time, disruptive changes occur in the IT industry. These advances leapfrog incremental evolution by approaching the challenge in a fundamentally different way. We see many of these characteristics in Google Apps. By the intensity of the reaction that we’ve generated, we can see that change is difficult. In this light, we want to elaborate on the benefits that our customers have experienced by switching to Google Apps. We have addressed the feedback with an analysis of five key points:

1. Rapidly Changing Technology. There were numerous responses from consultants that Notes/Domino 8.5 is a great product with many wonderful features. Although my experience ended with 8.0, I assume that you tell the truth. However, most Notes/Domino organizations are not on the latest version and probably can’t tell you if or when they are going to upgrade. I’m sure the folks at IBM can tell you exactly how many organizations are fully deployed on version 8.5, but in today’s economy, how many companies can afford to allocate time, money and effort to upgrade on-premise infrastructure instead of using those resources to focus on their core business? In the move to Notes/Domino 8.5, server upgrades are a very small component of the process. To take full advantage of the latest release, desktops, clients, templates and applications must be upgraded too, which can be quite daunting in terms of hardware requirements and time. (One of our enterprise customers with over 15,000 users would need to upgrade 38% of their laptops just to use the 8.5 client.) Whether you spend 20 minutes, 20 hours, or 20 days upgrading your Lotus Notes and Domino infrastructure, should this ever be the chief priority for your business? The truth of the matter is that in today’s economy, using and/or transitioning to the latest and greatest in IT is not an option for organizations focused on sustaining, building, and growing their business.

2. Notes and Domino Applications. Lotus Notes and Domino is a wonderful rapid application platform. Things such as field level security and offline capabilities are merely a few of the many positive features that provide a “Swiss army knife” of tools at a developer’s immediate disposal. If you are driving business-facing and transactional applications that help your organization succeed, by all means, keep it going. However, the best (and most cost-effective) solution to a problem is oftentimes not the most complex or versatile option, but rather, the one that most directly and efficiently meets your needs. To continue the metaphor, a pair of scissors can better solve certain problems for which a fold-out “Swiss army knife” would prove too costly, too convoluted, and too cumbersome.

With such a useful and fast development tool, many organizations find themselves left with a myriad of Lotus Notes applications that, while a good idea in the beginning, lack the careful life cycle approach to application development and data management. Over time, the initial value of the application wanes, and the enterprise is forced to dedicate ongoing resources and money to non-core business needs. For example, traditionally crucial Notes applications often mature into more complex CRM and/or ERP applications.

3. End Users. In today’s world in which messaging has extended to web clients and mobile devices, we believe that Google’s approach to mail is more convenient and appropriate for end users. Over the years, IBM has continued to extend support to a wider range of browsers; however, cross-platform support is a necessity, not a luxury. As the lines of collaboration blur inside and outside the organizations, IT departments have increasing difficulty mandating client software. Yet, with over 100+ million users on GMail, Google has built a platform that is designed from the ground-up to be intuitive, fast and self-supported. Deployment of all users on this single platform provides an unprecedented level of feedback for the evolution and refinement of Apps on a daily basis.

More often than not, many of the advanced features that fat clients provide are not utilized by end users. In comparison, Google has built a client that addresses key end user pain points like mail box size limits, message labeling, and a powerful search functionality, all powered by an almost infinitely scalable, cloud-based infrastructure that requires zero administrative management or maintenance.

4. Innovation. At some point, even Lotus gurus have to wonder, is Lotus Notes and Domino driving innovation, or is it more engrossed in features and functions? With Google, we see many companies take their first step into cloud computing by moving on-premise messaging spam and antivirus filtering to Google Message Security (formerly Postini). On the surface, the case is simple; an overwhelming majority of Internet inbound mail traffic is spam, so why consume precious internal bandwidth receiving these messages if they’re only going to get deleted? If you dig a little deeper, you see first-hand the innovation provided by having an intensely focused, multi-tenant filtering and archiving solution. Whereas on-premise solutions can only “see” what’s happening locally, collect patterns, and download definitions, a cloud-based solution has access to all this information with an enormous sampling of Internet activity in real-time. Google is constantly adding dynamic features and functions to the Google Apps suite. In the last year, Google has added real-time voice and video chat to instant messaging, released Google Video (aka YouTube for your internal organization), and developed full Java support for Google App Engine.

5. Cost. Running a data center is a costly proposition. As employees and customers demand systems that are designed to yield zero downtime, additional resources must be allocated to provide redundancy, failover, and recovery capabilities. The cost of providing IT services can be greatly reduced with an economy of scale. Did you know that Google is actually the world’s fourth-largest server manufacturer? (Not for resale, but for their own use.) Building on such a massive scale proves once again that Google has approached the problem differently. As another example, Google uses a custom-built operating system stack that bootstraps itself at runtime. This allows Google to release and deploy an update across hundreds of thousands of servers in less than 24 hours. The scale of this design is one of many ways that Google’s economies of scale greatly cuts costs for Google, which in turn, results in significantly lower costs for customers. To refer back to the first of these five topics, instead of spending additional funds on IT, a business should reduce costs and overhead associated with building, operating, maintaining, and upgrading IT infrastructures.

Enhancing your messaging and collaborative infrastructures can be the perfect, first step onto the cloud. Google is redefining this space for you each and every day. And for the most part, unless you’re talking to Google, other players in the industry are not going to help you migrate an organization of less than 1000 users. Why would they keep such a good thing from smaller to mid-sized companies? The answer most likely goes back to how much revenue providers (in this case, Lotus Notes) need to generate from software licenses that you purchase for your current on-premise deployment in order to profitably offset their own costs.

From time-to-time, disruptive changes occur in the IT industry. These advances leapfrog incremental evolution by approaching the challenge in a fundamentally different way. We see many of these characteristics in Google Apps. Do you?

We also invite you to join us on Thursday, Aug 13 at the Google Atlanta office for a free seminar: Leaving Lotus — Making the Switch from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps.

If you can’t make it to Atlanta, we’ll be broadcasting the Q&A portion of the event over a conference line and taking your questions live over twitter. Click here for more info on how you can participate.