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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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 is pleased to welcome the Google Apps community into the SherpaTools for Google Apps beta program. There’s no longer a need to sign up and wait for an invitation — if you have a Google Apps administrator account, you can log in right now!

To start, visit this help page on SherpaTools.com to learn how to configure your domain for Single Sign-On (Remember – SherpaTools only works with Google Apps Premier, Education and Partner edition). Configuring single sign-on will allow you to access SherpaTools as long as you’re logged in to Google Apps. As a result, SherpaTools will never handle your administrator credentials. Once you’ve configured your domain, browse to sherpatools.appspot.com to log in.

Thank you to all of our beta program participants who have provided invaluable feedback during the development process. We’re excited to open the app up to a larger audience and look forward to receiving your feedback as well. Enjoy!

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!