Ah, Microsoft and Google. Two of the Great Tech Corporation Triumvirate, always looking to make sure the other does not trump them up in the many platforms in which they compete with each other. However, there are the select few fields in which each one of the three excels (Search and ads: Google, productivity software: Microsoft and selling overpriced gadgets for hipsters/suing the hell out of a competing phone maker creating innovative product designs: Apple) and Microsoft is hell bent on keeping it that way. At least, that is what I could make out with the recent ad launched by Microsoft against Google Apps, a cloud-based enterprise productivity solution that competes with Microsoft’s own Office 365.

The launch of the ad (ironically hosted on the Google-owned and operated YouTube.com, but let’s not make too many assumptions here as Microsoft is only targeting Google Apps and not the rest of the company’s diverse fields of work) adds to the new Why Microsoft website in which comparisons are drawn between Microsoft and Google’s enterprise productivity solutions. Terming Google’s non-search and ad services as “Googlighting” (a portmanteau of “Google” and “moonlighting”), Microsoft aggressively outline how their productivity suite is better than anything else in the market.

Googlighting is what happens when the world’s largest advertising business tries to sell productivity software on the side. In fact, according to Gartner, Google Apps accounts for merely 0.5% of the ad company’s revenue after five years of Googlighting. Meanwhile, Microsoft enjoys its trustworthy reputation in the cloud; with 40% of companies from the Interbrand list of top 100 brands.

The advertisement shows a flamboyant Googlighting Stranger as he tries to sell Google Apps to a corporation. Apart from general clarity and saturated colors, the ad looks like it was made in the 70s with very random jingles of why Microsoft is better than Google.

I honestly do not understand why Microsoft proceeded with this rather terrible ad campaign when the company has become generally better and NonDickish™. Most enterprises live by Office because it has been refined over the years primarily for corporations and end users and is known for its stability. It does seem like Microsoft is scared of Google Apps and is trying the scare tactic against medium to large enterprises, warning them to stay away from Google Apps because Google shut down Gears and Wave – known to be experimental projects while Google Apps is not – and that the software might change completely overnight because Google is using corporates as guinea pigs. I do not think Google needs to reply to this ad at all; as the Beatles said, Let It Be.

When Google App Inventor came out, Google advertised it as a groundbreaking Android app-development platform. One could integrate components to create awesome apps, or so it seemed from the promotional videos. However, it was a lesser-known fact at that time that the App Inventor project would die soon.

Nowadays, the App Inventor page reads,

App Inventor for Android lets people create apps for Android phones by manipulating programming blocks in a web browser.    Since July 2010, Google has run App Inventor as a large-scale public web service as a part of its Google Labs suite.  With the wind down of Google Labs, as of December 31, 2011, Google ended support of App Inventor.

Google pulled the plug on App inventor back in August, but it will live on as a MIT project. Google Research is funding the App Inventor project, and the Center for Mobile Learning is managing it at MIT. The App Inventor project was open sourced and was removed from under the umbrella of Google product. However, App Inventor has been left high and dry at present with no visible future, in spite of promises. At present, the only way to run App Inventor is to run it on the Google Apps Engine. Alternatively, you can setup your own App Inventor service using this guide.

It is interesting to note that App Inventor is based on Open Blocks, which is a MIT product itself. With untimely deaths of products like these, it is extremely demoralizing to trust a vendor and traverse up a learning curve only to find that it was all in vain. The App Inventor project will take some time, until it is back up again.

I don’t know about you, but I think computing is getting a little too “cloudy”. Many companies are offering there software as a service and are pushing us toward “the cloud” for everything. Fortunately, Google has gotten their head out of the cloud long enough to realize we can’t always be in the cloud all the time. Google announced on the Official Gmail Blog today, a new application called “Offline Google Mail”.

“Offline Google Mail” is an app that can be downloaded for free from the Chrome Web Store and installed into Chrome. Here is the link if you would like to download it. Below you can see the web page on the Chrome Web Store. All you have to do is click the button that says “Add to Chrome” and it will begin the installation. It took me less than a minute to complete.

Once you have the app installed, it will ask you if you want to use it to manage and compose email when you’re offline. Just click “allow”, and then “continue”, and you’re in business.

The main window, pictured below, is sort of a dumbed down version of what you would see in  Gmail online. You have a list of your messages in a column on the left side of the screen and a preview area on the right side of the screen. You can compose messages offline and they will be sent when you are connected at a later time. You can even add labels to your messages offline.

This is a great feature add on for Google products. I know there have been many times where internet access has been scarce for me. This made using Gmail very inconvenient as it didn’t have the offline capability. Now, I can add this new app to my laptop and can work in my “Offline Google Mail”. The good thing is it will seamlessly work in online and offline modes.

Google also plans to roll out similar products for Google Docs and Google Calendar. According to the blog post, it appears that Google Docs allows offline viewing now, but they haven’t implemented offline editing quite yet. If Google gets this perfected, I believe it will make them much more attractive to corporate IT.

I am encouraged by the fact that Google recognized the need for offline synchronization. While I think it is great that we live in a world where everything is accessible virtually anywhere, the reality is there are still a lot of dead zones when it comes to internet access. I hope this is a sign of many more good things to come from Google.

Last year, the Department of the Interior selected Microsoft’s service for their cloud-based email system. Google advocated open competition and sued the Government for not considering their Google Apps for the Government service.

Google used the FISMA certification as one of the factors when pushing their Google Apps for Government service, though it has recently come to light that Google Apps for Government does not have FISMA certification. It has only applied for it. On the other hand, another service from Google, namely Google Apps Primer has FISMA certification and this has led to a lot of confusion.

The DOJ has seen through this and says,

On December 16, 2010, counsel for the Government learned that, notwithstanding Google’s representations to the public at large, its counsel, the GAO and this Court, it appears that Google’s Google Apps for Government does not have FISMA certification.

David Howard, the Corporate Vice President & Deputy General Counsel writes in his Technet blogs report,

I’ll be the first to grant that FISMA certification amounts to something. The Act creates a process for federal agencies to accredit and certify the security of information management systems like e-mail, so FISMA-certification suggests that a particular solution has proven that it has met an adequate level of security for a specific need.

While Microsoft accuses Google of misleading information in their services, Google accuses the Government of unfair competition and gets a lot of bad press from both ends.

(Image Source)

With Android being one of the leading smartphone operating systems and very rapidly climbing the charts in deployment, it’s well received news that Google is aligning their mobile offerings to include enterprise-level controls to compete in the business market.Google has updated their Device Policyapplication to include the ability for users to control their Android devices by way of tracking it via GPS, activating the ringer or resetting the PIN or password on the device. In the event that an employee or regular Apps user loses their device, they can use the online remote functionality to retrieve or secure their phone. Administrators and users can set up multiple devices in a new page that provides detailed information about each synchronized device (a tablet or smartphone) and plots the last known location. Devices must be running Android 2.2 or higher in order to use this feature.

Continuing along with the ability to remotely secure a device, Google Apps administrators now also have the option to force encryption for data stored on the device (supporting Android 3.0/Honeycomb tablets with encrypted storage). This will greatly reduce some of the risks that organizations take when employees wish to bring personal devices to work, it will allow security provisioning for any data exfiltration to ensure it is stored properly. Presumably, this can be done on a device-by-device basis allowing administrators to specifically select which devices have this set.

The last minor, yet very welcomed addition is Google Apps Lookup, which provides a much easier way for users to search their corporate address book for a contact. Similar to Microsoft’s Exchange Global Address List (GAL), mobile users can enter the name of a contact (by speech or text input) and the app will automatically search the online Apps directory for the contact and provide all the available information for the user to interact with as a regular contact in their device address book. This feature is available to Android devices running 2.1 or higher and must be enabled by the Apps administrator.

With personal devices making their way into the corporate environment, many organizations are feeling the weight of providing support for numerous devices yet retaining control and security over sensitive information. Google is taking steps in the right direction to take Blackberry head-on with some competition in the enterprise market.

Via Google Enterprise Blog

We have always know that Google has a certain level of remote control over Android devices and now, Google wants to pass on some of this control to Google apps as well. Google has decided to add IT administration tools to Google Apps and Google Product Manager Mayur Kamat has announced this by saying,

Today we are announcing three more updates to our Android for business portfolio around security and connecting with colleagues. These products will be available to all Google Apps for Business and Google Apps for Education customers.

Google has announced that enterprise employees using Google Apps can quickly locate a lost device on a map and can either ring the device or reset the PIN on the device. To perform this operation, they need to go to this page. Google has also introduced a new feature that allows us to encrypt all the data on Android 3.0 based tablets. To take corporate support to the next level, Google has introduced a Corporate Contacts app that allows users to effectively manage all communications within the organization.

You can setup Google Apps device policy and  Google Apps lookup at the given links.Though, Google Apps device supports are available only for Google Apps Business and Education customers. Finally, Google is taking some steps to monetize the Android ecosystem and might be the first of many steps in integrating enterprise Google services with Android.

Google has sued the US government for using only Microsoft products. According to Google, the Department of Interior is restricting competition by not considering alternatives like Google Apps. The complaint in this case is regarding a quotation by the department for its messaging needs. The DOI (Department of Interior) said that the solution should be a part of Microsoft’s BPOS suite since it offers unified and consolidated email along with better security.

Google contested these claims but were ignored by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) since they did not have a GSA contract. The GSA (General Services Administration) is an independent organization that helps with the functioning of the federal agencies.

The complaint filed by Google can be read on Scribd.

Source: TechDirt

Google has released new and improved Google apps for use by the government. It has a better security features and is built on the enterprise flavor of Google apps. Google has recently received the FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act) certification, which lets it store sensitive government data.

FISMA as  described by Wikipedia:

The act recognized the importance of  information security to the economic and national security interests of the United States.^[1] The act requires each  federal agency to develop, document, and implement an agency-wide program to provide  information security for the information and  information systems that support the operations and assets of the agency, including those provided or managed by another agency,  contractor, or other source.^[1]

The servers used to store this data are separate from the servers used to store other data and are geographically located inside the United States. Google has been a strong contender for FISMA and only has Microsoft as a potential competitor. Google aims to provide cost effective and safe solutions to putting data in the cloud with this latest offering.

The government has been  skeptic  about having a third party control sensitive data. However, it is showing more acceptances for this now. FISMA goes a long way in developing this level of trust and will opened a new war-zone for enterprise solutions to provide services to the Government.

(Via: ZDNet)

Google Apps for domains adds a new layer of productivity, features and an extra charm to its service. Google Apps already gives professional email IDs, feed URLs, docs support, QR Code support, groups and so much more to add an extra level of functionality to one’s website. Adding to that, Google announced the support for multiple domains, a few hours ago.

Google today announced the availability of a multi-domain support for Google Apps. This would mean that we could access multiple domains from the same Google Apps account right from within our control panel. The availability of this much-anticipated feature  has made managing multiple websites spread across the same network, a lot easier.

From now onwards, we can manage groups and contact lists spread over different domains, under a single master account. This would allow moving, sharing and adding accounts in a more flexible manner. This would also allow setting up different levels of access. As an example, a certain group of contacts can have chat permissions while others can have the privileges of editing documents.

This feature gives Google Apps for Domain a professional touch and a multitude of features it has been lacking. However, the feature is currently available for Educational and Premium users free of charge.

It is good to see Google introduce this feature as Microsoft Exchange has had it from long ago. One difference here is that Microsoft Exchange has a limit on the number of domains. ReadWriteWeb gives a better understanding of the new features in this post.

TextFlow app offers users a powerful alternative to Microsoft Office’s track changes, document comparison and review functions

(Umeå, Sweden May 19, 2010) Nordic River, innovator in tools for document review and collaborative writing, announces the launch of TextFlow for the Google Apps Marketplace. The TextFlow application integrates with Google Docs and enables the contributions made by each writer to be clearly visualized, evaluated and decided upon ultimately providing users full control in Google Docs.

Offering a simple and dynamic way to gather and review text input from colleagues, partners and clients, TextFlow enables users to make better decisions by visualizing all their options and making it easy to choose the best contributions. A document’s full revision history becomes available with TextFlow’s easy-to-follow "bubbles," which highlight input that each person has suggested for an original document. This offers users immediate visibility into what changes have been made by whom, and when those changes were made. From there, users can choose to either accept or reject each revision, or move them to the side as post-it notes. The end result is a more cohesive final document.

With TextFlow, Nordic River adds a unique tool to the rapidly growing number of innovative solutions available in the Google Apps Marketplace,adds Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead for Google Enterprise. Through the Google Apps Marketplace, solutions such as TextFlow are helping us to build a rich ecosystem of integrated apps that work seamlessly with each other. TextFlow is a great example of how users who require professional document review can leverage the benefits of cloud computing and meet more of their business needs. We are happy to offer TextFlow to the millions of Google Apps users who have embraced the cloud.

We’re convinced that the collaboration landscape just became a lot more interesting – not to mention much more competitive – with the addition of TextFlow for Google Apps,says Tomer Shalit, CEO, Nordic River. Without question, professional document review and comparison is no longer the sole domain of Microsoft and Workshare. With TextFlow we bring professional change control to the cloud.

After installing TextFlow, Google Apps users can immediately start using TextFlow by launching it from the universal navigation menu, needing only to select a document to review to get started. TextFlow is available by subscription for $99.00 with a 14-day free trial. Academic pricing is $49, but free for undergraduates. For more information on TextFlow for Google Apps, please visit TextFlow Google Apps Marketplace listing or www.nordicriver.com.