As you’ve probably seen when using Google Apps, Google is rolling out a new look and feel across Google products to make the interfaces consistent, streamlined, and easier to use.
The New Look for Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites
The new look is optional now, but will soon become permanent for all Google Apps users. These are target release dates and subject to change (see the New Look site for details):
App
When the new look become permanent
Docs
Tuesday December 13, 2011
Sites
Tuesday December 13, 2011
Calendar
Beginning of January 2012
Gmail
The new looks starts to roll out as the default interface on
Tuesday, December 13, and continues to the end of the week.
After that, the new look will become permanent within weeks.
Steps to help you and your users transition to the new look:
Use the new look now
See the Google Apps New Look site. You’ll find steps to enable the new look as well as the latest release schedule.
Communicate to your users and helpdesk staff
On the New Look site, you’ll find email templates and customizable presentations to help communicate the changes.
Tip: For Gmail, use the one-time switch in the control panel to opt-in all your users, and control the timing of when they see the new look.
Help your users get up to speed
Point your users to the Learning Center for guides, tips, and videos. Please plan to update any custom training material you’ve developed.
Please see the New Look site for the latest schedule information. We hope you find the refreshed interfaces easier to use and navigate.
The transition from standard business interface to cloud computing is becoming the IT function of choice for companies, each of which has been convinced by the cloud’s flexibility and efficiency. Here are reasons why your company should consider using Google Apps and cloud computing:
Simplicity
When your business operates in the cloud, there are many internal business functions that are no longer necessary, like an in-house IT team or maintenance to an internal server. This streamlines your company’s processes and communications and saves you money.
Security
There is nothing more terrifying than realizing your server has crashed or email has shut down. With cloud computing, that fear diminishes. Documents, emails and data are automatically saved every few seconds to ensure that they are never lost. These copies are stored in several data centers, keeping them safe and secure. Even if one data center is compromised, the cloud is able to seamlessly transition to another center without interrupting your work or business. There is also a two-step verification process for each user, ensuring that information is only accessible by the right persons.
Availability
The cloud is everywhere. Using cloud computing allows collaboration and telecommuting to take place easily. Multiple people using multiple computers in multiple locations can participate in file sharing. This flexibility allows workflow to continue whether you’re sitting next to each other or the other side of the world. In 2010, Google Apps achieved 99.984 percent uptime.
Accent Plus is committed to making cloud computing work for your business. Let us discuss with you how to harness the cloud for the benefit and growth of your business.
Business application software has been undergoing a decade of change, from its architecture, development and deployment to its business model.
Cloud computing and “software as a service” (SaaS) offers dramatic gains in the way your company operates, its efficiency, lowering costs on IT and labor.
Business practices are streamlined by storing all information on one platform, accessible from anywhere. Information and resources are shared across this network and distributed to computers, phones, tablet devices – any technology your company employs for business use.
You would no longer have to worry about losing access to a server, server downtime or misplacing a file. Once it’s in the cloud, it is easy to find and easy to access.
A recent Google study reported that running a cloud-based email platform is more energy-efficient than employing an in-house email system. The study found that using Gmail for a year consumes less energy than it would to send a message in a wine bottle (including drinking the bottle of wine).
Accent Plus is here to make your cloud needs a reality. From apps to email networks, Accent Plus can use to cloud to make your business and your life function more easily, and how much more can you really ask?
Over the next few months, Google products and experiences will get a facelift. It’s simple: These changes will give users a more focused, seamless and consistent online experience. Here are the three areas Google is improving.
Focus
With streamlined interfaces, Google will offer user-friendly apps and thoughtful design. Your focus, whether it’s checking your email, searching a product or finding a restaurant, will become Google’s focus. The design will be more intuitive, allowing users to quickly and effectively use the apps.
Elasticity
Consider all the ways that we access the Internet. From desktops to laptops, tablets to smartphones, there is no shortage of ways to use the Web. Google is committed to providing users a great experience across all platforms. Users will be able to access an app on their big screen television or their tablet without sacrificing design aesthetics or functionality.
Ease of Use
Google doesn’t need bells and whistles. Their apps and products speak for themselves. For that reason, the third design principle that Google is focused on is effortlessness. Designs will be clean and simple and will incorporate new technologies such as HTML5 and WebGL. More power and less distractions make for great products.
Interested in using the new Google design and experience for your business? Accent Plus can help you harness the power of Google apps in a way that works for you.
As cloud computing continues to gain scale and popularity, the positive environmental impact of utilizing cloud-based servers is becoming apparent.
Google recently announced plans to open a seawater-cooled data center. Traditionally, server warehouses have been cooled by air conditioning, which use incredible amounts of energy to both power the servers and keep them cool enough to stay operational. Google hopes to use tunnels to push cold seawater into the building, keeping their machines cooler with less energy. The water will be returned to sea temperature before being released back into the ocean in order to minimize environmental impact.
Data centers are just like energy sources; their effectiveness and efficiency grows with scale. Many businesses that use in-house servers waste energy by not making the switch to the cloud, as they have to spend money and energy keeping these servers cool. Data centers realize economies of scale by using the same amount of energy to cool more computing power.
Environmental initiatives are becoming more and more important to consumers. If your business is serious about going green, you may want to consider an eco-friendly switch to cloud computing.
Google Business Solutions just got even more versatile with the addition of an official Google Docs Android app. Now you can create, edit, and share documents on the go straight from your Android smartphone. The Android app takes advantage of all of the features of the web-based software, allowing fellow collaborators to see edits to documents instantly across platforms.
Additionally, the app can be used to view regular documents and PDFs. Should you need to edit such a document on the go, any traditional document (such as a Word doc) can be converted to a Google Doc in seconds, where you can then edit instantly from your phone or later from a computer. The app even allows the capability to take a picture of printed text and convert it into an editable Google Doc.
Finally, the Google Docs app is designed for real-time collaboration. Any doc can be shared with any number in your contact list, making it easier than ever to collaborate and communicate with family, coworkers, and friends.
Google Apps for Business has never been more versatile, and Accent Plus is proud to offer these solutions. For more information on how your business can use Google Apps to become more efficient and effective, please contact Accent Plus.
As previously discussed, Accent Plus is proud to offer Postini services as a part of its Google Apps for Business solutions. We would like to highlight a few of Postini’s most important features, specifically, inbound and outbound email security.
Google Message Security automatically blocks spam, phising attempts, and viruses before they reach your inbox, creating security within a company and peace-of-mind for business owners and IT professionals alike. A complex system analyzes incoming messages and removes offenders with low rates of false-positives. Additionally, it requires no client-side installation, making for an easy and efficient implementation process.
Since Google handles over two billion emails per day, Postini can actively spot global threats and work to make sure that your company is not affected. This removes the need for a paid IT staff to constantly update and monitor a security system. A report is delivered regularly to administrators and users alerting them to quarantined and flagged messages, allowing an organization to quickly respond to attacks.
Postini can also regulate and secure outbound traffic, ensuring that legal and regulatory compliance is achieved and that valuable information stays within your company. Emails can be encrypted to make sure that sensitive communications are not intercepted mid-transit.
All of these settings are extremely customizable, giving the administrator maximum flexibility in deciding what level of security is correct for his or her company. This is merely one way that Google Apps delivers extraordinary value to businesses at a great price.
For more information on how cloud computing can make your business more effective, efficient and secure please contact Accent Plus.
On June 8th, 2011 — World IPv6 Day (http://worldipv6day.org/) — major web companies, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, will enable IPv6 on many of their websites for 24 hours to test how IPv6 performs in the real world. That day, Google will be using IPv6 (http://worldipv6day.org/faq/index.html) for Google Apps, including Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites.
More than 99.9% of people shouldn’t have any problems during this industry-wide test, but your experience on June 8th will depend on your computer and network configuration.
- If you only have IPv4, you’ll simply use IPv4 as usual and not see any test-related problems.
- If your configuration is ready for IPv6, you’ll automatically use IPv6 and not see any test-related problems.
- In rare cases if you have IPv6 enabled but not configured properly, you may have connectivity issues with Google Apps and other test sites on June 8th.
If you’d like to start checking your organization’s IPv6 preparedness before June 8th, you can instruct your users to visit ipv6test.google.com from the devices where they access Google Apps, like primary work machines, tablet devices and home computers. If you discover IPv6 connectivity problems, please let us know.
If you are having a major issue related to this from now until the end of June 8th, 2011 and need to contact us about IPv6, please submit your inquiry here:
On April 21, Amazon Web Services, a major provider of cloud computing solutions to such companies as Foursquare, Reddit, and Netflix, experienced a significant issue in its East Coast data center that ultimately caused the center to shut down and rendered hundreds of companies helpless. Advocates of cloud computing had been saying all along that such a catastrophe would be impossible due to the backups and redundancies both within data centers and between data centers. Amazon themselves structured their centers with things called “availability zones” that were supposed to fail independently of one another, like crumple zones in cars. The only way something like this was supposed to happen was if a natural disaster completely destroyed an entire data center Yet, for over twenty four hours, some of the biggest names in technology were unable to receive traffic from web visitors.
While it will be some time before anyone completely understands what happened in northern Virginia yesterday and figures out how to stop it from happening again, there is no mistake that this was the worst possible scenario in cloud computing. For the first time, we understood exactly what it would mean if a provider such as Google or Amazon were to experience significant distress for even as little as twenty four hours. Amazon had promised its customers that they did not need backups in different regions due to their use of availability zones, leaving many businesses stranded when the entire eastern center went down. It highlights the importance of backups and redundancies, not just within a data center, but even among cloud computing services.
Critics and pundits will no doubt frame this as a sky-is-falling indication that cloud computing cannot live up to its hype and promise. As Justin Santa Barbara points out, it is important to realize that this was a failure by a company, not by cloud computing as a technology. With appropriate safeguards and backups, cloud computing can be and is more reliable than traditional server solutions. Let’s not forget, either, that this same thing can happen and has happened in traditional hosting providers.
Choosing a service provider is, ultimately, just as important as choosing a technology and scale. Cloud computing offers incredible efficiency and scale as long as one is partnered with the right company, and some may rethink their relationship with Amazon after yesterday’s events.
