Google Apps Deciphered: Compute in the Cloud to Streamline Your Desktop - Softcover

Granneman, Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0137004702 ISBN 13: 9780137004706

Publisher: Pearson P T R, 2008

Synopsis

Google Apps Deciphered

Compute in the Cloud to Streamline Your Desktop

 

Use Google Apps to Improve Productivity and Collaboration, Reduce Costs, and Eliminate Technology Hassles!

 

Google Apps gives you virtually all the business and productivity software you need–all of it free, or available at extremely low cost. Because the suite of Google Apps runs on Google’s network in the cloud, you avoid the hassles that go with desktop software. Getting started with Google Apps is easy–but if you want to make the most of it, you’ll need expert guidance that Google’s online help doesn’t provide. Get all the help you need, right here.

 

This is your start-to-finish guide to setting up Google Apps, migrating to it, customizing it, and using it to improve productivity, communications, and collaboration. Scott Granneman introduces every leading component individually, and shows exactly how to make them work together for you on the web or by integrating them with your favorite desktop apps. You’ll find practical insights on Google Apps email, calendaring, contacts, wikis, word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, video, and even Google’s new web browser Chrome. And, drawing on his extensive experience helping companies move to Google Apps, Granneman presents tips and tricks you simply won’t find anywhere else. Coverage includes

 

· Choosing the right edition of Google Apps for you

· Setting up Google Apps so it will be easier to use and manage

· Migrating your email, contacts, and calendars to Google Apps

· Administering and securing Google Apps

· Integrating Google Apps with other software and services

· Leveraging Google Sites to collaborate across teams, organizations, or the entire world

· Making the most of Google Talk voice calls and instant messaging

· Implementing Google’s office productivity tools, including Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentations

· Using policy management and message recovery to control and secure your messaging

· Customizing efficient Google Apps Start Pages for you and your colleagues

· Sharing important and useful videos with your colleagues

· Maximizing the innovative features of Google’s new web browser, Chrome

 

SCOTT GRANNEMAN is an author, teacher, and entrepreneur with extensive experience in Google Apps migration, setup, and training. As Adjunct Professor at Washington University, he teaches popular courses on technology, security, and the Internet. A monthly columnist for SecurityFocus and Linux Magazine, he has authored four books on open source technologies, including The Linux Phrasebook. As a principal at WebSanity, he manages the firm’s UNIX server environment, and helps develop its Content Management System, which is used by educational, business, and non-profit clients nationwide.

 

www.1and100zeroes.com

 

About this title

About the Author:

Scott Granneman is an author, educator, and consultant. Scott has written three books (Don’t Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox, Hacking Knoppix, and the seminal Linux Phrasebook), co-authored one (Podcasting with Audacity: Creating a Podcast With Free Audio Software), and contributed to two (Ubuntu Hacks and Microsoft Vista for IT Security Professionals). In addition, he is a monthly columnist for SecurityFocus, with op/ed pieces that focus on general security topics, and for Linux Magazine, in a column focusing on new and interesting Linux software. He formerly blogged professionally on The Open Source Weblog and Download Squad.

 

As an educator, Scott has taught thousands of people of all ages–from preteens to senior citizens–on a wide variety of topics, including literature and technology. He has worked to educate people at all levels of technical skill about open source technologies, such as Linux and Firefox, and open standards. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches a variety of courses about technology, the Internet, and security.

 

As a Principal of WebSanity, he works with businesses and non-profits to take full advantage of the Internet’s communications, sales, and service opportunities. He researches new technologies and manages the firm’s UNIX-based server environment, thereby putting what he writes and teaches into practical use, and works closely with other partners on the underlying WebSanity Content Management System (CMS).

 

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction: Computing in the Cloud

Introduction: Computing in the Cloud

Microsoft Office is the undisputed 800-pound gorilla in the office suite jungle, with millions of users and billions of dollars in sales. However, as we saw in King Kong, even the mightiest gorilla can be hurt by enough buzzing planes. If one of those planes is actually a mighty jet named Google, then good ol’ Kong may be facing more trouble than he’s anticipated.

Over the last few years, Google has been polishing Google Apps, its online suite of software that includes most of the features found in mainstream office suites, and then some:

• Word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations
• Email and contacts, including message security and recovery
• Calendar
• Wikis and websites
• Instant messaging
• Video sharing

Google is seeing phenomenal success with Google Apps. Over 3000 businesses a day are signing up at a rate of over one million per year. In total, over 500,000 businesses use Google Apps, with more than ten million active users. Of those, hundreds of thousands pay for the Premier Edition of Google Apps, which costs $50 per year. In the realm of education, thousands of universities, with more than one million active students and staff on six continents, are using Google Apps.

Some of those clients in business include the following:

• Brasil Telecom
• The District of Columbia (38,000 employees)
• Genentech
• Indoff (500 employees)
• Intel
• L’Oreal R&D
• Procter & Gamble Global Business Services
• Prudential Real Estate Affiliates (450 employees)
• Telegraph Media Group (1400 employees)
• Valeo (32,000 employees)

As for clients in education, there are many impressive wins in that list as well:

• Arizona State University (65,000 students)
• George Washington University
• Hofstra University
• Indiana University
• Kent State University
• Northwestern University (14,000 students)
• University of Delhi
• University of North Carolina—Greensboro
• University of Southern California
• University of Virginia

Just to give one example, Arizona State University has 65,000 students, which is obviously a huge number, but it took only two weeks to deploy Google Apps. As a result of the switch, ASU is now saving $500,000 a year, which is nothing to sneeze at.

This might all seem like a drop in the bucket compared with Microsoft’s reach and profits, and in strictly numerical terms it is. However, remember that Google makes its money primarily through ad sales, and it therefore has an overwhelming interest in moving as much of our lives as possible online. The more we move online, the more opportunities Google has to place ads in front of our eyeballs.

In addition, every person who starts using Google Apps is potentially one less customer for Microsoft, which hurts Google’s biggest competitor in the long run. Microsoft has finally woken up to the fact that software and services are inexorably moving to the Net, and it has responded with its own attempts in this area, called Microsoft Online Services.

Note - Microsoft also markets a service called Office Live (http://www.officelive.com), but don’t be fooled. That’s just rebranded Hotmail, document storage (you still have to have Word, Excel, and PowerPoint installed on your PC), and el cheapo website hosting.

Microsoft’s involvement, however, remains tied to its “software plus services” model, in which online tools still require the use of software running on a PC to work. This protects Microsoft’s cash cows, Windows and Office, first and foremost, while allowing the company to trumpet its participation in moving online as well.

If you look more closely at Microsoft’s offering, you see that it still requires software that runs on your computer beyond just a web browser. Sure, the cheapest offering —$3 per user per month—provides email through a web browser, but that’s just Outlook Web Access pointed to an Exchange server. To use other tools such as SharePoint server access for document sharing and collaboration, expensive licenses for Microsoft Office are still mandatory.

Prices go up from there so that the full package, with hosted Exchange and SharePoint and other tools, starts at $15 per user per month, which comes to $180 per year per person. And of course it works only with Microsoft software, which means Windows and Office. You can use a Mac to read email, but you have to use Entourage, Microsoft’s Outlook-like program that’s part of the company’s Office suite, for Macs. Linux users? Don’t be silly!

It’s not just Microsoft, however. Yahoo is sniffing around the hosted services concept with the formation of a new Cloud Computing & Data Infrastructure Group. And Amazon has been doing this for years with its Amazon Web Services (http://aws.amazon.com), which includes Elastic Compute Cloud, Simple DB, Simple Storage Service, and Simple Queue Service.

Something is changing in business, on the Internet, and in technology. The term that is increasingly used to apply to this change is cloud computing.

THE RISE OF CLOUD COMPUTING

As a term of technical slang, the “cloud” refers to the Internet, so cloud computing refers to Internet-centric software and services that are outsourced to someone else and offered on pay-as-you-go terms. In the case of Google Apps, organizations don’t have to install software on their computers (and it doesn’t matter if those computers are running Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux), and they don’t have to install and maintain expensive servers and the associated software they require to run. Instead, they simply access Google’s services in a web browser.

Everything is on Google’s infrastructure—the software, the data, the backups, everything—and is therefore accessible in the cloud from anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting to Google Apps from your computer at work or at home, or from your iPhone or BlackBerry, or from your office or somewhere in Timbuktu because everything you need is always available in Google’s cloud.

It’s not a new idea per se—decades ago, Sun co-founder John Gage proclaimed that “the network is the computer”—but it’s finally been able to reach a period of reality and even hypergrowth thanks to the spread of reliable high-speed Internet access coupled with the virtually limitless supplies of computer storage and processing power. As it gets cheaper and cheaper for companies such as Google and Amazon to build out massive server farms, and then connect those mind-bogglingly powerful resources to users across the world via the Internet, new and exciting technologies become possible. Case study number one: Google Apps, the subject of this book.

Of course, there are problems that companies building services in the cloud and users of those services will face.

To start with, there’s reliability. Yes, even the mighty Google has stumbled. In July 2008, for example, Google Docs was unavailable to many users for an hour or so. Virtually all companies have suffered downtimes, however, ranging from eBay to Amazon to Royal Bank of Canada to AT&T. This is simply a fact of life. Downtimes will happen. Humans can attempt to plan for every eventuality, but mistakes, errors, and even natural events beyond our control intrude and cause problems. It’s an interesting psychological fact, though, that we humans exhibit something called the illusion of control. For instance, we are far more likely to die in a car than on a plane, but people are often psychologically more comfortable driving in their cars than riding on planes due to the fact that drivers feel in control of the situation, while passengers may not.

For this reason, many people feel safer running their own servers instead of outsourcing to Google because they want that feeling of control over their machines and their data. However, Google now offers a service level agreement (SLA) for the Premier Edition of Google Apps that guarantees 99.9% uptime for Gmail (that means about 9 hours of downtime a year). SLAs for other services are coming soon as well.

In addition, take a look at 99.9% uptime guarantee. Before you refuse to even consider using Google Apps, think honestly about your own organization’s infrastructure. I know you work hard, and you do the absolute best you can, but can you honestly say that your servers are down less than 9 hours a year? If so, then maybe you should continue doing things the way you’ve been doing them. But if not, maybe you should think a bit more about cloud computing the Google way.

In fact, more than just a lack of downtime, I would argue that customers actually want honest communication about problems and what cloud computing providers are doing about them. If a service I use is down, that’s annoying, but if I can see that the service providers know about the issue and follow along as they fix it, I’m fine. I’m in the loop, and that reduces my stress and annoyance. Google has been okay at communication so far, but it is working on improving it, which is always a good thing.

And, finally, there is security. Again, many organizations have their own internal security matters they need to attend to long before they begin to worry about Google Apps’ security. And besides, Google does take security seriously. For an overview, read The Official Google Blog’s “How Google keeps your information secure” (http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-google-keeps-your-information.html) for the company’s four-prong strategy: philosophy, technology, process, and people. But on top of that, realize that Google eats its own dog food—it uses Google Apps itself. If there’’s a security vulnerability, no one feels it more acutely than Google. When your business is run on what you’re selling, you can bet that you’ll make darn sure that everything is as safe as it could possibly be.

In the end, cloud computing, especially as it is embodied by Google Apps, brings enormous benefits to users, administrators, and organizations that simply cannot be ignored.

• Access from anywhere—I have several computers at home, one at work, one at Washington University in St. Louis where I teach, and I use computers that aren’t mine at various locations all the time. On top of those, I carry my iPhone with me everywhere I go. With Google Apps, I’m always connected to my email, my calendar, and my data. If I’m online, I can access and use Google Apps. And even if I’m not online, I can still use most everything I need with Google Apps as well.
• Platform- and browser-agnostic—I use a Mac mostly, but I also use Linux and sometimes Windows. When it comes to web browsers, I’m running Firefox and Safari constantly, but I’ll also open Google Chrome and Opera, and even every once in a while if a really have to, and I’m forced, Internet Explorer. Google Apps doesn’t really care what operating system I’m running, and it does a heck of a job working with my menagerie of web browsers. That’s the way it should be, and I appreciate it.
• Costs less—I don’t need to buy special servers, operating systems, and software to access and use Google Apps. All I have to have is a free web browser on an Internet-enabled device, and I can work with Google Apps. Further, Google Apps has only two price points: free, which provides the services most users and organizations need, and $50 per user per year for the Premier Edition of Google Apps that is more suited to businesses with specialized needs. Even at $50 per user per year, that’s a negligible expense for an incredible set of services.
• Constant improvements—Google rolls out new features for Google Apps at least every month, thereby constantly making its software better. Those new features arrive as part of Google Apps without the need for additional software installs. And they’re free. Something that gets better all the time without inconveniencing me or costing me extra money? Sounds great!
• Someone else worries about the plumbing—I don’t have millions of dollars and thousands of smart folks at my immediate disposal, but Google does. The company has smart and experienced programmers, admins, and engineers, as well as money, and an amazing infrastructure of computers and networks—and by using Google Apps, I can use all of that for my own benefit. I don’t have to concern myself with the hard stuff that Google takes care of; instead, I can focus on using Google Apps to make my life and work more productive.
• Backup and reliability—As part of that massive infrastructure, Google provides backup for my data. Of course, it’s always a good idea to back up things yourself, so I’ll cover doing just that in Appendix A, but know that you don’t need to worry about day to day losses. And Google’s network has been remarkably reliable, with next to no downtime, so you know you can count on it.
• Security—It’s a fact of life that companies have to worry about security. Google Apps takes care of much of that, for instance, by scanning automatically for viruses and spam. Even better, its tools for detecting those nasties are excellent and highly effective. You can access most Google Apps services via an encrypted connection, which stymies snoops, and there are other security tools available for those that need them.
• Collaboration and sharing—No one is an island, and that’s never been more true than in today’s interconnected world. We don’t work today as much as we collaborate and share, and Google Apps makes this interesting. The first time you find yourself editing a file in Google Docs with another person on a different computer, and you realize that both of you are able to edit the same file at the same time, you’ll gasp. The second time you edit a file with someone else, you’ll start to wonder why all software doesn’t work that way. It’s that easy and that natural, and Google Apps makes it simple.
• Search instead of find—Google is the king of search, and it’s no surprise that its super-powerful search tools are embedded throughout Google Apps. Forget filing your email messages; instead, search for them. Don’t worry about pawing through subfolder after subfolder looking for that document you need; just search for it. Can’t find the details you need for that upcoming appointment? Search your Google Calendar and find past meetings that tell you what you need to know.
• Work with your existing programs—As great as Google Apps is, the company still realizes that many people are wed to one or more desktop tools that they feel they can’t live without (actually, I’d argue that most of the time, they just don’t yet realize that they can in fact live without them). Outlook often falls into this category, but it’s not just Outlook. Maybe you’re a huge fan of Apple’s iCal, or Thunderbird, or OpenOffice.org....

About this edition

• Publisher: Pearson P T R
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0137004702
• ISBN 13: 9780137004706
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 552