Google Enterprise Blog: Google Apps and Google Search Appliance help University College Dublin students and faculty stay informed, plus 3 more |  |
- Google Apps and Google Search Appliance help University College Dublin students and faculty stay informed
- Handwriting input comes to Gmail and Google Docs
- U.S. Army to cut costs, improve collaboration and go mobile with Google Apps
- Mapping a clear strategy for business growth with Google
| Posted: 22 Oct 2013 12:57 PM PDT Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Brian Morrissey, Head of Web Services, IT Services at University College Dublin, Ireland's largest university. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say. University College Dublin is the largest university in Ireland and one of Europe's leading research universities. Founded in 1854, UCD has 6,000 staff and more than 30,000 students. Being able to get accurate information quickly, even when on the go, is important for faculty and students in a highly competitive learning environment. Google Apps and Google Search Appliance are helping us stay connected and informed. Before Google, we weren't always able to respond to service issues quickly, particularly if they happened on the weekend when IT administrators were off work. Google's tools make service issues less frequent and easier to manage when they occur. Because we don't have all that hardware and software to manage, we can now focus our IT staff on bringing new services to the UCD community. These include collaborative and communications services such as Google Plus and Hangouts, together with improved services through UCD Connect and UCD Mobile. The ability to integrate Google Calendar and Drive with Gmail was another huge benefit for us. The big game changer for us is Google Calendar. We're delivering class schedules and other events to students directly in their calendars, so they are easy to update and accessible via mobile devices. With 40,000 smartphones and tablets on the UCD network this is key to helping students make it to class on time. In addition to Google Apps, UCD is using Google Search Appliance to make all of its publicly available documents searchable through its website, and internal documents searchable by university staff on the intranet. More than 500,000 documents are in the index and people are conducting more than 60,000 searches per month. We've implemented numerous custom search display pages and targeted directory searches with specific keywords to make it easier for people to find what they are looking for. Google's initial appeal was service availability, coupled with storage improvements, easy mobile access and cost savings. We're saving about $330,000 a year that would have been spent on servers, maintenance, personnel and power to manage the previous email system, SunMail. Storage was a big concern for us before going Google. We had about eight terabytes of staff emails alone and were always worried that we'd run out of storage and have to buy more. Now, each person has seven times more storage for mail and concerns about exceeding quotas have disappeared. Through the use of Google Apps and Search Appliance, UCD now has a scalable solution for mail, collaboration and search which drives better communication, collaboration and information retrieval throughout our university.    |
| Handwriting input comes to Gmail and Google Docs Posted: 22 Oct 2013 09:13 AM PDT (Cross-posted on the Gmail blog) Gmail and Docs offer wide language support, however in some cases using the keyboard is less than ideal. Whether you're a student trying to include a foreign phrase in your paper or an international consultant hoping to begin your message with a friendly local greeting, now you'll be able to use your own handwriting to input words directly into Gmail and Google Docs with your mouse or trackpad. To try it out, enable input tools in Gmail or Docs and select the handwriting input (represented by a pencil icon) of the language you want to use.      |
| U.S. Army to cut costs, improve collaboration and go mobile with Google Apps Posted: 22 Oct 2013 06:59 AM PDT Improving efficiency and innovating are ongoing missions for the U.S. Army, the largest and oldest branch of the U.S. military. The Army's continuous adoption of new, digital technologies is part of its effort to realize these goals, along with another: cost-efficiency. Bringing modern commercial cloud capabilities such as Google Apps helps the Army to reduce IT costs, while giving troops access to always up to date, web tools for productivity, collaboration, and communication. The Army's rollout of Google Apps is part of a transformational program to improve collaboration, information sharing and mobile access for an initial group of 50,000 Army and Department of Defense (DoD) personnel. Leading the rollout is the Army Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS), which is responsible for providing infrastructure and information management systems to the entire U.S. Army. This includes enterprise-level IT services that enable secure end-to-end communication across the organization. The accessibility of Google Apps from any device including thin clients was a primary driver for selecting Google. Mobile technology not only makes the Army more nimble, it is imperative for efficiency while personnel are in the field. Tablets are used by the Army for education and distance learning because they equip personnel with access to training materials anytime, anywhere. A soldier can review a lesson in Google Drive, complete an assignment with teammates in Google Docs, or attend a class via video Hangout, all from their tablet, smartphone or desktop. In addition, Army organizations can set up their own Google Play Private Channel for distributing mobile apps internally. The 50,000 personnel who will have access to Google Apps can use text and video chat, as well as real-time document, slide, and spreadsheet co-authoring and editing. These capabilities are ideally suited for today's modular teams and immediately scale to any number of Army units and users on demand. The Army anticipates rapid adoption of Google Apps because many Soldiers and Army personnel already use Google Apps in their personal lives. Gmail and Hangouts, for example, are popular ways to keep in touch with friends and family while deployed. Google Apps also enables seamless and high fidelity interoperability in their existing work environment with Google Quickoffice. What's more, Google Apps runs on multiple operating systems and browsers providing more device options, plus works with existing Army security policies and DoD directory and authentication services. Google's completion of FISMA certification and accreditation gave the government a complete understanding of the security controls Google Apps has in place and how they meet the Army's stringent criteria. Consistent with the DoD's better buying initiative, other DoD organizations can also benefit by buying off the Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) contract the Army instituted. We look forward to collaborating with the U.S. Army and DLT Solutions, a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, to make this project a success.   |
| Mapping a clear strategy for business growth with Google Posted: 21 Oct 2013 07:48 PM PDT Editor's note: Today's guest is A.V. Dharmakrishnan, Chief Executive Officer at Madras Cements, the flagship company of the Ramco Group in India. Madras Cements is the sixth largest cement operator in India with over 3,000 employees. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say. Madras Cements began in 1961, with a production capacity of 200 tonnes. Today, we have a capacity of 14 million tonnes for both the Indian and export market yearly, through five cement production plants and seven other plants covering grinding, packing, ready mix concrete and dry mortar production. Cement is a low-cost commodity sold in high volumes. Our market is extremely competitive and fast-moving, and the business is very much driven by logistics. We promise cost-savings for our customers by continuously innovating our production process, optimizing our logistics strategy and ensuring we have a presence in construction hotspots. We manage our inventory and business process using a proprietary Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution developed by Ramco Systems. This system generates lots of useful information about our supply network that we could not access easily. We used to do our reporting on Microsoft Excel spreadsheets - a complex and time-consuming process requiring constant manual extraction of data to prepare for our business reviews. On top of that, it was difficult to pinpoint where we could improve our processes or identify new business opportunities, and the reports were not available online. We wanted to identify patterns across our national network of suppliers and glean better insights from our reports. We turned to Google Maps to display this data on a map. Today, I can easily access these reports and insights online, using my tablet. By integrating Google Maps with the Ramco ERP system, we superimposed data onto Google Maps. The result was a rich data visualization tool. With Google Maps, our field sales teams have visibility into the competitor distribution networks in their areas, allowing them the ability to tailor sales strategies for better market penetration. They can also view dealer performance data, enabling better control on customer service deliveries. Best of all, we can access this information on mobile devices which allows for decision-making anytime, anywhere – a critical success factor in our fast-moving industry. Since implementing Google Maps, our consignment clearance time has improved up to 40%. With the ability to visualize our data on a map, our management team now has a clear view of our business -- from distributor performance comparisons to location mapping of wagon movements -- helping us to improve our overall competitiveness and map out strategies for business growth. Since implementing Google Maps, our EBITA has improved to about 7% higher than our immediate competitors – quite a feat considering the competitive landscape. Google Maps has provided Madras Cements with a winning business differentiator, in a fiercely competitive commodity market. More importantly, we have continued to give the best returns to our investors, in line with the wish of our founder, Shri P A C Ramasamy Raja, when he opened the first factory in 1961.   |
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