The US General Services Administration announced that it was moving to Google Apps and The Cloud for email, etc. It becomes the first federal agency to do so. The GSA said it will save more than $15 million over five years. The contract is worth just under $7 million and being implemented by Google partner Unisys Corp. The government said the following in its press release about the rationale: The contract provides for an easily accessible suite of services, including e-mail and collaboration tools, to facilitate a more mobile work force.  While agencies have moved sub-entities’ e-mai [...]

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Google is introducing what it calls "Cloud Connect" for its enterprise Google Search Appliance. The new functionality "lets workers search across both on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box, delivering more comprehensive results and improving productivity." Accordingly the new "Cloud Connect" brings together Google Docs/Apps with web content and other internal company documents. Google said that it now has 3 million businesses using Google Apps. Google also says that it has improved navigation with the latest release: Our new Dynamic Navigation feature allows u [...]

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Last May Google Wave was unveiled as a new communication platform and positioned as a successor to both email and instant messaging. It was also a powerful, real-time collaboration tool. It did other things too. Perhaps that was the problem; it offered too many possibilities. Beyond that people didn't necessarily see the need for Wave, even if it was more productive and efficient than more conventional tools. Here's what Google said when Wave launched: After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person "startup" team emerged with a prototype. And now, aft [...]

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Google has upgraded its "commerce search" offering for retailers, e-commerce sites and manufacturers. Commerce search is a product of the enterprise search team and version 1.0 launched roughly six months ago. Commerce Search 2.0 has more features and the price has been cut in half from $50,000 per year to $25,000 to drive more adoption. Here are the feature upgrades from the Google blog post: More merchant customization: Today we’re introducing a full merchandising dashboard, which gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product me [...]

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Taking a page from Salesforce.com, last night Google formally launched the anticipated Google Apps Marketplace at its "Campfire One" developer event. In short it allows companies and developers to gain access and sell into Google's "2 million businesses and 25 million Google Apps users." The marketplace launches with 50 partners including Intuit and competitor Zoho. Google controls billing for paid apps and gets a 20 percent cut of the revenue. All of the apps will potentially integrate with existing Google tools and services. According to the Google Blog: Once installed to a company's dom [...]

Related Topics: Google: Apps For Your Domain | Google: Docs & Spreadsheets | Google: Enterprise Search | Google: Mobile | Top News