Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is here!

Several hours ago, Google started sending emails to Google Apps users introducing Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. The email provides an overview of the Cloud Connect concept and includes direct download link for the Cloud Connect plugin.

Below is a brief overview of the Cloud Connect.

The installation took approximately 1.5 minutes, and having launched Microsoft Word we have noticed Google Connect toolbar right under the standard office toolbar in Office 2007.

Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office toolbar

Prior to using the plugin, you will have to authorize Google Cloud Connect by logging in to your Google Apps account and setting up synchronization options that can be changed later. Provided that you have selected automatic document synchronization that would take place every time your Word document is saved (always remember to enable auto-save option in Word so that you don’t loose important documents), Cloud Connect takes care of the rest and instantly provides you with a unique web link for sharing your documents with others. Don’t worry, while your document is saved to Google’s cloud instantly, it is not automatically shared with the world. A “Share” button on the far right, when clicked, will take you to what looks like standard Google Docs Sharing settings. In a matter of seconds you can start sharing a Word document, PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet with people you select. You can also specify if a person can edit a document, or just view it online.

Google Cloud Connect sharing settings

When synchronized, the file will be stored in Google’ cloud and can be viewed online as if it was a native Google Docs document.

Viewing Google Cloud Connect document online

In my view, this can be a huge win for Google specifically winning customers that hesitate  switching from Microsoft Office to Google Apps as many people prefer to use something with familiar interface. It would be interesting to see what happens to Cloud Connect popularity and to overall user loyalty to Google Apps after Microsoft’s launches Office 365 which is currently in Beta. Microsoft Office 365 incorporates online document collaboration features for standard Microsoft Office documents by design and includes feature limited online versions of popular Microsoft Office applications such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Unfortunately, Google Cloud Connect is currently not available for Mac due to the “lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac”. At this time, Google did not disclose any plans to make it available for users of Microsoft Office for Mac in the near future.

Google Cloud Connect is available as a free download from Google’s website at http://tools.google.com/dlpage/cloudconnect

Google also made available enteprise deployment resiurces including an MSI file. It can be located on Google Apps Administrator Help center at http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1186214

For additional information, please visit the official Google Enteprise Blog at http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/02/teach-your-old-docs-new-tricks-with.html

As always, I look forward to receiving your comments.

Until next time,

Steve E. Driz

How to choose a third-party Disaster Recovery provider

Recently, this topic was discussed with one of my colleagues on LinkedIn, and I’ve decided to blog it as a part of “how to” series. I hope that it would help businesses of all sizes make an informed decision when selecting Disaster Recovery provider.

I would like to start with stating while this “how to” may cover both DR and BCP, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are different by definition, and would not recommend blending the two together when evaluating 3^rd-party vendors in that space. Both have to be looked at and planed for separately based upon organization risk tolerance and scope.

For example, a complete or partial structural damage to the head-office may constitute a disaster in the event and majority of business related activities as well as back-office systems reside within the same building. In that case, you will need to repatriate your core systems as well as core recovery team to another location where you can continue selling products or services while supporting your customers.

On the other hand, if an application server fails, and you cannot be down for more than 10 minutes due substantial loss of revenue, you will most likely follow business continuity protocols to ensure that services are restored by using a redundant system hosted either on premises or in a third-party facility. However, this by no means would grant declaration of a disaster.

When choosing a 3^rd-party provider, you must ensure that your organization receives priority in the event and you are forced to declare a disaster. For example, many DR vendors offer their services on a first come first serve basis, and while history has shown that larger providers will have the capacity when needed, this point must be taken into consideration and properly incorporated within the master services agreement. To reiterate, following tragic events of 9/11 in NYC, a good friend of mine served as a CIO of a large national health provider in New York City. His organization was forced to declare a disaster along with other companies affected by it. Fortunately, they had a tested DR plan and a reliable provider who had the facilities and the equipment available despite the fact that it had to provide services to many other customers simultaneously.

When selecting a third-party DR provider, you must ensure that you primary DR site is not;

• located in close proximity to any manufacturing facilities that use large quantities of harmful chemicals
• located in a high-crime area
• located in close proximity of rail-road
• located within close proximity to any strategic government buildings

and is;

• receiving priority diesel supply if running on power generators, i.e. some larger telco data centers will have priority as they are considered an “essential” service by the City

As far as facilities go, you must ensure that the facility is equipped as follows:

• sufficient rack space, power, voice and data
• sufficient storage
• fully equipped office space for the core recovery team
• sleeping quarters for employees that may need to work multiple shifts
• kitchen, bathrooms etc.
• sufficient parking space

As always, I welcome your comments.

Until next time,

Steve E. Driz

Second Microsoft BPOS Outage in a Month

Mary-Jo Foley of ZDNet reports that Microsoft customers once again experience an outage of Microsoft BPOS hosted services for second time in a month. The outage lasted for approximately 90 minutes which is significant considering that during that time BPOS customers were unable to access their email, SharePoint site information etc. Strangely enough, some users reported more than 40-hours of downtime by posting statuses on Facebook only to have Microsoft respond that they have been having an issue with an individual account that was reported prior to the outage.

Read full story

Google to Docs users – “Upload anything”

Friends,

This is a first post in 2010, and I would like to take this opportunity to wish you happy New Year and myriad of successes in 2010 and beyond.

Several days ago, Google announced that soon all Google Apps users would be able to use Google Docs environment as online file storage by being able to upload any file in virtually any format. Last night, Google Apps Premium received the following message while login to Google Docs:

Google Docs - upload anything message screenshot

According to Google, users will be able to share uploaded files with others and open and edit supported file formats such as doc, docx, xls, xlsx, ppt etc. within Google Docs. By the way, we have uploaded several PDF and JPG image files that can be viewed and shared online with a click of a button.

What does it mean to your business? Utilizing online storage is not new. Many companies have been providing such services for years. It is new for Google and if your company presently uses Google Apps, the good news is that you should be able to forget about your USB thumb-drive and share important files with your employees, clients and partners through the same familiar environment you already use. Instead of emailing files to yourself, or uploading files to your local computer, your employees can always access important files online when they need it.

Why it’s important? For example, John is flying to from Atlanta to Toronto to meet with a client. Prior to leaving for his trip, he saves presentation files to his laptop hard-drive and a USB thumb-drive just in case. At the airport, his laptop case is lost or stolen and John recalls that the USB drive was in the same case. On the way to client’s office, John phones his assistant asking to email the presentation files to him, however, his assistant is not sure which file version is the most current since multiple edits where made by several people. As you can see, the amount of time required to find right version of the file for client presentation in enormous, and the process is tedious.

If John was using Google Apps as an online file storage, all he would have to do is ask his client for Internet connected PC, any PC, and access his files online without worrying about any local software since most files can be open from within Google Apps and the process does not require any specialized local software. One of the best features is the ability to view PDF files without Adobe Reader, meaning that you will no longer care about a platform or operating system, i.e. it will work on MAC OSX, Windows, Linux etc.

If you are interested in learning more about Google Apps, please contact us today for a free, customized demo!

Visualizing Storage or What is Petabyte

Source: Mozy.com

How many times have you sat in a meeting discussing IT related topics, not understanding data storage related lingo. From bits to bytes, and finaly to terabytes and petabytes, people at Mozy.com  – an online backup services provider, figured out how to visualize data storage. Enjoy!

Visualizing petabyte