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Turn on your cloud databases, Google Cloud SQL has a new pricing plan
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Posted by Joe Faith, Product Manager
Google Cloud SQL
frees you from the chores of managing, maintaining and administering relational databases. It powers your App Engine applications with a familiar
relational database
(MySQL) in a fully-managed cloud environment.
Since we
launched
preview last October, Cloud SQL has improved performance and added features like scheduled backups, multihoming to increase availability and to improve application performance, and more powerful instances. Many businesses and developers have also started using Cloud SQL to administer their databases in the cloud.
For example,
Daffodil
, a global software firm, wanted to build and scale cloud applications with an easy-to-use database management system. After trying different solutions, they migrated to Google App Engine and Google Cloud SQL last year. After the migration, the engineers at Daffodil saved 100 hours of engineering work, allowing them to focus on their app and worry less about infrastructure.
Today, we’re announcing a
two-tier pricing plan
to Cloud SQL that will be enabled on June 12th:
If you’re a business building lightweight applications or just want to try out the service, the flexible pricing option is for you. You pay for what you use.
If you’re a business building heavy-traffic applications, we offer pricing packages, which are more economical and help you predict costs in advance.
We hope the new Cloud SQL pricing plans help you build App Engine applications tailored to your business’s needs. Post your questions in our
user forums
or comments on our
Enterprise Google+ page
.
An improved view for insurers with iv3 Solutions and Google Maps
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Posted by David Newall, EVP, Sales and Data Solutions at iv3 Solutions
Editors note:
Today’s guest blogger is David Newall, EVP, Sales and Data Solutions, at
iv3 Solutions
. The company’s PropertyIntel PING product supports the underwriting efforts of iv3’s property and casualty insurance clients.
Gathering information about a property can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating task for both the insurer and the homeowner. We’d have to send out inspectors or have a long phone call to gather detailed information about a property. We noticed that Google Maps makes it easy for people to find directions or see a 360-degree view of a vacation spot, and we wanted to apply this to our business.
At
iv3 Solutions
, we built a real-time online report called PropertyIntel PING. This report uses the
Google Maps API for Business
and Street View. By combining Google Maps technology with our own address mapping and property information, we’re able to give our clients an immediate and detailed view of the property. This saves time and reduces frustrating phone calls with the property owner and the insurer. The Google Maps API also allows us to gather critical property data without having to store and maintain all of the basemap data on our servers -- and we can even add our own property data to provide more accurate results to our clients. Because of this technology and its integration with Google Street View, insurers can show their customers a customized “mash up” of rich photography, custom GIS data, aerial views and more. In the end, insurance companies are able to develop stronger relationships with their customers because they’re spending less time worrying about the technical details.
With PropertyIntel PING, we’re helping our clients save time, increase profit, and improve customer service, using the power and ease of Google Maps API for Business. Find out more about iv3 Solutions and how you can integrate Google Maps into software.
The City of Columbia is going Google
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Posted by Mike Matthes, City Manager of Columbia, Missouri
Editors note:
Earlier this week we announced the City of St.Louis is going Google. Today we welcome another guest blogger from Missouri, Mike Matthes, to tell us how he recently moved Columbia to Google Apps for Government.
I grew up in Chillicothe, Missouri. Until last year, I worked for the City of Des Moines in Iowa for 15 years. When I got the opportunity to move back to my home state and became the
City Manager
of
Columbia
, Missouri, I jumped at the chance. Columbia is a boomtown with outstanding quality of life that emphasizes the value of public services for the citizens. I find great joy in serving the public, partnering with our city employees, and supporting them as they work with the community.
After I moved to Columbia, I realized the city was challenged by an antiquated email system that couldn’t keep up with the latest technology trends and our employees’ needs. When my iPad acted as nothing more than a paperweight, I knew we needed a change.
Columbia is fortunate to have an open-minded City Council and IT Department, so we started looking for a new email solution last fall. When I worked for
Des Moines
, I became familiar with
Google Apps for Government
. We chose the Google email and communication platform for 2,000 Des Moines employees because it could help the city save budget while enabling our employees to be more productive. When I looked at Google Apps again, I was struck by the tremendous product enhancements made in just a year since I last reviewed its offering.
We quickly decided to move all 1,188 Columbia employees to Google Apps for Government after evaluating available email and communication solutions. With the help of Google Apps reseller
Onix Networking
, all city employees were flawlessly transitioned to Google Apps in April 2012.
The only comments I received were gratitude from our employees for finally being able to communicate and collaborate smoothly. Email and calendar just work, and other advanced collaboration features in Google Apps bring much more efficiency to our workplace. Eighty percent of our employees are mobile, such as police, fire and public works staff. They have been starving for mobile productivity for years. Now they can easily check email, documents, and sites from the field.
Although most reasonable people dread an annual budget process, I’m actually looking forward to it this year because all 18 of our departments will be using a Google Site to collaborate and share information easily while preparing for the budget. This site also integrates a Google calendar that marks budget due dates with a countdown clock for all departments.
For Columbia, going Google is a force multiplier. With resources saved and productivity enhanced, our city employees are able to better focus on their core mission of serving citizens. Being a part of modernization efforts of both Columbia and Des Moines makes my job as a public servant meaningful.
Sperry Van Ness goes Google
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Posted by Kevin Maggiacomo, CEO of Sperry Van Ness
Editors note:
Today’s guest blogger is Kevin Maggiacomo, CEO of Sperry Van Ness, one of the largest commercial real estate advisory firms in the world. They employ over 1,400 advisors and staff in more than 150 markets. See what
other organizations that have gone Google have to say
.
As CEO of Sperry Van Ness, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve the work our 1,400-strong workforce does and how we do it. With the help of Google Apps Reseller
SADA Systems
, we implemented Google Apps across the entire organization to bring efficiency to an industry that isn’t traditionally known for being collaborative or efficient. Google Apps helped us solve workflow bottlenecks and process inefficiencies to move us beyond
best
practices to
next
practices. It has been a huge win for us.
There’s an old saying related to technology that “usability drives adoptability.” Getting everyone transitioned onto a single platform can be a challenge for any organization, but the learning curve for Google Apps was almost non-existent. Since all our tools -- Docs, Sites, Calendar, Gmail and more -- are all easy to access, they smoothly and seamlessly became part of our operating culture. Our entire organization went from implementation to total adoption in less than 30 days.
Creating a culture of teamwork and collaboration has been a key driver of our business model for years – it was just more difficult and costly prior to using Google Apps. Aside from email, chat, and conferencing, Google Sites allowed us to quickly replace our intranet. Additionally, Google Docs gives us an easy and secure way to collaborate on documents in real-time throughout the entire sales process.
In addition to the efficiency and productivity gains, the cost savings was a driver in our decision to use Google Apps. By moving our platform to the cloud, we dramatically reduced the cost and complexity of our IT infrastructure in favor of a system that’s faster and more robust. The frosting on the Google Apps cake is that we’ve been able to eliminate dependency on Microsoft products, allowing us to grow and scale faster. The discussions we used to have about platform scalability and synchronization have faded away, allowing us to spend more time on our business.
With great confidence, I can say that implementing Google Apps can resolve many of the workflow management, collaboration, and process automation issues that companies still struggle with -- it did so for Sperry Van Ness.
Google Maps API for Business brings NexTraq to the next level
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
Posted by Nicole Locklear, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq
Editors note:
Today’s guest blogger is
Nicole Locklear
, Channel Marketing Specialist at NexTraq. NexTraq is a GPS fleet tracking company headquartered in Atlanta that helps business owners across the US and Canada track the movement, behavior and activity of their vehicles.
NexTraq
, a GPS fleet tracking company, helps customers manage their fleets with reporting, alerts, dispatching and routing tools. Several years ago, our company noticed a simple problem: it took too long to train our customers how to use our products. After looking at several other mapping possibilities, we realized that we should give our customers something they already used in their daily lives: Google Maps. Our customers already used Google Maps to get directions, view landmarks with Street View and Satellite View and avoid bad traffic. This made the decision to move to
Google Maps API for Business
easy.
By using Google Maps, we were able to free up internal resources -- such as developers and engineers -- because of the outstanding support that Google provides during implementation. Even though we deployed Google Maps on a large scale, the implementation was seamless. Our customers love Google Maps for Business because it brings Google Maps features directly to the business setting. For example, they can look at their route for the day, pinpoint heavy traffic, and reroute their vehicles accordingly. Not only are they saving time, but, as gas prices rise, they’re cutting fuel costs as well. Being able to see the street view of any place a vehicle is located gives customers an added layer of comfort. If an employee can’t find a service stop, a dispatcher can see a 360-degree view of where the employee is standing and direct them based on landmarks and other surroundings.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we went with a solution that we knew our customers already knew and loved. Google Maps API for Business was the best move we could have made for our customers.
Google BigQuery brings Big Data analytics to all businesses
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Posted by Ju-Kay Kwek, Product Manager, BigQuery
Cross-posted on the
Google Developers Blog
.
BigQuery
enables businesses and developers to gain real-time business insights from massive amounts of data without any upfront hardware or software investments. Imagine a big pharmaceutical company optimizing daily marketing spend using worldwide sales and advertisement data. Or think of a small online retailer that makes product recommendations based on user clicks. Today, we are making BigQuery publicly available, an important milestone in our effort to bring Big Data analytics to all businesses via the cloud.
Since
announcing
BigQuery in limited preview last November, many businesses and developers have started using it for real-time Big Data analytics in the cloud.
Claritics
, a social and mobile analytics company, built a web application for game developers to gain real-time insights into user behavior.
Crystalloids
, an Amsterdam-based analytics firm, built a cloud-based application to help a resort network analyze customer reservations, optimize marketing and maximize revenue. This just scratches the surface of use cases for BigQuery.
BigQuery
is accessible via a simple
UI or REST interface
. It lets you take advantage of Google’s massive compute power, store as much data as needed and pay only for what you use. Your data is protected with multiple layers of security, replicated across multiple data centers and can be easily exported.
Developers and businesses can
sign up
for BigQuery online and query up to 100 GB of data per month for free. See our introductory
pricing plan
for storing and querying datasets of up to 2 TB. If you need more than that,
contact a sales representative
.
We hope you'll be able to gain real-time business insights using BigQuery. Share your BigQuery use cases and feedback in our
user forums
or on our
Enterprise G+ page
.
Google Apps for Business helps keep business flowing at Pure Energy
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Posted by Zachary Curry, Manager of Information Systems at Pure Energy Services Ltd.
Editors note:
Today’s guest blogger is Zachary Curry, Manager of Information Systems at Pure Energy Services Ltd., a publicly traded oilfield services company headquartered in Calgary. See what
other organizations that have gone Google have to say
.
Since 2001, Pure Energy has provided equipment and services for oil- and gas-producing companies in Canada and the U.S. In recent years we’ve grown nearly 20% per year, and today Pure Energy employs over 1,500 people based in our corporate offices and at more than 20 field locations. With 90% of our staff working outside of our corporate office, we needed a system that could better manage our expansion, easily accommodate new users and provide access to our staff in the field.
Using Google Apps helped transform some of our internal processes, allowing us to work more efficiently. Our business requires a lot of safety and task documentation, and each employee in the field must complete training for hundreds of tasks. Even though we’ve implemented multiple systems to help manage these tasks, there were still operational gaps and paper-based processes. Google Docs helped us simplify the tedious and time consuming task of managing these processes and tasks. Now that we’re moving the majority of our documentation to Docs, our station managers can more easily provide up-to-date information to their field staff and our corporate executives in shared files. In certain business units, we’ve also started to use Google Forms to track job training completion for each employee, making it easy for station managers to see exactly which employees can complete certain jobs at a glance.
Google Apps Scripts has helped us streamline our equipment utilization tracking processes. In the past, our corporate office had to compile 20 individual spreadsheets sent in from our field locations that was then manually inputted into a single spreadsheet. By the time the main corporate spreadsheet was updated, the information was usually out of date and therefore largely irrelevant for decision making purposes. Using Apps Scripts, we now get real-time updates of our equipment utilization through automatic email notifications to our managers at corporate office, saving us time in completing this important operational task.
With a growing company, particularly one that’s as geographically dispersed as ours, it’s important to have a dependable and easy-to-use Information System in place. Google Apps has helped us streamline numerous internal processes all while keeping us connected and collaborating efficiently.
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