BITSoftware / Blog

From Government departments through small local companies, information can be extremely valuable to organizations. However, this useful information often ends up trapped in files or databases, inaccessible to the average employee or user. Also, the explosion of information stored in multiple formats that needs to be accessed by both internal staff and a distributed workforce (dealers, vendors, etc) only complicates the problem. The need for organizations to quickly respond to market changes, innovate, and accelerate their time to market increased in direct proportion to their structural complexity. So, it’s no wonder that 39% of a knowledge worker’s time is wasted on searching for information or recreating existing content.

To help those organizations to discover information that previously were not „findable”, Google developed Google Search Appliance (GSA). With its ability to search for information stored in over 220 file types across multiple enterprise systems (CRM, ERP, financials system, business intelligence systems, Google Docs, Google Sites, graphic file format, etc), GSA is a relatively simple, highly scalable intranet search solution that has brought universal search capabilities to several different organizations.

Using Google Search Appliance, your company can increase employees productivity by making it easy for them to find what they’re looking for, when they need it. Also, it can improve customer satisfaction by providing fast, reliable search results and seamlessly integrating with common contact center applications. GSA can also reduce administration time, because some of the more powerful features are available right out of the box, so less time and resources are spent implementing a world-class enterprise search solution.

But this is not all. Because in the last years, more and more companies started using cloud-based applications from Google (more than four million businesses already run Google Apps), Google Search Appliance got a new feature, Cloud Connect, which lets employees search across on-premise and cloud-based content from a single search box, delivering more comprehensive results and improving productivity.

Cloud Connect displays relevant, personalized results from Google Docs and Google Sites alongside results from more traditional repositories, like file shares and content management systems. Easier access to collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and sites with Cloud Connect speeds up how quickly coworkers can complete projects. For companies that already deployed Google Apps and Google Search Appliance, the Cloud Connect feature brings “universal search” to another level, with more accessible business systems and content now spanning from cloud to ground.

As you move your business to the cloud, Google Search Appliance can be an important bridge between on-premise and cloud-based systems, while enhancing employee collaboration and strengthens your company`s ability to access and disseminate organizational knowledge.

Sources: google.com/enterprise, Google Official Blog, Computer World, PC World

Tags: BITSoftware, business, Cloud Computing, Customer Relation Management, Enterprise Resource Planning, social media, Soft, worldwide

Businesses of all sizes need to be prepared for the unexpected. In legal actions, a business can be required to turn over all emails on a topic, or between certain employees. It’s a huge and expensive headache to hunt down these emails, especially for smaller businesses who don’t have dedicated IT staff. Even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll really get everything relevant.

Now, Gmail business customers get a huge help. Because Google launched a new feature for Google Apps for Business, Google Vault. Vault is an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for managing information critical to your business and preserving important data. This new app can reduce the costs of litigation, regulatory investigation and compliance actions. And lets IT staff make sure that all relevant emails are stored forever, then gives them an easy way to search those emails. Vault helps protect your business so you can quickly find and preserve data to respond to unexpected customer claims, lawsuits or investigations, with an instant-on functionality and availability of your data a few clicks away. With Vault, you will find the information you need, when you need it.

Vault also lets IT staff set policies for when an email should be deleted. For instance, when an employee leaves the company, Vault could be set to automatically delete all emails to and from that employee within 90 days. That could be useful because Gmail (unlike traditional email systems) is designed to store everything forever.

Moreover, Vault gives management, IT, legal and compliance users a systemized, repeatable and defensible platform that will reduce the costs and risks of doing business.

Vault is built on the same modern, 100% web-based architecture as Google Apps. Unlike traditional solutions, it does not require a complex and costly IT environment, and can be deployed in a matter of minutes. For start, the new feature for Google Apps for Business works with Gmail and Google Chat sessions, but not over long time it will work with other data in Apps, like documents stored in GDocs, as Google`s officials said.

Sources: Google Official Blog, Business Insider, Wikipedia, Google Apps

Tags: BITSoftware, Cloud Computing, Open Source, powerful tools, worldwide