Gmail’s spam detection is amongst the best in the industry and has the benefit of being able to automatically learn a user’s individual preferences when they mark a message as spam or not. Our experience has shown that users prefer being in control of their spam but were confused by having to go to a separate interface to manage their settings in Postini, so this change should be welcomed by administrators and users alike.

Benefits

If you have created an organisational hierarchy within Google Apps you will be able to apply different policies at different organisation levels. Settings at a parent level will be inherited by sub-levels and additional filters can then be applied. This allows businesses to apply baseline policies for the entire organisation at the top-most level and then apply department or function specific policies further down.

A particularly useful feature is the ability to create multiple mail footers which can be enabled and disabled a needed. This give businesses the flexibility to create specific marketing messages and apply them to all outbound emails during a particular marketing campaign, then disable them centrally when the campaign is over. You can also decide which footers are added to internal emails so that you don’t need to clutter up internal mail with all the branding and compliance information that you would include on external messages.

Transitioning

Administrators that have integrated Postini enabled will be contacted directly by Google with transition instructions. However, there is nothing to stop businesses starting to move over straight away. Policies can be created within the Google Apps settings today and left in a disabled state until it’s time to cut-over.

DNS and Control Panel Changes

Cutting over from Postini will require a change the to DNS MX records associated with any domains you have in Google Apps. This includes domain aliases as well as primary domains. This change will route incoming mail directly to Gmail instead of Postini so it’s important to have the policies in place at this time.

If SPF records have been entered for Postini these will also need to be replaced by Google’s SPF details.

Changes will also be needed within the Google Apps settings to remove Postini as the inbound and outbound gateway.

Available Features

The Google Apps control panel now includes the following email management features:

• Content Compliance and Objectionable Content filters
• Compliance Footers
• Approved and Blocked Sender lists
• Attachment Controls
• Restricted email delivery

New Features

• Support for Postgres 9
• Ability to specify folders to exclude from migrations (all platforms)
• Re-architected Email message saving and retrieval
• Added OK button to configuration dialog

Fixes

• Apply incoming shared folder settings to GroupWise calendar migrations (fixes duplicate appointments with shared calendars)
• Better reporting if a process fails

Notes

As usual, if you have any queries about the tool, usage, pricing or anything else contact us.

The latest version of the tool can always be downloaded from our migration tool download page.

Composites One is the leading distributor of composite materials in North America.  The organization’s products include fibers, resins, and a wide range of chemicals and accessories used in manufacturing.  Its 32 distribution centers serve over 8,000 customers across North America and Asia, and the company prides itself in providing the best quality materials, exceptional local service, and personalized support.

Business Need

As the organization continued its growth, Composite One’s personnel had expanded to approximately 400 employees in over 30 locations.  Regarding its IT email and messaging platform, the company had been a Novell GroupWise user for over 15 years.  However, continuing down the GroupWise path seemed like an increasingly costly obstacle.  In almost all the organization’s separate locations, there were separate file servers; this was valuable to the extent that mail was regulated locally instead of having to travel through the home hub network.  All in all, Composites One utilized a highly decentralized mail system, and keeping up-to-date with GroupWise required imminent, major upgrades to all servers in all locations, license renewals, and significant time and effort by the IT department.  Furthermore, users were not even satisfied with the functionality of the GroupWise platform and a large-scale change in IT started to seem like the best course of action.

With all these factors in mind, Director of IT, Hal Greene, began seeking a solution that would meet 3 criteria: a wide range of improved functionality, mobility capacities and major cost savings.  A number of employees within Composite One’s IT group had had some personal experience with Google Apps and recommended the platform as a possible alternative.  Hal then attended the 2009 Enterprise Summit and found that many IT executives had very positive things to say about Google Apps.  For the remainder of 2009, Composite One’s IT team began discussing with Google and Cloud Sherpas the possible migration to Google Apps, and eventually pitched the idea to the Composite One executive team.

“Cloud Sherpas are one of the best Google Enterprise partners in the world.  We are proud of the relationship we have with Cloud Sherpas and of the success the Cloud Google Migrator from Cloud Technology Solutions has given them.” Steve Kaye: CEO, Cloud Technology Solutions

Solution

A few months later, Composite One began a pilot phase with Cloud Sherpas by taking a group of 32 users (which encompassed the entire IT team) and having these key users experience Google Apps first.  Cloud Sherpas also conducted admin and end-user training to accelerate the learning process of migrating to a new IT platform.

However, perhaps the most integral assistance that Cloud Sherpas provided was in the application of the Cloud Google Migrator from Cloud Technology Solutions, the only tool to-date that can be widely-used to migrate organizations to Google Apps from Novell GroupWise.  Cloud Sherpas seamlessly transferred all of Composite One’s data to the cloud, and Hal Greene had this to say about the process:

“When it comes to this data, it’s so important to people; this is their work and what they’ve been doing for years, so it would’ve been unacceptable for them to no longer have access to this data.  So it was very helpful to have Cloud Sherpas be there and help us through the migration process.”

Benefits

The pilot phase was successfully completed within 2 months, and while Cloud Sherpas maintained a co-existence system that allowed users to function from both Google Apps and Novell GroupWise.  Composite One went on to migrate users in increments and aims to have all users on Google Apps within half a year.

As Cloud Sherpas additionally provided mobile access to Google Apps, Composite One’s goals of moving to a platform with greater functionality, mobility capacities, and major cost savings seemed to be fulfilled.  As Director of IT Hal Greene concluded:

“We’re really glad to be on Google Apps now, and to the extent that we ran into any confusion, the Cloud Sherpas team was very knowledgeable and very helpful.  I did think that their role throughout the project was quite impressive.”

To learn more about how we can help your organisation Go Google, please contact us now.

Over the next few weeks, Google will start transitioning to the new version of Google documents. Here are some of the new features in the new Google Docs that we are excited about:-

• Real time collaboration: See updates from other collaborators as they edit the document.
• Higher-quality imports: More consistent imports from your desktop into Google Docs.
• Chat with other collaborators: As you make your edits, you can chat with other document editors about the changes, from within the document.
• Ruler: Google documents have a ruler for setting margins, indentations, and tab stops.
• Google spreadsheets  editable formula bar, and cell auto-complete.

The goal of these changes is to make sharing and collaboration even easier and to give you even more control of your Google files.

The basics aren’t different. You can still share your docs with as many or as few people as you like — and it’s all under your control. But now, you can assign a visibility option to a doc in just one step. Check out the descriptions of these options below to get started.

Within the domain

Private

When you create a private doc, you are the only person with access to it. And from there, you can grant access to other people. Anyone trying to access the document will have to sign in to verify that they have access to the doc, unless you change its sharing setting.

Private is the best setting for confidential documents or if you want to collaborate within a closed circle of people.

People at your domain with the link

A doc set to ‘People at your domain with the link’ is accessible to anyone inside the domain who knows the URL of the document. If you also select the ‘Allow anyone to edit’ option, anyone with the URL will be able to view and edit your document.

Docs in this category will generally not be indexed by internal search tools, but they may show up in search results if the doc URL is included on another page that is indexed.

Your domain

Docs that are set to your domain can be accessed by anyone in the domain. Docs with this setting may be indexed by internal search tools and may be opened by anyone in the domain. If you also select the ‘Allow anyone to edit’ option, anyone with the URL will be able to view and edit your document.

Outside the domain

Note: Some domain administrators do not allow docs to be shared outside of the domain.

Anyone with the link

If you select ‘Anyone with the link’, anyone who knows the web address of a document can view it. No sign-in is required to view the document. If you also select the ‘Allow anyone to edit’ option, anyone with the URL will be able to view and edit your document. Since sign-in is not required, viewers and editors may appear as anonymous users.

Docs in this category are generally not indexed by search engines, but they may show up in search results if the doc URL is included on another webpage that is indexed.

Public on the web

Public documents get indexed by search engines (like Google Web Search), and are accessible by anyone on the web. Set a doc to public if you want anyone to be able to see it.

Click ‘Share’ to open Sharing settings

To change the sharing setting of your doc (say, from Private to Anyone with the link), you’ll click the Share button in the top right corner of the doc. Here’s what you can do from the Sharing settings box:

• Change your doc’s visibility option — just click Change to the right of the visibility option.
• See who has access to your doc — their names are listed in the window, along with whether they can view or edit.
• Add editors or viewers by name — just click the white space below ‘Add people’ and type any email address.
• Reset your doc’s web address — just click Reset link under the doc URL (Anyone with the link docs only).
• Remove editors and viewers, or adjust how much access each person has.
• Transfer ownership of your doc to someone else. Just choose ‘Is owner’ from the drop-down next to any person with access to the doc.

Macquarie University, is home to approximately 35,000 students and 5,500 members of staff. The beautiful 126 hectare of park-like campus is an ideal setting for discovery and learning. Located within the high-technology corridor of Sydney’s north-west, Macquarie University graduates are highly sought-after. Macquarie University is one of Australia’s leading research universities, it is a dynamic, flexible and engaged university committed to excellence in research, teaching and global citizenship. Formed in 1964, the University prides itself on being enquiring, open to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new ways of ensuring a sustainable institution.

Business Need

Macquarie University have been providing a number of email systems for staff with the main system being a Novell GroupWise system. The GroupWise setup catered for approximately 80% of staff with the remaining 20% on a variety of other systems and provided email service to staff since 2005. With approximately 5,500 users, the Novell GroupWise system spanned over 29 GroupWise Post Offices. Beneath this impressive email infrastructure ran a well managed 8 Node Novell NetWare cluster.

In 2007 Macquarie University migrated the entire student body over to Google Apps for Education. With staff and lectures on GroupWise and students using Google Apps, managing multiple systems became a very costly undertaking.

“The main issue for Macquarie University was to remove the costs and complexity of managing multiple email systems and to consolidate on one system” – Norbert Attard, Technology Project Leader at Macquarie University

Solution

With a large student user base already happy on Google Apps, the choice was obvious. Macquarie University decided to migrate away from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for it’s staff users.

Marc Bailey CIO at Macquarie University says:

“Success at cloud-sourcing email depends entirely on two factors beyond feature/benefits, namely out-of-box experience and consumer confidence. Cloud Technology Solutions delivered Macquarie University the best possible impression of our new system from the very first customer click. Combined with a great project team, some intense planning, training and communication, we were able to engender the confidence needed to rapidly reach an adoption tipping point, then smoothly proceed to completion”

Migrating staff would have been an extremely complex process as the users all took advantage of calendars and scheduling, along with maintaining contact information within the GroupWise address book. The University did not have the option to simply move to a different email system, as it did with students, it needed to migrate everything, email, calendar, chat and contacts.

Cloud Technology Solutions

Cloud Technology Solutions were the migration partner of choice to provide assistance and support with the Cloud Google Migrator, the market-leading migration tool widely used to migrate organisations to Google Apps from Novell GroupWise. The tool allows entire organisations of any size to migrate to Google Apps efficiently and with no downtime. As the Cloud Google Migrator had proven ability to migrate to Google Apps and supported email, calendar and contacts, it was a perfect match for the Universities requirements.

The migration was smooth and efficient. Simultaneously running the migration tool on 8 Dual Core 4GB workstations, Macquarie University seamlessly migrated all 5,500 users from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for Education over the course of a few weeks and with no data loss.

“Cloud Technology Solutions were invaluable in helping us migrate our staff to Google Apps. The migration tool itself was excellent and meant we reduced our migration time by about 30%. Where any problems did arise the support response was first class”

Benefits

Currently 8 million students, faculty and staff at educational institutions around the world are using Google Apps, so Macquarie University are not alone.

Google Apps for Education now provides the entire campus community, including students, faculty, staff and alumni all the tools they need to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Providing over 7GB of email storage per student, Google Apps for Education delivers all the email and collaboration needs of Macquarie University.

“Cloud Technology Solutions Google Migrator allows organisations to seamlessly and easily migrate legacy email platforms to Google Apps significantly reducing the cost of running an IT department” – Steve Kaye, CEO, Cloud Technology Solutions

To learn more about how we can help your organisation Go Google, please contact us now.

For a PDF version of this document please complete your details below.

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Also included with the tool is updated documentation, with new advice regarding getting the best performance from the tool. The central advice is ensure that many users are processed simultaneously. More information can be found on our news post about peformance.

As usual, if there are any questions about the tool, migrating to Google Apps or for reseller enquiries, please contact us.

To download the latest build visit our download pages.

Usually the best way to obtain optimal performance, after making sure all local factors are as favorable as possible, is to migrate many users simultaneously. Google often restrict the speed at which users can be migrated, but this is on a per-user basis and not usually on a domain basis. This means that migrating one user (if the rate is limited for that user) can often take as long as migrating twenty users. It is therefore advisable to migrate as many users as possible simultaneously.

The best way to get great performance from the tool while migrating to Google Apps is to migrate many users simultaneously. Often, migrating one user can take as long as migrating twenty users.

The number of users that can be migrated simultaneously can be affected somewhat by local bandwidth restrictions. For example, if there is limited upstream bandwidth, then in this case it can make sense to limit the number of simultaneous users that are migrated. If bandwidth is high, then migrating many simultaneous users is highly recommended to achieve the best throughput. An upper limit of 20 simultaneous users is recommended. With higher numbers performance can be adversely affected by CPU and memory usage.

To migrate more than 20-25 simultaneous users, we recommend setting up multiple migration workstations, each processing many users. This way CPU and memory is only an issue per-workstation and very large numbers can be migrated at one time, providing bandwidth is high.

A recent customer, migrating over 5000 accounts, was running 8 cloned workstations each processing 20 simultaneous users, and achieved migration of thousands of users in just a few weeks.

The best way to determine performance for your site is to perform a pilot migration with a representative number of users and examine performance. Often a migration of just one user may be carried out to ensure that mails, appointments and contacts are migrated correctly, but this alone does not give a true indication of the performance that can be obtained from migrating many users simultaneously. When the performance from your site has been established, a full migration plan can be established.

To set the number of simultaneous users the tool will process, adjust the setting ‘Maximum User Threads’ in the ‘System’ section of ‘General Migration Settings’. For more information, please also see the tool documentation installed with the program.

To discuss appropriate migration strategies for your site, please contact us and we would be happy to help.

To download the migration tool, visit our migration tool pages.

Update: 22:40GMT Google App Engine is down again – further updates will be provided as and when the situation changes.

Update: 22:55GMT Back up, hopefully for good!

New Features

• Display number of used and allocated licenses on the ‘License Key’ dialog
• Use Unicode more effectively to deal with non-western character sets
• Added a ‘Modify Request’ option to the Google settings to help deal with a proxy issue
• Added special handling for Turkish characters
• Added an option to migrate only the plain text body for internal GroupWise emails

Fixes

• Ensure that ‘Application Identifier’ is persisted. This is important so that, if using multiple tool instances with one database server, the correct database is used for each tool instance
• Documentation updated with new advice regarding using a shared database setup with multiple tool instances

For migrations using multiple tool instances with a shared database, this upgrade is highly recommended. Also please ensure that each instance of the tool has a different ‘Application Identifier’ if using with a shared database setup.

Download a trial of the tool now from our download area.

For more information about the migration tool or if you have an support queries, please contact us.

More information is also available to download in our datasheet.