Posted by Ben Schrom, PM Google Apps for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog)

In a little over two years, Drive has become the cloud storage and sharing solution for more than 190 million people worldwide who use it regularly at home, work and school. For many of the 30 million students and educators using Google Apps for Education, Drive has even replaced their bookbags. Why lug around piles of paper or overstuffed binders when every type of document or file can be retrieved from the nearest Chromebook, tablet, smartphone or browser?

Earlier this year, we introduced Drive for Work—a premium version of Google Apps for Work—and now we’re bringing that same power to schools. Today we’re announcing Drive for Education, an infinitely large, ultra-secure and entirely free bookbag for the 21st century.
Drive for Education will be available to all Google Apps for Education customers at no charge and will include:

• Unlimited storage: No more worrying about how much space you have left or about which user needs more gigabytes. Drive for Education supports individual files up to 5TB in size and will be available in coming weeks. 
• Vault: Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, will be coming free to all Apps for Education users by the end of the year. 
• Enhanced Auditing: Reporting and auditing tools and an Audit API easily let you see the activity of a file, are also on the way. 

All of this comes with the same world-class security that protects all Drive users. Every file uploaded to Google Drive is encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers. As always, the data that schools and students put into our systems is theirs. Classroom, which recently launched to Google Apps for Education users, makes using Drive in school even better by automatically organizing all Classroom assignments into Drive folders. And Google Apps for Education remains free to nonprofit educational institutions with no ads or ads-related scanning.

We want educators and students who use Google Apps for Education to be able to focus on the learning experience—not the technology that supports it. With Drive for Education, users can put an end to worries about storage limits and more easily maintain a safe, effective and compliant learning environment.

Posted by Taavet Hinrikus Executive Chairman, TransferWise

Editor's note: From the typewriter to the propelling pencil to our favorite, the world wide web, inventors and innovators from the United Kingdom have brought us brilliant advances that have changed the way we work all around the world. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a handful of stories from disrupters and trailblazers in the UK who are using Google Apps for Work to support their mission while growing at faster and faster speeds. Today, we hear from Taavet Hinrikus, Executive Chairman of TransferWise, a company disrupting the international money transfer marketplace. He shared his insights on managing fast growth with a culture of collaboration and flexibility, with Google Apps for Work.

The story of Transferwise started with a pair of frustrated Estonian ex-pats. My co-founder, Kristo, and I were both living in London but getting paid and paying mortgages in Euros, leaving us with a trail of bank fees incurred from transferring money between currencies. We knew there was a better and less financially painful way to handle these transfers, and created a peer-to-peer network with complete transparency and no hidden fees. Since launching in 2011, we’ve processed 1 billion pound sterling in transfers, and in the last year alone, we’ve gone from 20 to 120 employees. What follows is a series of five insights we’ve learned along the way that we hope may help other businesses seeking a path of fast growth.

1. Seek to offer a better service. It’s really easy to say but hard to do.
We’re focused on making things faster and cheaper, but when you boil that down, what really matters is keeping our customers’ needs at the core of our strategy. We focus on making their experience as enjoyable as possible, and constantly tracking customer satisfaction across all touch points of the business helps drive the strategy that fuels our growth. And since our customers are so passionate about our service that they want to share it with their friends and relatives, virality has driven a lot of our growth over the past three years.

2. Measure satisfaction constantly and fix problems quickly
When we discover an issue or source of dissatisfaction, we set out to fix it — If we fix a problem that’s affecting one person, it’s likely we’re fixing potential problems for 100 future customers. We want to build a trusted financial service that people want to use every time they need to send money abroad. Part and parcel of that aim is keeping proactive perspective of specific issues users that could become larger. To do this, we place a heavy emphasis on measuring customer satisfaction to ensure that every customer has an excellent experience.

3. Recruit people who understand and evangelize your value proposition
We’re on a mission to make international money transfers more transparent, and we’ve built a team that’s passionate about making it a reality. A big part of our culture is our belief that the financial services industry needs to change. It shouldn’t be slow, out of touch or painful; it should be dusted off and reinvigorated. That’s why we look to hire creative and focused people who can help us shake up the old system; they understand that we’re making a difference to people’s lives by making it fairer, easier and quicker to move money around the world.

4. Invest in technology that allows your teams to work anywhere, on any device
These days, we can work anytime from anywhere. Productivity doesn’t depend on being in the right place; it depends on being in the right state of mind. We’re no longer limited to working in an office space because we have technology that enables us to access our work when we need to, no matter where we are. Google Drive makes sharing quick, efficient and simple across the company. Since we have offices in London and Estonia, it’s important that we can store and work on documents simultaneously from different locations. Google Drive is intuitive, makes us a flexible team, and allows us to turn ideas around quickly. This speed and agility helps set us apart from our competitors.

5. Keep teams in touch with the bigger picture
Communication becomes increasingly crucial as growth momentum accelerates, especially when it comes to keeping the whole team aware of the big picture and high level strategy of the company. We use Google Hangouts to drive these essential check-ins between our Estonian and London offices via a real-time video stream, so we feel like we’re all in the same room together. We even view and edit documents from within the Hangout by sharing our screens, so it’s almost as if we’re reviewing documents next to one another in person. We also host a bi-weekly company meeting over Hangouts, where we introduce new team members and update the company on big news, ideas and developments. And that’s just the beginning. Hangouts has enabled us to foster a unified vision, collaborative workflow and single culture across our office locations.

Posted by Hari Ravichandran, CEO and Founder, Endurance International Group

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Hari Ravichandran, CEO and Founder of Endurance International Group, which helps small businesses get online and manage their web presence.

Launching a small business is tough, and getting a website up and running along with marketing your company online can seem especially daunting. At Endurance, we realized way back in 1997 that the Internet was going to change how small businesses reach and serve their customers, and that bringing the power of the Internet to them was both a great business opportunity and a way to support aspiring business owners globally. So we built our company around helping SMBs manage their web presence with hosting, domains, email, design and online marketing. With Endurance doing the technical heavy lifting, SMBs can focus more on growing their companies and making them succeed.

Google Apps for Work is now is now an integral part of our e-mail and cloud productivity offering we recommend and provide to our customers, and it’s going to make business owners’ lives easier. How do we know? Because we started using Google Apps ourselves, and we’ve seen firsthand how we’ve used it to connect more often with our teams, get projects done faster and save money.

Today we serve over 3.7 million small businesses around the world, and we operate a number of leading brands such as iPage, Bluehost, HostGator and Domain.com from offices around the globe. In such an environment, communication is important. In the past, it took too many actions to complete simple tasks — sending emails back and forth, with employees from different offices not easily able to collaborate on documents or see each others’ calendars to schedule meetings. That all changed when we moved to Google Apps.

We knew of Google Apps and wanted to use the suite, which has all the e-mail, calendar and document-sharing features we needed to run our business. Many of our employees had personal Gmail addresses, so they were already familiar with Google and were genuinely excited about making the switch. Our IT department was equally happy about the short learning curve for Apps, since it made migrating our employees over to Apps surprisingly easy.

Perhaps the best part about our move to Google Apps is the ability to communicate with our colleagues across the company, no matter what country we’re based in. We talk to each other and keep in touch far more often than we used to, thanks to Hangouts and Google+. Since Google Apps has everything we need, from file storage to video calls, we will no longer rely on expensive or hard-to-use video conferencing, email, and file storage solutions.

We have built a relationship with Google to help small businesses harness the power of the web in multiple ways, first through the AdWords Referral program, and more recently via joint programs in the US, India, Africa and Southeast Asia including the “Get Your Business Online” program. Once we saw how quickly Google Apps changed the way we work, we wanted to share it with our small-business customers. That’s why we’re excited to be joining the Google for Work Partner Program. We’re integrating Google Apps with the dashboard that our customers use to manage their businesses, like email marketing and website design, so customers can have one seamless experience working with their website and productivity apps. And since we use Google Apps everyday ourselves we can help our customers get the most value out of it.

Google Apps fits in perfectly with our philosophy of guiding small businesses to success – not simply getting online but being online. When you have an easy-to-use solution like Google Apps, working together on projects, accessing documents from anywhere, and keeping costs in check becomes part of doing business every day.

Posted by Rytis Vitkauskas, Co-founder and CEO of YPlan

Editor's note: From the typewriter to the propelling pencil to our favorite, the world wide web, inventors and innovators from the United Kingdom have brought us brilliant advances that have changed the way we work all around the world. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a handful of stories from disrupters and trailblazers in the UK who are using Google Apps for Work to support their mission while growing at faster and faster speeds. Today we hear from Rytis Vitkauskas, co-founder and CEO of YPlan, a mobile app that lets users discover amazing experiences they can do that same night.

For many, planning a night out on the town means grabbing the local weekly newspaper and thumbing through it to find entertainment and club listings. My co-founder Viktoras Jucikas and I think there’s a better way to plan an exciting night out with our mobile app. YPlan provides curated entertainment listings for London, Edinburgh, New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas, and gives our users the ability to easily buy tickets with two taps on a smartphone. The app has surpassed one million downloads to date and our company has swelled to 60 employees. Growing rapidly, we’ve learned some valuable lessons. The following are five insights that might help business leaders stay focused and keep momentum when growing their business.

1. Identify a real problem — the more personal the better — then try to fix it
YPlan started as a solution to solve a personal problem. My co-founder Viktoras and I previously worked in finance but quit our jobs to travel to San Francisco to find inspiration. In San Francisco, we found it challenging to easily find things to do on our free nights. There wasn’t a central destination to find events and book tickets. So we decided to create an app to solve that problem.

2. Model early and often 
In the early stages of our business idea, we came up with 50 different project ideas before finally settling on YPlan. We constructed a business model, subjected it to an intense process of testing, then eventually scrapped it and started over. When we returned back to London we started the concept for YPlan. We conducted user testing that included Viktoras and I running around to make sure people had their tickets on time (we hadn’t finished the e-ticket mechanism by that point). Testing heavily during the first few months highlights problems you might not have anticipated and gives you the opportunity adapt your product accordingly.

3. Growth stems from your culture and early DNA 
From early on, we established a culture of creativity, collaboration and a relentless focus on our customers, which has been a foundation for our future growth. From the first day we stopped negative office patterns of blaming and arguing, and instilled frequent communication, positive reinforcement and team problem-solving. Our primary focus is to deliver the best experience for our users and our employees tackle that task creatively on a daily basis.

4. Communication and collaboration fuels growth 
YPlan’s success is largely due to successful collaboration and integration with our partners. With our teams working in at least three time zones simultaneously, Google Drive allows us to collaborate globally in real-time. It’s our central communication hub for content sharing and project collaboration. Having files accessible from anywhere on a mobile device is big plus. This has enabled seamless working and communication with our local teams, which has directly affected our global success and allowed us to expand.

5. Growth opportunities start with the user 
When surveying growth options, look to your users and learn from that data. We’re constantly analysing the data we have on our existing users to see how we can improve our services. At any one time we have two thousand versions of the app running in parallel, undergoing a highly selective process of A/B testing, which means the app is constantly being refined. Closely studying our user data led to us introducing “collections.” We knew people wanted to choose from a wide variety of events, but had to present numerous selections in a way that wasn’t a boring list of options. By adapting our interface to meet the needs of users, we now provide a curated experience, which in turn leads to consistently high retention rates after download.

Editor's note: We’re counting down to next week’s Atmosphere Live with a series of interviews from speakers who will be featured at the interactive online event. Today, we hear from Jeff McConathy, VP of Engineering & Consumer Services for Trulia, who is speaking in our session on delighting customers in new ways — online, offline and on the go. Learn more and register for Atmosphere Live, which takes place on October 1st, here.

Buying a home is a stressful process. How do you make that experience more pleasant for your customers? How do you delight someone who’s making one of the biggest financial commitments of their lives? 

Industry research tells us that the home buying process takes an average of 18 months, and as many already know, there’s a lot of anxiety, especially when the process is new. Trulia was founded to make that process easier, less stressful and more enjoyable, by providing information and insights to consumers and connecting them with real estate professionals to help them through the rest of the process.

Our goal is to delight consumers by making home search unexpectedly enjoyable by understanding what they want and giving it to them when and where they need it – which, in our case, often means on their phones, while they’re touring neighborhoods and open houses.

How has technology helped Trulia deliver on that vision and change the experience of the average prospective homebuyer?

The old way of buying a house revolved around talking to the neighbors, checking the newspaper on Sunday, driving around neighborhoods and chasing agents down on the phone. With Trulia, you provide the parameters for the home you want and, within seconds, get all the information you need, seamlessly integrated on a map, which includes school districts, parks and amenities nearby, as well as additional information.

We’ve learned that the combination of mobility and maps is especially suited for home seekers. That’s why we recently launched a feature that will alert you, via the Trulia mobile app, when you’re near a home that meets your search criteria and has recently been listed.

Home is also about safety, so if you’re concerned about natural hazards, such as floods, you can see historical data integrated into our maps. If you’re worried about overpaying, we can show you the average sales price per square foot in your area. And if you want to talk to someone from the neighborhood, we have millions of people in a social community who give unfiltered answers to all sorts of questions — everything from “How often do trains pass through?” to “Will I have to move my car when it snows?”

Finding the right broker or agent is also extremely important, so Trulia built an agent directory, with hundreds of thousands of agent profiles, which is helpful to consumers and agents who want to connect with potential new clients.

We get really excited about this stuff. It’s why I tell people that Trulia is really a technology company that happens to dabble in real estate.

What advice do you have for other businesses looking to improve the experience of their customers?

Never assume that other people have your expectations, and never stop learning and adapting to your customers’ feedback. One way we make sure to deliver on this promise is by running extensive user studies. Last year, our Consumer Research team ran surveys in eight different cities, for example, collecting information and insights about our customers. That’s how we learned that many of our customers keep a separate tab open in their browser just to check distances on Google Maps because they can’t find the feature on our site. By responding to these insights, we can significantly improve the customer experience — in this case, by integrating Google Maps into our site. I often ask my team how we can make our searches that much more local, that much more precise and that much more delightful for our customers.

We also have a team of data scientists that develop insights from anonymized site searches to understand the most important things people want in a particular city or neighborhood. Then we use that data to tailor the results, accordingly. Say, for example, you’re looking to rent a two-bedroom house in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. When you get the first page of search results, even if you’re a first-time Trulia customer, it reflects what people just like you are seeking.

Posted by Neil Delaney, International SMB Director, Google Apps for Work

Editor's note: From the typewriter to the propelling pencil to our favorite, the world wide web, inventors and innovators from the United Kingdom have brought us brilliant advances that have changed the way we work all around the world. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a handful of stories from disrupters and trailblazers in the UK who are using Google Apps for Work to support their mission while growing at faster and faster speeds. Today, Neil Delaney, International SMB Director for Google Apps for Work, shares insights from a new research report from Google and Deloitte on how cloud technology helps businesses overcome growth challenges.

Fast growth often seems an elusive concept, something a lucky few tech start ups capture for a few fleeting years before slowing to smaller, incremental advances. But a new report we commissioned with Deloitte, Small business, big technology: How the cloud enables rapid growth in SMBs, paints both a more complex and uplifting picture — that small and medium businesses are using cloud technology to overcome growth challenges and scale and grow faster. The research explores the operating practices and strategies of businesses in the United States and Europe with up to 750 employees, and suggests that SMBs should move tools and applications to the cloud in order to free up time, capital and resources, and to establish a platform for sustainable rapid growth. Here are a few of the key insights we discovered.

Cloud technology unlocks faster scaling and growth opportunities Eighty-five percent of SMBs reported that cloud technology enables them to scale and grow faster, while sixty-six percent said that the cloud allows them to outperform against their competitors. It’s this ability to leapfrog other companies and scale rapidly that makes cloud an essential part of any small business’s strategy.

Cloud technology has a bright future Sixty-six percent of companies expect to increase their use of cloud-based technology in the next three years. This is another trend prevalent amongst companies who have gone Google, who begin adopting cloud services early on in their development and, through experimentation and iteration, begin to adopt more and more cloud solutions across their business processes. Businesses using an above average number of cloud services also grow 26 percent faster and drive 21 percent more profit than those that use no cloud tools.

The cloud is favoured by both startups and established companies It’s not just startups that use the cloud as a tool for fast growth: 79 percent of relatively mature companies — those older than 5 years who are growing at less than 10% per year — believe cloud technology enables them to access new markets and revenue streams. This will become even more important as organisations adopt more digital tools in order to expand into new regions or product areas.

Fast growth in action One businesses that knows firsthand the power of embracing digital technology to drive fast growth is Made.com, an online retailer that’s grown to 150 employees across four countries in just four years — and become a household name in the UK along the way. Made.com has relied on Google Apps for Work from its founding days to build a culture of collaboration and innovation, and cites the cloud tools as a key driver in its ability to grow quickly and at scale. “Google for Work” they said recently, “helps us connect, communicate and collaborate.”

Keep your eye on the Google for Work blog over the coming weeks for three more fast growth stories from companies that have gone Google and rapidly scaled the business food chain. You can read the full report on fast growth and the impact of cloud technology on businesses here.

Posted by Chuck Coulson, Google Apps Technology Partnerships

Work today is very different from 10 years ago. Cloud computing, once a new idea, is abundantly available, and collaboration is possible across offices, cities, countries and continents. Drive for Work enables collaboration and content sharing for businesses large and small and helps them share and access their files — even from different cloud applications.

Google Drive extends the reach of business applications by taking content that previously was only available in a single application, and making it available across multiple applications — all while maintaining security. For example:

• Marketing teams can create collateral in Drive that’s accessible for sales reps who spend time in a salesforce automation (SFA) app on their mobile phone. 
• Support reps working in a helpdesk app can use Drive to share a customer-submitted error log with engineers. 
• Accounts payable clerks working in an accounting app can generate an invoice and share the invoice directly with a vendor through Drive. 

To help businesses gain more value from Drive for Work, we’ve partnered with leading Software as a Service (SaaS) application vendors to build deeper integrations with Google Drive. Here are a few examples:

• Freshdesk provides a customer support service that allows helpdesk agents and customers to attach videos, pdfs, screenshots and other files from Drive to their support tickets. (website; blogpost) 
• Insightly provides a CRM system for small businesses that makes it easy to search or browse files in Drive and attach files to the relevant contact, organization, project or opportunity. (website; blogpost) 
• MavenLink provides a project management system allowing Drive users to seamlessly share files in a collaborative project workspace with team members, contractors, and clients. (website; blogpost) 
• Sage One, from The Sage Group plc, offers a small business accounting solution for businesses to manage their finances online, with invoices automatically backed up to Drive for easy sharing and access from any device. (website; blogpost) 
• Smartsheet offers a project management platform where users can attach Drive files to a project so everything is in one place. (website; blogpost) 
• Solve CRM, by Norada, has integrated with Drive so customers can use Google Sheets to manage and report on sales data. (website; blogpost) 
• Xero provides online accounting for small businesses and integrates with Google Drive so employees can easily export and share reports. (website; blogpost) 
• Zoho CRM, by Zoho, allows users to browse their documents from Drive and associate documents to customer information such as contacts, leads, accounts, activities, potentials, cases and more. (website) 

And this is only the beginning. We’ll continue to work with our ecosystem so the most popular applications, and those that are most frequently used within our community, can help businesses store and access all of their content in Drive.

If you’re a developer and would like to learn more about our APIs that enable you to extend the functionality of the Google Apps platform check out developers.google.com. For a list of cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps, please visit the Google Apps Marketplace.

Posted by Samir Desai, CEO, Funding Circle

Editor's note: From the typewriter to the propelling pencil to our favorite, the world wide web, inventors and innovators from the United Kingdom have brought us brilliant advances that have changed the way we work all around the world. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a handful of stories from disrupters and trailblazers in the UK who are using Google Apps for Work to support their mission while growing at faster and faster speeds. Today we hear from Samir Desai Co-founder and CEO of Funding Circle, the world’s leading marketplace for small business loans.

At Funding Circle, we’ve built the world’s leading marketplace for individuals to lend money directly to small and medium-sized businesses in the US and the UK. Since our launch in 2010, we've experienced rapid growth, lending more than half a billion dollars to over 5,500 businesses. Google Apps for Work equips our teams to work across geographies which keeps business strategy on track as the company grows. Today, I’ll share four insights that are relevant for other businesses looking for growth opportunities.

1. Use data to your advantage
We use a combination of data and risk analytics to effectively grade our loans in more detail than traditional lending institutions and to differentiate ourselves from what other banks offer. Because of our deep analytical understanding, we can offer loans to businesses that banks might turn away. We also publish the performance of every loan we’ve ever originated on our marketplace so this information is downloadable to investors. As a result, we’ve attracted 30,000 individual investors, the Government, 10 local councils, a university and a range of financial institutions, who are all willing to lend their money because of how transparent we are about performance.

2. Invest in technology that allows your business to scale and grow
We’ve embraced the cloud from the outset. We select technology that enables us to save money, increase productivity and collaboration, like Google Apps for Work. Google Docs and Sheets are particularly valuable tools for the press releases and centralised documents we edit and share across geographies. For example, we recently announced our latest funding round of $65 million and our communications team, based in the UK and US worked very closely together. Docs and Sheets allowed them to collectively craft a strong story about the announcement and share updates. We are using Google Hangouts to help our UK and US offices keep in touch. The tech team is often in Hangouts as they review our web platform and refine our code. The collaborative and inexpensive nature of Hangouts also helps us save money when it comes to travel. The immediacy you get from Hangouts connects you when it matters, where ever you are.



3. People work better when they socialise together
We set out to create a place where people want to work. We bring smart people together and offer them a place to tackle large challenges, and have fun. Our offices are equipped with gaming consoles, ping pong tables, our beloved mini-bar ‘Fundabar’, as well as breakout areas where quick meetings can happen away from your desk. Nurturing the working environment can create a fabric that connects employees even when they’re new to the team. People work better when they socialise with each other and spend their valuable time in a comfortable office environment.

4. Reflect constantly to reinvent how you grow
We’re relentlessly assessing how to reinvent the company and change things. As we grow in size it’s important to avoid being complacent. We maintain a startup culture of moving fast and trying new things. Just because we’ve done things a certain way for the last 6 months or even 4 years, doesn’t mean there isn’t suddenly a better, more efficient way of moving forward. It’s better to take cues from what doesn’t test well, such as a marketing channel or a particular part of the website, and change course rapidly, putting the company in a better position to capture better results and offer a better service. We’re committed to providing the best experience for our customers. This only happens with a constant evaluation of the service and a neverending drive for efficiency.

Editor's note: We’re counting down to Atmosphere Live with a series of interviews from speakers who will be featured at the interactive online event. Today, we hear from Steve Cadigan, Founder & CEO of Cadigan Talent Ventures, who is moderating our session on HR’s culture of innovation. Learn more and register for Atmosphere Live, which takes place on October 1st, here.

How has technology changed the culture of the companies you've worked or consulted for?

Technology is changing the culture of transparency. Not long ago, management decisions were rarely challenged or explained, and those who questioned them often expected and received repercussions for doing so. Now, employees expect management to share information about all facets of the business, while management expects its staff to roll up more information in return. And the companies that value the flow of knowledge between roles and teams are winning at a faster clip than those that hold decisions close. Why? Since things change so quickly, the more intelligence that flows through organizations, the better their decision-making process becomes. With the proliferation of internal collaboration and communication tools, like Jive and Salesforce.com Chatter, along with social network streams like Google+ and Twitter, companies can collect intelligence across a variety of topics and make more informed plans and strategies.

Do you live by any principles or mantras when it comes to defining your strategy for using technology to drive HR forward?

This is a hot button topic for me. Throughout my career, I’ve found HR systems and HR technology frustrating. I firmly believe that talent is the biggest driver of value creation, but many people systems are just poor add-ons to company’s financial systems — awful, counterintuitive user interfaces that do more to impede productivity than improve the employee experience. When I worked at LinkedIn, for example, a while back our engineers were so frustrated with some of the HR "tools" that they asked if they could build some of their own.

With that in mind, I try to follow a few simple principles when it comes to HR:

1. Be clear on the problem you’re solving, and engage end users in product development or selection
2. Make using the systems highly intuitive
3. Try to have a consistent feel and platform so the experience is consistent

What do you most look forward to in the year ahead in your field?

What excites me most is the groundswell of recognition that talent is the single largest driver of value creation for organizations — from companies building out their HR strategies to venture capitalists and private equity shops investing in talent solutions. Predictive analytics is going to move from being two fancy buzzwords into an unignorable term for companies that are serious about growing their talent.

I’m also excited about the direction of performance management as we unlock more truly analytical employee insights. We have a lot to learn from professional sports — it’s the only profession in the world today where everything is truly and meticulously measured. Most companies grade performance on gut feel and highly subjective intelligence. Reviews often read like this: "I think Sally is a good leader because I see her motivate her team, she is crisp in our 1-1’s, and her team meets its goals." What if we could measure the career progressions of everyone who worked for Sally and see an arc that looks different than those who worked for a peer manager? What if we put an index next to the projects that Sally worked on that showed if they were mission critical projects, or projects where the odds of success were low? I don’t think we’re far from realizing this reality as more companies are building technology to help us track more human performance data than ever before.

Posted by Ning Li, CEO, Made.com

Editor's note: From the typewriter to the propelling pencil to our favorite, the world wide web, inventors and innovators from the United Kingdom have brought us brilliant advances that have changed the way we work all around the world. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share a handful of stories from disrupters and trailblazers in the UK who are using Google Apps for Work to support their mission while growing at faster and faster speeds. Today we hear from Ning Li, Co-founder and CEO of Made.com, an online retailer that offers designer furniture at affordable prices.

Made.com was born in 2010 out of a desire to provide designer furniture for anybody, without a compromise on quality. We think customers pay too much for nice furniture, so we cut out the middleman for the furniture we love. Pieces like the Fonteyn Coffee Table and Lulu Scoop Chair reveal our eclectic, contemporary design selections that don’t demand a high price tag.

Along the way, we’ve sought to disrupt the traditional furnishing industry model, which typically relies on long product cycles, large floor room displays and a slow turnaround. We produce a new design every two weeks — quite fast for a furniture company — and rely on sales data to frequently adjust our inventory — most of which is online. We’ve established a culture that celebrates speed and innovation, and we rely on Google Apps for Work to help our team connect, communicate and collaborate as effectively as possible.

We began using Google Apps during our humble beginnings as three co-founders in a four square-meter room. With no IT staff, Google provided an easy to use technology foundation that has kept pace with our rapid growth to the present day. Now we have more than 150 staff members in four countries, who use Gmail and Calendar as part of our daily routines. Their integration keeps us in sync and on track for meetings with suppliers, designers and our logistics partners.

Since we’re a very visual business communicating quickly about creative decisions is key. Google Drive takes away the frustration of being out of the office, especially when some of our employees travel throughout the world finding furniture designs. Whether it’s reviewing and directing new design concepts in Google Slides or browsing through new trends, our employees have the freedom to work wherever they may be and access the same information they would in the office.

If you’re going to disrupt an industry you need to outpace the competition and constantly delight customers like we’re doing today. You need to work in seamless new collaborative ways with tools that are quick, efficient and simple. For that we look to Google Apps for Work.

Posted by Ego Obi, Global Lead of Access for Education in Emerging Markets

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

What if students and teachers from around the world could work on projects together in real-time without ever leaving their classrooms? Pope Francis recently joined students in Australia, Cameron, Israel, Turkey and South Africa for a Hangout on Air to celebrate the launch of Scholas―a new education initiative sponsored by the Vatican that aims to connect 500,000 schools across the world to enable e-learning and remote teaching using Google tools.

A social component of the platform uses Google Hangouts to connect students and teachers globally, so if students at a middle school in Ghana want to learn what it’s like to be a student their age in Peru, they can teach each other through an open and collaborative environment. Schools can also post shared projects on the platform, like the “40 Days of Hope” project by Seton Catholic High School, which aims to raise $3,000 to provide parasite medication and feed 40 people for a year in Nicaragua.

Later this year, Scholas will integrate more tools through Google Apps for Education and Classroom to create an even more personalized learning experience for each student. The Scholas platform aims to foster education through dialogue because when students can share and communicate openly, there’s no limit to what they can learn.

Posted by Dawn Santone, ‎Manager of Workflow and Technology Integration, CBC

(Cross-posted on the Google Canada Blog)

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Dawn Santone, Manager of Workflow and Technology Integration at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). CBC is Canada’s national public broadcaster and provides a range of radio, television, internet and satellite-based services. See how other forward-thinking organizations are investing in mapping technology and transforming their business: Maps are Going Google.

Canada didn't have a national team at the 2014 World Cup, but our crew at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation knew that wouldn’t stop Canadians from wanting to experience the tournament alongside the rest of the world. Who did our viewers root for? We created a SuperFan Map to spotlight our fans’ unique experiences as they enjoyed the frenzy and excitement in Brazil.

The idea for the SuperFan Map began with a Google Form that we used to survey our fans about their favorite teams. As we looked at their responses, we noticed the diversity of fans — across Canada and across the world. We used this geolocation data to drop pins on a map and visualize where our fans were located when they enjoyed games. We made the map even richer by pulling in photos and videos from Google+, Instagram and Twitter, curated using our #cbcworldcup hashtag.

We knew we wanted to use Google to create the SuperFan Map. The turnaround was quick — we started using Google Maps Engine in the beginning of June and had our map up and running before the first game was played on June 12. It worked consistently, even during major matches and other spikes in traffic.

 The map also connected our fans in a way that went far beyond sport alone: it created a sense of community, from coast to coast to coast in Canada, from Australia to Norway, and dozens of countries in between. We saw an incredible diversity of teams, geographies and faces surface on a single Google Map.

 The SuperFan Map has helped us take engagement further by connecting with fans in real time. A cross-promotion with CBC Music connected our SuperFans with The Beetle Roadtrip Sessions traveling across Canada. We used the map to see where people were cheering, then invited them to celebrate with us. For instance, we held a giant party in Montreal after seeing a high concentration of fans in the area.

We’ve seen how Google Maps can help us better inform our organization and inform our fans about the events that matter to them, no matter where they happen in the world. Beyond helping us connect with our fans, Google Maps helped connect fans with one another.

Posted by Chris Han, product manager, Google Apps Marketplace

Your local hardware store offers something for everyone, just like the Google Apps Marketplace, which features hundreds of third-party apps that complement the suite of tools in Google Apps for Work.

Starting today, employees can install these apps without involving their administrator. Previously, only administrators could install these apps within an organization. So if you work at an organization that uses Google Apps for Work, Google Apps for Education or Google Apps for Government, you now have greater access to apps that help you work faster, more efficiently and collaboratively.

To find and add third-party apps for Google Apps, click the app launcher icon, click More, and click More from Apps Marketplace.

Administrators can adjust the settings that filter and show which third-party apps are available to their organizations from the Admin console (learn more). By default, any user can now install apps from the Google Apps Marketplace—excluding K-12 EDU domains that are defaulted off.

The Google Apps Marketplace has a wide-variety of options, no matter your taste, including Smartsheet for online project management, Freshbooks for accounting, Zoho for customer support, GQueues for to-do lists and more. To find a solution that fits your needs, visit the Google Apps Marketplace. For additional information regarding end user installations, visit our Help Center.

Posted by Jeanne Anderson, SVP of product at DogVacay

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Jeanne Anderson, SVP of product at DogVacay. Based in Santa Monica, Calif., DogVacay is a service that connects dog owners with local pet sitters. Learn how the company partnered with Google Maps to deliver localized pet sitting services.

At DogVacay, we help people find the perfect home away from home for their dogs while they are away. People across the U.S. spend billions of dollars on boarding for their furry friends, and we want to offer a better solution than current commercial options. The way we see it, dogs are happier in a loving home where they receive customized care, rather than sitting in a crate at a kennel with limited human contact.

Our business has struck a nerve — we have more than 15,000 hosts in 3,000 cities across the U.S. and Canada since we launched in 2012. To help pet owners find the best host nearby for their pooches, we use Google Maps.

With Google Maps, which we integrated with the help of SADA Systems, DogVacay allows pet owners to locate hosts nearby simply by typing in a zip code or street address. Potential hosts are pinpointed on an interactive map linking to profiles that detail the pet sitter’s experience, certifications, price and other details. Many of our guests have told us they like the ability to quickly find sitters nearby — sometimes only blocks away. Our Concierge Team has even helped people find dog sitters in their own buildings in New York City.
There’s an enormous number of dog lovers who want to provide excellent care and a loving home for animals while their owners are away. DogVacay and Google Maps makes it easier than ever to find these hosts right in the owner’s neighborhood. In addition, we’ve made the search options extremely customizable to our customer’s needs, offering services to elderly or sick dogs in need of special care.

We’re always looking for ways we can expand our offering, and Google Maps plays a big role in providing hyperlocal services that help keep dogs (and their owners) happy!

Posted by Julie Pearl, Director of Cloud Developer Relations and Partner Engineering, Google

Today at the Google for Entrepreneurs Global Partner Summit, Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President, Technical Infrastructure & Google Fellow announced Google Cloud Platform for Startups. This new program will help eligible early-stage startups take advantage of the cloud and get resources to quickly launch and scale their idea by receiving $100,000 in Cloud Platform credit, 24/7 support, and access to our technical solutions team.

This offer is available to startups around the world through top incubators, accelerators and investors. We are currently working with over 50 global partners to provide this offer to startups who have less than $5 million dollars in funding and have less than $500,000 in annual revenue. In addition, we will continue to add more partners over time.

This offer supports our core Google Cloud Platform philosophy: we want developers to focus on code; not worry about managing infrastructure. Starting today, startups can take advantage of this offer and begin using the same infrastructure platform we use at Google. For example, Headspace is helping millions of people keep their minds healthier and happier using Google Cloud Platform for Startups.

Thousands of startups have built successful applications on Google Cloud Platform and those applications have grown to serve tens of millions of users. It has been amazing to watch Snapchat send over 700 million photos and videos a day and Khan Academy teach millions of students. We look forward to helping the next generation of startups launch great products.

 For more information on Google Cloud Platform for Startups, visit http://cloud.google.com/startups.

Posted by Carl Schachter, VP of Sales, Google for Work

The workplace is undergoing a significant shift away from the old, isolated cubicle to an always connected, collaborative approach. More people than ever are working together from any device or place, with cloud-based tools that help them connect, collaborate and quickly bring ideas to life.

On October 1st, innovative business leaders and tech experts will explore this trend and the future of work at Google’s first Atmosphere Live event. In true digital fashion, we’re taking a fresh approach by hosting it entirely online, sparing attendees the travel and hassle of typical conferences. We’re turning a traditional in-person event into an any-person experience. You’ll get the chance to participate and interact by voting, asking questions and using our social media visualizer—all from the comfort of your desk, couch or anywhere else. The future is about working how you want, so we’re bringing you that freedom as you learn and take part with your peers.
The agenda includes Google’s Sundar Pichai talking about bringing game-changing products to market; Claire Hughes Johnson discussing Google [X] moonshot thinking for self-driving cars; Urs Hölzle on next-generation cloud technology; and Vivek Wadhwa talking about inspiring workplaces. Breakout sessions will focus on human resources, marketing, IT and product development, featuring the insights from forward-thinkers from Trulia, All Saints, Whirlpool, Avery Dennison and Chico’s. They’ll weigh in on subjects ranging from employee productivity to customer engagement to workplace technology in the age of Cloud Computing.

We hope you’ll join us for one of our biggest work events of the year. So charge your devices, mark your calendars for October 1st and share your thoughts, impressions and questions using #atmosphere14 on social media. Register today and we’ll see you there.

Posted by: Alan Warren, Vice President, Engineering

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog, Google Drive Blog and the Google for Education Blog.)

Imagine trying to keep track of another person’s real-time edits in a document—using only your ears. Or trying to create a table from spreadsheet data—without being able to clearly see the cells. Whether you’re backing up a file in Drive or crunching some numbers in Sheets, it should be easy to bring your ideas to life using Google’s tools. But if you’re blind or have low vision, you may need to rely on assistive technologies such as screen readers and Braille displays—and that can make working in the cloud challenging. While screen readers can parse static webpages (like this blog) relatively easily, it’s much harder for them to know what to say in interactive applications like Google Docs because the actions they need to describe are much more complex.

With these reasons in mind, today we’re announcing some improvements to Drive and all our editors—Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms—specifically designed with blind and low-vision users in mind.
Improved screen reader support in Drive and Docs 
In June, we introduced a new version of Drive that’s sleeker, easier to navigate and much faster. But just as importantly, the new Drive also includes better keyboard accessibility, support for zoom and high-contrast mode and improved usability with screen readers.

Across Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings and Forms, you’ll find that it’s now much easier to use a screen reader, with nicer text-to-voice verbalization and improvements to keyboard navigation. You’ll also notice other updates, including:

• Support for alt text on images in Docs, so you can tell a screen reader what they should say to describe an image 
• Better support for using a keyboard to edit charts and pivot tables in Sheets 
• Additional screen reader improvements specifically for Docs, Sheets and Slides, including support for spelling suggestions, comments and revision history 
• The ability to quickly search the menus and perform actions in Docs, Slides and Drawings (and soon Sheets and Forms)—even if you don’t know the action’s key sequence 
  

Collaborating with others is easier too: in Docs, Sheets, Slides or Drawings, screen readers announce when people enter or leave the document, and you’ll now also hear when others are editing alongside you.

Refreshable Braille display support 
If you use a Braille display, you can now use it to read and enter text in Docs, Slides and Drawings. Even if you don't use a Braille display, with Braille support, your screen reader’s settings for character echoing are automatically followed. Enabling Braille also dramatically reduces the lag between when you press a key and when it’s announced by your screen reader, and improves the announcements of punctuation and whitespace. Learn how to enable Braille support in our Help Center.

Get up and going faster
The first time you use a screen reader or a Braille display, getting up to speed can be a daunting task. But it’s simpler with new step-by-step guides for Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms and Drawings.
You can also access the in-product “Help” menu at any time without interrupting your work, or use the updated shortcut help dialog to easily search through keyboard shortcuts if you don’t remember them.

Finally, we’re offering phone support for Google Drive accessibility questions. If you get stuck, visit support.google.com/drive to request a phone call and someone from our team will reach out to you.

What’s next
As Laura Patterson, CIO, University of Michigan puts it, "The latest improvements in Google Drive and Docs for users of assistive technology are a major step forward and exemplify Google's commitment to making their products available to all members of our community.” We’re pleased the community has welcomed these improvements, and will continue to work with organizations to make even more progress.

Everyone, regardless of ability, should be able to experience all that the web has to offer. To find out more about our commitment to a fully accessible web, visit the new Google Accessibility site at www.google.com/accessibility.

Posted by Clayton Jones, Product Manager, Google for Work

Marvel and DC Comics, Star Wars and Star Trek, Emacs and VI—we all have our favorites. And then there’s iOS and Android, each with dedicated fans. Regardless of which you prefer, there’s no reason your device of choice should get in the way of your work.

 Alongside our Android device management solution, we’re introducing iOS Sync for Google Apps giving you and your company the increased security needed to protect your files, emails, documents and more on your favorite iOS phone or tablet. iOS Sync is integrated right into the Gmail and Google Drive apps for iOS, so you don’t have to take any action to download an additional app. And iOS Sync will support iOS 7, 8 and, of course, the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

 As part of iOS Sync, you’ll get the following additional security measures:

• Manage Google Apps: Set a policy that prompts employees to enroll their device when they log into Google Apps such as Google Drive and Gmail. 
• Configure WiFi networks: Distribute WiFi passwords and certificates to employees so they can easily connect to trusted networks. 
• Support for existing policies: Manage password requirements, data encryption and camera policies, as well as actions like remotely wiping a device, activation approvals and blocking devices. 

iOS Sync will be available for Google Apps for Work, Google Apps for Education and Google Apps for Government beginning next week. Administrators should go to the Admin console to enable these new functions.

Work from anywhere, safely on your favorite device while keeping your work information secure with Google’s mobile management tools.

Posted by Bhagwat Patil, Head IT of EMCO Limited

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is Bhagwat Patil, Head IT of EMCO Limited. Read more about EMCO’s move to Google Apps here.

As one of the leading players in energy transmission and distribution, EMCO Limited sees immense opportunities in India’s rising power sector. With the country’s energy demand expected to reach over 315 gigawatts by 2017, the industry is currently valued at more than $600 billion. In order to meet this opportunity, we need a digital collaboration strategy that allows us to keep pace with the market.

EMCO Limited’s solutions and products are marketed to over 50 countries worldwide so we interact constantly with our overseas partners and customers to collaborate and innovate across product lines and business segments. We compared various technology solutions and tested them for security and remote access for our employees. Encouraged by the positive results and employee feedback, we decided that Google Apps for Work would be the best fit for our business.

With Google Apps, employees feel better equipped to run projects across country borders. They can respond to customers faster and collaborate with team members easily. The management is able to access shared information about project timelines and progress to stay on top of multiple projects. Our employees are no longer strapped to their desktops and laptops. With Google Apps available on mobile devices, we can respond to customers and partners, across time zones, from anywhere and at any time. Using Google Hangouts, our teams can now conduct group video conferences worldwide. Anytime there’s an issue to resolve, we can quickly jump onto a Hangout, regardless of where team members are located. This has reduced our overseas communication costs.

We also share large file-size plans and proposals through Gmail and Google Drive. Previously, we were concerned that data sitting on users’ local drives could not be adequately accounted for in the event of computers being compromised or damaged. Google Apps alleviated this concern. With our data stored in the cloud and not on-premise, we feel better prepared to address challenges like hardware failure or even natural disasters. On the backend, Google Apps’ cloud-based model resulted in significant time and cost savings. Previously, the IT team spent a lot of time backing up data for storage and recovery purposes. Google helped take this task off the team, freeing them up for more strategic tasks.

Overall, Google has helped us to communicate better. Google Apps offered us a single, cost-effective platform to stay connected with employees, partners and customers anytime, anywhere. With Google Apps powering our business, we at EMCO are confident about strengthening our business in India and across the globe.

Posted by Hidetomo Aramaki, Vice President of Innovation & IT Strategy, ANA Group

Cross posted on the Google for Work Japan blog

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Hidetomo Aramaki, Vice President of Innovation & IT Strategy at ANA Group (All Nippon Airways, Co., Ltd.), a Japan-based airline operating more than 1,000 flights each day.

As Japan’s largest airline we have lots of moving parts to manage. And we don’t just mean planes and passengers. We’re a global organization with more than 40 departments across the world. While we’ve always had a strong sense of teamwork, we’ve run up against some walls as our company has grown. So in March 2013 we switched to Google Apps for Work so all our 49,000 people - in the air, on the tarmac and in our offices — could use a communications and IT platform that supports our culture.

The move was a big part of our broader “Work Style Innovation” program which is designed to connect our employees around the world as one team and provide better service to our customers. Since moving to Google tools, we’ve been able to launch some new initiatives with a level of staff input that was previously unimaginable. It used to be difficult to get input from multiple departments on big projects, but now we can upload project documents to Google Drive and teams can simultaneously make edits and instantly share issues. This was very helpful when we overhauled our international flights reservation system — a company-wide project.

The ability to connect departments and employees around the world was also key during the redesign of our new uniform. This was the first change to our uniform in 10 years, and we found it really easy to share designs and pictures of staff wearing uniforms through Gmail and Drive with our New York-based designer. No matter where we were, or what device we were on, we could make adjustments to files and discuss everything from breathability to elasticity with Google Hangouts.

Being able to access files from anywhere using Google Drive has been great for our safety teams too. If maintenance staff at Haneda Airport see a problem they’re not sure how to solve, they take a picture of it right from the tarmac with a tablet and share it with the global team. Other maintenance and safety experts review the images and can give advice from wherever they are. The new process results in problems getting fixed faster and an overall increase in our safety standards.

As well as improving work processes and communication, tools like Google+ have been great for supporting internal communication. We have some really active Google+ communities for working mothers and fathers to share stories, advice and experiences.

Our industry demands information at jet speed. Google Apps helps our employees share ideas, opinions and updates no matter where in the world they happen to be, so that time zones and language barriers don’t hinder our ability to work well together and we can better serve the customers who fly with us.

Posted by Chris Lindland, CEO and Founder of Betabrand

Since launching in 2010, Betabrand has sought to upend preconceptions of what constitutes a clothing brand by pairing original apparel with a spirit of innovation and a strategic sense of humor. Clothes like Executive Hoodies and Dress Pant Yoga Pants aren’t mere novelties — they’re products people love, and they’ve helped Betabrand establish itself as a fashion innovator. We try to foster a work culture as cutting-edge as our clothing designs, and we do it with the help of Google Apps for Work.

We didn’t have much experience in the apparel industry at first, but we did have a vision of a new style of clothing company, one that constantly beta-tests products, fashion photography and design ideas. Now, we now have more than $8 million in annual sales, a 50-person office in San Francisco and designers from around the world pitching new ideas every day. Our success is predicated on a digital business model and a work culture that fosters frequent communication and collaboration between employees, designers and clients.

We operate quickly with an agile, crowdsourced product cycle that takes an idea from concept to sale in anywhere from three weeks to three months. (To put this in perspective, the traditional fashion-industry cycle typically takes 12-16 months). It starts with both independent and in-house designers creating design concepts. We then elicit feedback from our fans in our Think Tank, launch the designs they like into crowdfunding and, ultimately, turn the most popular prototypes into actual products. Every week, we launch 5-7 new experimental products.
As a fast-moving business with even faster-paced product cycles, we need tools to complement and enhance the way we work. Google Apps for Work was the obvious choice. Since employees at Betabrand are tied to their phones, we depend on the mobile features of Gmail and Calendar every day. In addition, Google Hangouts helps us communicate with designers and easily share design-concept visuals.

With Google, we’re not tied to sharing a product only in its final form — we have our entire production timeline on a spreadsheet that people throughout the company reference and edit. We now easily collaborate with employees at our offices down the street and with designers from around the world.

Google helps us maintain our streamlined product cycle and, more importantly, our focus on innovative fashion, like the NASA-inspired Space Jacket and Disco Hoodies made with pure shimmering “disconium.” If you’re going to set out to revolutionize an industry, you need your team to work in a revolutionary way — with tools that are familiar and that make collaboration seamless. Google for Work lets us do just that.

Posted by Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman

Work is where you spend a lot of your time. So we’ve always believed that it should be meaningful—not a daily grind, done in isolation on an old desktop in a sea of cubicles. Even more, we believe that technology should make work better. It should make it easy not just to get things done, but to get things done with people who inspire you, at the times and in the places where you work best, and in a way that lets you make an impact, no matter what your job is, or what industry you’re in.

Ten years ago, we started bringing Google’s consumer technology—along with the features, controls and services businesses need—to work. We first brought search and then Gmail to businesses. Today we also offer the scale and reliability of Google’s infrastructure to developers with Google Maps and Google Cloud Platform, and have extended into hardware with Android and Chromebooks. Along the way we’ve invested in what matters to our customers and partners—security, transparency, compliance and customer support. And our team, the breadth of our offerings, and our commitment to business customers have all increased substantially.
Work today is very different from 10 years ago. Cloud computing, once a new idea, is abundantly available, and collaboration is possible across offices, cities, countries and continents. Ideas can go from prototype to development to launch in a matter of days. Working from a computer, tablet or phone is no longer just a trend—it’s a reality. And millions of companies, large and small, have turned to Google’s products to help them launch, build and transform their businesses, and help their employees work the way they live. In other words, work is already better than it used to be.

But technology for the workplace isn't just about a better way of doing business. It's about empowering anyone, whether they're a developer with an idea in their basement or a baker with a better cupcake or a company with thousands of employees, to have an impact. We never set out to create a traditional “enterprise” business—we wanted to create a new way of doing work. So the time has come for our name to catch up with our ambition. As of today, what was called Google Enterprise is now, simply, Google for Work. When we use the tools that make our lives easier—Google Apps, Maps, Search, Chrome, Android, Cloud Platform and more—work gets better. And that’s what we’re working on—the best of Google, now for work.