MC+A

Yesterday on their Google Apps Blog, Google announced a web clipboard for Google Docs. This is the first great step in getting similar thick client functionality. My “holy grail” request is to actually get a web clip board so that I can simply paste say an image I’m working on into Google Docs or Google Wave and have everyone be able to see it. Below or some screen shots of it in action.

Google has released a new software update for version 6.2.  The most notable fix in this release is for the GSA mirroring feature.  Additionally, there are about 14 documented updates. 

Our support customers will be contacted by MC+A support to schedule a time to perform the upgrade.  Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

The MC+A team will be hosting a webinar to discuss the new features of the recently released Google Search Appliance version 6.2 software. We will be covering the business impact of these features and making recommendations for upgrading your appliance.

More Information

OpenPipline is an open source software project for crawling, parsing, analyzing and routing documents.  I joined the board of advisors a while back and I’m happy to say that I’ve finally got around some time to put effort into really contributing.  The goal is to develop a standard framework for developing enterprise search applications.  Enterprise search products have similar architectures yet they are typically incompatible with one and another.  Something developed for one…can not be processed by another.

We’ve started out building on a commercial release of the pipeline processor and have begun to integrate it with some of our Google Search Appliance customers.  For them, this tool provides the ability to convert document types that are not support by the GSA or other extraction techniques.  It really depends on the requirements.

Our first contribution to the project is a commercial release of a stage that publishes the item from OpenPipeline to a Google Search Appliance.  By combining the technologies, you get an open text processing framework along with Google’s powerful algorithm.

Stay tuned for some interesting updates!

We believe in the benefits of effective search. At MC+A, search is more than an add-on or after thought. We strongly feel that search should be at the core of your IT efforts to help you work better. It today’s market, even with talk that the worst is behind us, reducing cost of technology investments is important. IT investments need to produce results and justify their cost.

Along these lines we’re proud to announce a new Search Hardware Renewal Program, design specifically to help our current Google Search Appliance users to renew their solution along with the services they need to maximize their return on investment. Effective November 1st we’re offering all renewing Google Search Appliance customer a discount on our renewal hardware packaged with our Search Best Practices service review. We are hoping to help our clients continue their enterprise search initiatives, maintaining a substantial ROI and competitive edge due to less wasted time and resources searching for documents.

What is the Search Hardware Incentive Program?
The program is straight forward. Current customers will have an opportunity to trade in their old end of license GSA for a discount credit toward their renewal.

Simply turn in your old GSA for a brand new yellow box (GB-7007 running version 6.0) and MC+A will provide a 10% discount on renewal hardware with our Search Best Practices package. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

What is in it for you?
Keeping up with the latest Google search technology. There have been three major releases in the past 12 months and a new appliance platform the GB-7007.

MC+A implementation experience. Over 75 implementations in the past two years. We’ll help you maximize your ROI and leverage your search technology so that you’re effectively using it shortly after your purchase.

So, how does it work?

1. Inform your sales rep that you would like to take advantage of SHIP.
2. MC+A will process your hardware renewal and execute the SBP review.
3. Once your new hardware is up and running. MC+A will process your hardware trade in. We’ll even cover the shipping for your old GSA.

Truly see what the Google Search Appliance can do for you an your business. Renew today.

Google Search Appliance customers typically find value in the product

In August, we published our first public survey here.   Our goal was to explore how many of the basic features of the Google Search Appliance were being implemented by customers of the product.  We promised to share the results of the survey when we completed it.  After 6 weeks, we’ve decided to wrap up this survey and begin to start planning for the next one next quarter.  Here are the results are our observations of the survey.

Summary

At the time of this writing, only 18 responses were received.  The number of responses received makes the survey generally statistically insignificant.  However, the responses fall in line with our previous expectations.  We also feel that most of the responses were from our customers and not of the general population of Google Enterprise customers.  This would mean that that would be mostly in the United States and a systems integrator would have more involvement with them then of a typical Google Enterprise customer.

Overall,

• Customers think the Google Search Appliance provides value
• Customers are typically not investing significantly in their implementation(beyond the cost of the GSA).
• Customers are not using OneBoxes.
• Most customers could be using their appliances to crawl more content.

We’ll begin to create another survey in October, conduct it in November and publish it in December.  If you have input for the survey, please contact us.

A few weeks back Google announced a “Welcome Package” for new customers who purchase a Google Search Appliance with a 1 Million document license. As a Google Enterprise Partner we are excited to be participating in this promotion.

Return on Information
We believe very strongly in enabling clients to manage their technology solutions, and because of this have always offered and strongly suggested our Jumpstart services to all our clients. What is exciting about this promotion is that new customers will be getting 2 days of consultation on getting your Google solution up and running, for FREE.

The Specifics
From Google:
“With this ROI JumpStart, new GSA users will accelerate their onboarding experience, from purchasing to deploying to getting relevant results to end users. Our partners will work with your team on site for two days, at no cost to you, sharing proven expertise and the GSA’s out-of-the-box results and getting your new GSA indexing repositories across your organization.”

Interested in more information about the ROI Jumpstart Offer?
Contact MC+A and we’ll be happy to discuss the Jumpstart in detail.

MC+A has announced that it will be sponsoring a CIO Chicago event in partnership with CIOsynergy.

Security is always a major area of interest in the enterprise. The event will feature Frank Abagnale, security and fraud expert, whose life was made famous by the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can. The evenings presentation and discussion will center on the latest technologies for detecting and preventing cybercrime.

“E-Discovery and effective knowledge management are at the heard of technologies providing insight into information that would otherwise be ignored. We’re happy to participate again with CIOsynergy Chicago to bring great speakers into Chicago to discuss topics that matter,” said MC+A President Michael Cizmar.

It should be an informative and entertaining evening. For more information on this and all MC+A event be sure to check out our events page.

Google will be hosting a webinar on August 13th in support of their “Gone Google” campaign. The webinar will review of University of Notre Dame’s switch to Google Apps.

You can register for the Webinar here.

Webinar Info:
Date and time:
Thursday, August 13, 2009 10:00 am
Pacific Daylight Time (GMT -07:00, San Francisco)
Thursday, August 13, 2009 12:00 pm
Central Daylight Time (GMT -05:00, Chicago)
Thursday, August 13, 2009 1:00 pm
Eastern Daylight Time (GMT -04:00, New York)

Duration: 1 hour

Legal Services of Northern California, has recently published their 18 month.  Their project included initiatives other than simply installing a GSA.  Some of the concluded outcomes were:

• Between the initial phases of the project and its completion the overall success rate of users in locating the information they were looking for improved from 73% to 90%
• The project integrated: Google Docs, Google Analytics, Microsoft SharePoint

The Report can be found here:

http://www.findabilityproject.org/