Build IT Together Detroit Wrap Up

Thank you to all who joined us at Grand Circus in Detroit for Build IT Together on October 1, 2013. We're happy to say it was a success with over 20 different companies' CIOs, and Technology Directors coming together to share experiences and collaborate on emerging trends and ever present needs. Congratulations to Eric Spicer, of Plymouth-Canton Community Schools, and Jeff Schefke, of City of Oak Park, who won themselves a Nexus 7 tablet and Samsung 303 Chromebook, respectively. We have already received great feedback and look forward to being involved with future collaboration events.

Philip MacKethan of
University Liggett School testing Google Glass

We all gathered at Grand Circus early Tuesday morning and were able to experience brand new technology including Google Glass & a Double Robotics robot. It was fun to see attendees' reactions to wearing Google Glass, trying out the voice commands and hear the discussions about use-cases for the new form factor. Many discussed practical applications of the device in their environment, from streaming technical specs and hands-free information look-up to training videos for new employees. When it came to the Double robot, the ability to interact with a space and group over long distances seemed to be the most valuable feature.

Getting to Know Each Other

Build IT Together opened with a unique survey allowing attendees to anonymously compare their current IT environment to the rest of the group. This allowed everyone to reflect on areas of improvement, while simultaneously providing connections to others at the event with which to network and learn from. Those in small companies were able to compare their current setup with that of a mid-sized company and glean insights for how to scale. Larger companies were able to see what helped smaller companies remain nimble.

Technology Infrastructure Benchmarking

We're building an IT Assessment Tool to help your organization benchmark your technology infrastructure against industry trends.

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Google Apps Updates [October 2013]

Announcement - Gmail Outage Explanation

On September 23rd, many Gmail users were receiving messages slowly, and some of their attachments were unavailable. The message delivery delays were triggered by a dual network failure, where 2 redundant networks failed. Google has assured us they are taking steps to ensure sufficient network capacity, including backup capacity for Gmail, even in the event of a rare dual network failure. Even including this event, Gmail remains well above 99.9% available, and we intend to keep it that way!

Notable new features include:

• Monitor user logins, storage consumption and apps usage with the Admin SDK
• Quickoffice Acquired - Share & edit files with people that heaven't made the switch to Google Docs.
• Real-time data in BigQuery -using new API calls, you can stream & query real-time data. 
• 4 New Google Form Customizations

Full release notes below...

Protect your Google Apps with e-archiving

Archive and retain emails and chats according to your policies, preventing inadvertent deletions.

• Ensure compliance
• Be prepared for audits
• Prevent deletion
• and more...

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Mobile Security Best Practices

Mobile devices are quickly surpassing traditional computers for more and more of our needs.  As these functions evolve and expand, and we use our wireless tools to access more information, the security risks multiply.

Most companies let employees use their work devices to access personal information or let them use personal devices to access work information. With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices not slowing down, malware infections are on the rise, growing 163% in 2012. Just like the golden days of Netscape Navigator and those AOL discs in the mail, hackers are more than happy to take advantage of this vast new crop of unprotected devices.

But it’s not only hackers we need to guard against. We need to make sure other scenarios are covered, such as What happens when my phone is lost or stolen? Or, How do I prevent a data breach? And, How can I manage all this stuff?  So with all this in mind, let’s go down the list:

Managing Mobile Devices - Platform Reviews

It’s a big world out there. Lots of places to go and people to see. Also, lots of places to lose your mobile device and a fair few people who may want to nab it from you. Fortunately, different developers are coming up with solutions that help you protect your device - or at the very least your data.

Droid Does

First to weigh in, Google has released it’s own device manager for Android devices, called Google Apps Device Policy. You can access this tool from any browser by visiting google.com/apps/mydevices. Installing is super easy: just pull up the app from the Play Store (Or scan the QR code that will display from the device manager on your browser). Once it installs, just ‘add device’ from a browser, sync the device, and you’re good to go.

Chromebooks Updates [Sept 2013]

Announcement

We're always trying to bring more value to our customers. Starting today we'll be sending a summary of all the new features to ChromeOS & the management console as a monthly email newsletter.

We invite you to share this newsletter with all Google Apps users in your organization, and invite them to subscribe, so that they can stay informed about recent updates to get the most out of Google Apps.

Notable new features include:

• Custom Terms of Service - upload your own terms of service agreement
• Disable "Add-User" - Admins can disable the ability for chromebooks users to add new users
• Immersive Mode - which hides toolbar and shelf for a less distracted viewing experience
• Monitor Scaling - which can help free up more screen real estate.
• App Launcher Search Updates - dynamically learn what you search for, apps are more prominent, search web store if you don't have app installed
• Pin Apps to Shelf - Drag & Drop apps to shelf to pin them
• Wallpaper Sync - default wallpaper will now sync across devices

Full release notes below...

Protect Students With Web Filtering

Securly protects students on computers throughout the school while giving them safe access to 21st century learning tools like YouTube, Google and Wikipedia.

• Safe Search
• Safe Social Media
• YouTube for Schools
• and more...

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Taking Advantage of Data

“The most valuable commodity I know of is information.”  - Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (the movie released in 1987)

The time and resource commitments required to calculate a return on investment or determine if conference attendees would prefer a turkey or ham sandwich are much different than they were a generation ago. In fact data-crunching tools are improving at a near constant pace and every few years there are better ones. Because of this new reality the percentage of data-driven decisions we make can and should increase.

Big Important Decisions

There are numerous examples of how really important decisions are being made better and faster because of this new reality, like this TedTalk given by Joel Selanikio: The surprising seeds of a big-data revolution in healthcare, telling the fascinating story of how the introduction of Palm Pilots in 1995 began a revolution in collecting and analyzing data on important global health statistics.

BYOD vs Standardization - SaaS makes it easy

I started this BYOD series to show that the root of this conversation isn't about devices, specifically, but instead business goals. This post, the 3rd installment of the BYOD vs Standardization series, will touch on a few security misconceptions and strategies for becoming device agnostic. If you're not familiar with device standardization head back to the first post of this series, BYOD vs Standardization - Understanding Your Mobile Strategy Pt1. (Understanding the various device policy models can give insight into how to implement what this post will discuss, so check out part 2, BYOD to COPE: The Mobility Spectrum.

What is driving the mobile device discussion?