Google Enterprise…your very own Google in a Box

Google has been hard at work developing their Google Enterprise business. They have advanced their customizable search hardware and software to make them more affordable for the smaller enterprise and to give users a boost in functionality:

Universal Search

Google released the first version of their Google Search Appliance back in 2002 as an internal search solution for businesses. The plug and play box enables employees to search their intranet for internal company information and helps businesses optimize search on their public sites by hosting their searching capabilities; basically it’s Google in a box. This years Google released their fifth edition of the hardware and software along with a vamped up mini-me version for the smaller firm; the aptly named ‘Google Mini Search Appliance’. Both machines allow businesses to search over 220 different file types in one simple Google style search supposedly increasing employee efficiency by lessening the time searching for items as well as increasing user adoption as there will be less need for training. The most affordable mini me version costs $2,990 and holds up to 300,000 documents. The big one is slightly more expensive starting at a cool $30,000 but does hold up to 30 million documents and can search up to 50,000 documents.

Website Search

The mammoth search engine has also enabled businesses to easily create customizable searches for their own websites where the business defines what pages will be searched and how the search results appear (well, text and background colour for now). The business signs up to the service then selects the site from Google’s index that should be included in the search, customizes the search, imbeds the code and then, hey presto, you have your very own Google search on your website. Of course this is accompanied by a bit of Google branding and Google’s very own ads which magically disappear for the princely sum of $100 a year.

Google Apps

Google has also advanced their Google Apps package for enterprises. The package of customizable applications is based around Google’s very own Gmail. Enterprises can use domain names as their Gmail address, instantly chat with contacts and personalize their home pages. A new and slightly scary addition is an email detection function where Gmail detects when an email is about an event and then suggests adding it to your diary.

by Peter Jackson from 77Academy

I like it!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Google Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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