Why Google?

Read more: Universal Search | End User Experience | Relevancy | Security

Google was founded with a clear vision in mind: To organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. And so the world’s leading search engine was born. It did not take long to realise that to fulfil our mission, we must help organise not only publicly available information, but also the valuable information residing behind corporate firewalls.

Why is it that you can get the “number of steps in the Statue of Liberty” in under a second, and yet, you have to waste so much time finding that old presentation in your intranet, file share or some other place? We believe that your information should be just as easy to find as the stock quotes, weather, movie show times, package tracking and other general information that you are already used to easily finding on Google.co.uk.

Google Enterprise offers a wide range of products to help you organise your corporate information and securely make it available regardless of its location or nature.

Google already enables millions of users a day to find the information “out there” through Google.co.uk. What enterprise customers want to know is – how do we solve the other two problems?

Users are spoiled by the experience and ease of use they get while searching information on Google.co.uk. They wonder why they have to spend so much time looking around in different places for the enterprise information that they need to do their jobs. After all, they can find all the information “out there” through a single box, the Google search interface.

What if you could provide that same experience for your Enterprise information? We are talking not just about your intranet, but also your file shares, your ERP system, your CRM, your calendar application, your BI system and much more.

To be more applicable to your needs, search results can be personalised based on your role or function within the organisation.

The Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini

The Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini are designed to let you search your enterprise information. When used inside your corporate firewall, the Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini make it easy to discover and retrieve the information stored in your corporate intranet, web servers, file servers, content management systems and more. They allow you to discover information stored in more than 220 different file formats and in over 109 different languages.

With the all-new Google OneBox for Enterprise feature, you can easily and securely retrieve real-time information from your business applications – employee directory and calendaring, CRM, ERP and BI systems. All from the familiar, simple Google interface.

Our appliance approach to enterprise search means not only that there are no hidden hardware, software licensing or consulting costs, but also that you can start finding all sort of corporate information in little time after setting up the product. Of course, they are also highly customisable so you can define the look and feel of your internal search destination.

The Google Mini can deliver relevant search across up to 300,000 documents on a website or intranet and includes support for basic document level security. The Google Search Appliance is designed for customers who, in addition to receiving highly relevant results, need to search across a larger set of documents (up to 30 Million), access information stored in third party systems (content management systems, databases, document management systems), require enhanced security integration and need to support a larger number of users. See a detailed list of differences between the Google Mini and the Google Search Appliance.

In addition, you can also use our search appliances outside your corporate firewall - in your websites - to allow visitors to quickly find what they are looking for in your website.

Find out more at one of our Google Search Appliance or Google Mini seminars.

Enabling Secure Universal Search

At Google, we understand that organisations have two kinds of information: that available to anyone behind the firewall and privileged information that is only accessed by a limited subset of people. The Google Search Appliance easily integrates with existing industry standard authentication and authorisation mechanisms – such as LDAP, Active Directory, NTLM, X.509, Kerberos, Single Sign-On systems and more. Access control checks are performed in real-time, thus always guaranteeing that only authorised users view your information. Interested in Security? Read more.

Google Desktop for Enterprise and Google Toolbar for Enterprise

Google Desktop and Google Toolbar for Enterprise represent our answer for solving the last part of the puzzle: helping users find their personal information. Google Desktop for Enterprise makes it easy for users to find the information stored in their hard drive and to view search results from their intranet, Google.co.uk and their own desktop in one single place.

The Enterprise version of these tools allow organisations to centrally control, manage and deploy user features/preferences, encrypt user data in search indexes and enforce document retention policies. For example, the IT department can easily turn off the “Search across all your computers” setting if desired.

And the best part: Google Desktop and Toolbar for Enterprise are distributed as a free download. Google Desktop for Enterprise also has an optional Premium Support package which offers consultation and support in deploying these tools.

Google Earth Enterprise connects geographic data to your people, work and processes by providing a fast and simple to use interface for non-specialist users to explore and interact with massive datasets of your own geospatial data.

Asset tracking, marketing properties and site surveying are a few examples of the business processes that Google Earth Enterprise simplifies. Data only gets used if people can find and consume it – and there is no better way to find and visualise it than with Google Earth!

SketchUp is a simple, amazingly powerful tool for creating, viewing, and modifying 3D ideas quickly and easily. SketchUp was developed to combine the elegance and spontaneity of pencil sketching with the speed and flexibility of today's digital media. The results can be easily combined with and visualised in Google Earth Enterprise.