Manymoon and Versus Technology

Manymoon is a leading project collaboration application built specifically for customers who utilize secure online tools. Manymoon makes it simple to organize tasks, documents, events, and links with coworkers, customers, and partners. By seamlessly integrating with Google Apps, Manymoon helps organize and track projects so that anyone can efficiently collaborate and reduce email clutter.

Versus Technology Inc. is a leading provider of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and Infrared (IR) patient locating solutions for healthcare facilities, providing patient tracking, patient flow management, asset tracking, and real time locating services. Established in 1988, Versus has sold its solutions to more than 500 healthcare facilities, and tracks more than one million patients annually.


Challenge
Versus Technology works directly with their largest healthcare customers to implement RTLS on-site at their facilities, and thus, Versus employees often work remotely and across multiple customer locations. Delivering a successful and on-time implementation requires smooth communications between remote Versus project managers, customer contacts and Versus headquarters.

Versus traditionally used a wide array of files and applications to manage projects. Mindmapping software was used during project meetings with customers to take notes of open issues, spreadsheets tracked customer issues, email messages shared information among project members, and specialized desktop collaboration software was used to distribute project spreadsheets and documents.

But this approach came with some challenges, since these files resided locally on each person's computer and people often lost track of the correct document version to use. It was also difficult to use these solutions with customers and remote workers. As a result people often resorted to using email to communicate open items for each customer project. Multiple emails would then have to be sent just to collect comments or send reminders and the end result was lost productivity while working across multiple customer projects.


Solution
Versus chose Manymoon to streamline the process of tracking open tasks associated with each customer installation.

Manymoon is a project collaboration application that allows anyone to quickly set up an online project, invite people within and outside the organization, begin assigning tasks and sharing documents with each other, and ultimately track activity towards completion of a project. Manymoon's built-in security means that only people invited to the project can view associated tasks, comments and documents. The project administrator can set permissions to determine which people can view project information and who has administrative capabilities.

Because there's no software to install, it's easy for Versus employees to bring both colleagues and customers in to a project. With just a browser and an internet connection, anyone can be invited to the project and immediately have access to the most recent project information.


Results
Before using Manymoon, Versus project managers had to collaborate with colleagues and customers and send important data and status updates using email. Now, the average on-site Versus project team has reduced its email burden by approximately 400 emails per week, per project. All information is neatly centralized in Manymoon and easily accessed by all team members, crucial in situations where Versus employees and customers are in different places or using disparate systems. Additionally, Google Calendars and Docs are automatically shared with customers and colleagues within the context of the deliverables and projects to which they relate.

Liz MacManus, Implementation Project Manager at Versus says, "Manymoon has allowed us to efficiently track a large number of customer projects without sacrificing customer satisfaction."

ISR and Unicharm

International Systems Research (ISR) was one of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide. ISR’s CloudGate SSO service currently delivers secure single sign-on software and services with advanced capabilities including two-factor authentication and security policy management to thousands of end users.

Unicharm Corporation, established in 1961, has its head office in Tokyo, Japan and is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of household consumer products. The company has almost 7,000 employees worldwide, and annual sales of 3.9 billion dollars. Unicharm’s products include baby and child care products, feminine care products, health care products, cosmetic products, household products, industrial materials, food-packaging materials and more.

Challenge

With the rapid growth of its global business, Unicharm was looking to unify various inconsistent company systems, reduce the cost of system expansion and reduce the workload related to e-mail management. For this purpose, Unicharm entrusted ISR to provide a solution to deploy Google Apps for 3,500 users.

Solution

First, ISR helped Unicharm determine the specifications for a highly secure system that could be easily managed and that would meet their requirements. These requirements included account management, security policy, and address book for the entire system. It was decided to,

• Unify the domain and mail system for the entire company.
• Implement a shared Address book.
• Restrict external access for increased security.

• Establish a security policy that determines password strength and password expiration for users.

• Generate a log to record who accesses the system, when, and where.

Based on these requirements, ISR provided a solution comprising Google Apps Premier Edition, CloudGate SSO and CloudGate Address Book.

ISR set up Google Apps Premier Edition accounts for Unicharm’s users and deployed the CloudGate single sign-on system with customized functions. A special version of the CloudGate Address Book was developed to fulfill the shared address book requirement with LDAP integration so that employee address book information would be updated automatically and seamlessly.

Results

Thanks to the ISR solution, today more than 3,500 Unicharm users can access all of their web applications securely and reliably. Administration costs are significantly lower, and expansion of the system for new business units can now be made easily and effortlessly.

Clear Sight Compliance and The Zonta Club of Cincinnati

Clear Sight Compliance offers platform agnostic consulting and services to establish, enhance, support and monitor corporate compliance programs. Clear Sight Compliance team members have skills in document management, database, business analytics and business intelligence aligning with select partners that offer compliance oriented solutions.

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati has been in existence since 1935 with just under 50 members and supports local causes as well as those from Zonta International. As a service organization, a key challenge is raising funds needed to support their local causes and strive to build a stronger community by improving women's literacy, financial independence, and health.

Challenge

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati needed a way to improve communication within it's board, foster committee collaboration, and relay important information to club members and Zonta International affiliated groups. Relying on personal and work email accounts proved burdensome for the leaders, hindered collaboration and slowed down communications. Laura Delaney, the club webmaster, was also overburdened with a continuous stream of new press releases, calendar updates, and other fresh content that required publishing.

Solution

Enters Clear Sight Compliance (CSC). CSC was engaged by the Zonta Club of Cincinnati and immediately conducted an initial cost study and functional needs comparison which favored the adoption of Google Apps. After seeing a demonstration of the platform, the Zonta Cincinnati webmaster immediately presented the Board of Directors with a summary and a recommendation to engage CSC to move forward with the implementation of the Google Apps. Clear Sight Compliance was quickly able to distribute and federate content creation for the public website and provide the board, subcommittees, and members with powerful collaboration tools to enhance operations, transparency, and efficiencies.

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati had been paying an annual fee for a static website with all content updates resting on the webmaster's shoulders. There was no means by which the board of members could collaborate directly, nor a shared calendar funtion which was important for keeping this disparate group and their schedules coordinated. CSC conducted a cost and function point review to assess appropriateness and ROI.

After project approval, Clear Sight provided implementation services for the 50 member organization, along with web design expertise, integration between Google Apps components and its public web site followed by training services for select "power users". Leading "by example," is President Ellen Spaeth's philosophy with other members to be trained next.

Results

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati was able to provide each member a zonta-cinti.org email, shared calendaring, online chat, an ability to create and collaborate on documents, and more. There is a master events calendar the president is maintaining that is reflected on the public website with much richer detail as a result of Google's standard calendar functionality. The club marketing director is able to create draft press releases, then solicit input and pictures from team members without the confusing exchange of multiple emails with attachments. In addition, the press release housed on Google Docs is distributed to the list of normal press community as before, then quickly available on the public website with the simple creation of a URL link.

Essentially, Zonta Club of Cincinnati was able to dramatically increase its ability to collaborate, communicate, and coordinate its fund raising and project efforts at one-quarter the cost it was costing for a static website alone..... a big win for any nonprofit!

“Our members needed a better means by which to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and share information,” stated Zonta Club of Cincinnati president Ellen Spaeth. “I was ecstatic about an option [Google Apps] that lets us both revamp our public web site AND and improve collaboration for members."

TriCipher and eModeration

TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication and identity management technologies to protect web applications and enterprise portals, the people that use them and the business processes that flow through them against fraud and identity theft. The myOneLogin service from TriCipher combines strong authentication, single sign-on and federation as an on-demand service.

eModeration was founded in 2002, and is a leading international provider of outsourced multilingual community management and user generated content moderation services for US Fortune 500 and top UK based content providers. It works with agencies and clients to protect brands and users from the risks associated with user generated content, and its community management team helps brands to build happy and thriving social media communities. eModeration also moderates and manages children’s virtual worlds and MMOGs.

Challenge

eModeration is a modern, virtual organization, with offices in London, New York and Los Angeles, and expert moderators around the globe. Its entire business is conducted on the web, from moderating its clients' social media sites to collaborating and managing projects. The company uses Google Apps for mail, documents and calendars, and applications like QuickBase and Basecamp for data collection and project management.

With every employee relying on dozens of accounts, the problem of managing account access is significant. For eModeration, the challenge was two-fold:

• Passwords for its own applications: eModeration needed to access shared business applications like Google Apps and Basecamp.
• Accounts on its clients' sites: eModeration also gives its moderators access to accounts on the clients' social media sites, and must protect those logins carefully.

Solution

myOneLogin provides secure single sign-on to eModeration's various web applications, with tight integration to Google Apps Premier Edition. Using myOneLogin, eModeration can distribute online applications to employees and consultants based on their project needs, without having to distribute the actual accounts and passwords.

eModeration often needs employees to share access to specific accounts. For example, a Google Apps account may be linked to a specific project or client rather than an individual user. Using myOneLogin, eModeration's users can have more than one Gmail account available on their myOneLogin page, and gain easy, single-click login without hunting down the right password.

Results

myOneLogin offers secure single sign-on to the company's web applications, including Google Apps. All accounts are protected by multi-factor authentication.

In addition, eModeration is using myOneLogin to access customer website accounts for moderation. The moderator for the project does not need to know the password to access the customer site. myOneLogin adds another layer of security to eModeration's trusted services.

"We take security and privacy very seriously, and work hard to earn and maintain our customers' trust," said Tamara Littleton, founder and CEO of eModeration and member of the Home Office Internet Taskforce for Child Protection on the Internet. "With its strong authentication and centralized control, myOneLogin adds a layer of security to our services, as well as our daily operations. It helps us maintain our trusted relationships with our clients."

Cloud Sherpas and Richline Group

Cloud Sherpas is a cloud computing systems integrator and application developer. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, Cloud Sherpas helps organizations leverage Google Apps and Google App Engine to dramatically reduce IT expenses. The company delivers deployment, change management, support and development services to commercial, enterprise and educational institutions seeking to adopt cloud computing.

Richline Group, Inc. is the USA’s foremost Fine Jewelry Manufacturer and the largest importer of Gold Jewelry. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,the Richline Group was formed in 2007, consisting of the combined operations of Bel-Oro International and Aurafin LLC. Headquartered in New York, the company has globally expanded and acquired other major brands and retailers into its portfolio.

Challenge
As the company thrived, Richline Group acquired a number of smaller businesses in order to grow its customer base and generate more revenue. With the positive growth, however, emerged a bottom-line dilemma. Some of the larger acquisitions ran on rather sizeable IT infrastructures, and Richline Group eventually found itself using four major servers in three different states: New York, Florida, and Rhode Island. Thus, Richline Group began to experience setbacks in both operational efficiency and costs.

The most obvious hindrance was the existence of four different server infrastructures, especially since each server had belonged to once-autonomous companies. Not surprisingly, each server had had its own unique settings, directory tree structures, etc. As a result, one of Richline's biggest problems was that its employees found it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other. Secondly, Richline Group wanted to cut costs, but building a new, larger network infrastructure to connect all four systems was estimated to be an even costlier undertaking.

Solution
Richline Group and Cloud Sherpas decided to consolidate Richline's 750 Outlook users from four different Microsoft Exchange servers to one, simplified solution via Google Apps in order to reduce costs and streamline management. The project required extensive planning, management, and coordination from both Cloud Sherpas and Richline Group management to align all the people responsible for managing the separate infrastructures. Cloud Sherpas also implemented some of Google's provided tools, such as the Google Apps Directory Sync, to successfully collapse the four separate entities into one cohesive, more efficient unit.

Results
As a manufacturer and distributor of precious metal jewelry products that are sold at thousands of outlets across the world, Richline Group knew better than anyone that its core business was not in the maintenance of a progressively complex IT system. After all, the top-line growth from successful acquisitions needs to be supplemented by decreased costs and increased efficiencies which was accomplished with the implementation of Google Apps. Martin Leidich, Network Manager of Richline Group, put it best when he said, "In collapsing four independent IT infrastructures into one reliable source with Google Apps, Cloud Sherpas allowed us to better allocate our human capital, cut major costs, and focus on growing our business."

OffiSync and Correlsense

Customer

Correlsense is the leader in IT Reliability software. The Company has developed the first IT Reliability platform, SharePath, enabling enterprises to automatically generate a central, real-time repository of detailed, contextual knowledge regarding their applications and infrastructure. Using patent-pending technology for tracking and correlating all transactions throughout the datacenter, SharePath is essential in achieving a Reliable IT environment. SharePath’s Reliability Management Database (RMDB) is a key enabler for strategic IT initiatives including Application Performance Management, Capacity Planning, Change Management, Charge backs, Security, and Auditing. Using SharePath, latencies and bottlenecks are quickly located and resolved, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.

Partner

OffiSync marries the traditional "Microsoft Desktop" with Google's cloud to improve the way information workers 1) store, organize and retrieve their work, 2) use web content in documents and presentations, and 3) collaborate with others in real time, all in a streamlined and simplified way. OfficSync's customers are those looking to use Google Apps as their communication and collaboration platform yet are not willing to give up Office on the desktop.

Challenge

As an innovative, agile startup, Correlsense was looking for a way to easily share information with partners and employees. Correlsense wanted to improve the way employees manage their information and collaborate to achieve better productivity across the board, and found Google Apps and Google Docs to be the best platform for their needs:

• Delivered in SaaS with no need to maintain servers
• Ability to access content from any computer through a web browser
• Powerful collaborative capabilities

In order to get the collaborative advantages of Google Apps, users need to start using Google Docs as their productivity suite. Unfortunately, many of Correlsense users were not ready to give up their Microsoft Office on the desktop and standardize on Google Docs, making the adoption of Google Apps in the organization a challenge.

Solution

Correlsense found OffiSync on the Google Solutions Marketplace. OffiSync is a Microsoft Office add-on that adds a new toolbar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (2003, 2007 and 2010) enabling users to save and organize their documents on Google Apps, access their content from any computer, collaborate with others and use Google Search to find documents and web content in seconds.

Results

By using OffiSync, Correlsense has enabled their users to keep using Microsoft Office on their desktops while benefiting from the Google Apps platform to store, organize and access documents. This has streamlined collaboration between Correlsense employees and customers and enabled a mixed environment where some employees use Google Docs as their primary productivity suite while others use Microsoft Office.

"OffiSync has 'supercharged' Microsoft Office with some powerful Google cloud computing capabilities," notes Nir Livni, Director of Product Management at Correlsense. "Our users have new ways to manage their content, access it from any computer, collaborate and more without giving up their applications of choice."

Learn more about OffiSync: http://www.offisync.com

SADA Systems and Wagner College

One of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide and initial contributor to the Google Apps Open Source provisioning tool kit, SADA Systems, Inc. has developed an proven track record in successful implementations of Google Apps solutions for the higher education market. SADA works closely its clients to create custom, leading edge solutions that strategically meet their business and institutional objectives.

Located in Staten Island, New York, Wagner College has distinguished itself for over 100 years. Founded in 1883 as a Proseminary for Lutheran ministers, Wagner College has grown into a national leader in Liberal Arts education. Today over 2,000 students in over 30 academic programs and four graduate departments attend Wagner.

Challenges

When the project with Wagner College started, SADA worked closely with the client to develop a set of requirements. At the beginning, the client had not yet configured a Google Apps Education Edition account, so the first order of business was to assist with the configuration of their account and setting up Google Apps on their domain. In the discovery process for the project SADA and the client worked together to determine the following:

• The set up of the Google Apps account would require configuring it to work with a pre-existing domain.
• The client required a dual delivery configuration during the transition period.
• Project coordination required the creation of a Google Site to manage all details.
  

Solution

After developing a clear set of requirements, SADA worked in partnership with the client to ensure the smooth transition of their existing mail solution to Google Apps. Set up of the Google Apps Education Edition account was completed through SADA's Quickstart service.

• Migration of contacts made use of our custom contact migration tool.
  
• Email migration was handled through IMAP.
  
• Calendar information was migrated using Google Calendar Connectors.
  
• To ensure that no messages were missed, SADA enabled dual-delivery to Google Apps and Exchange.

Result

With SADA's assistance and the implementation of best-of-breed utilities for the deployment of Google Apps, Wagner College was able to smoothly and effectively implement Google Apps for their students and faculty. This implementation of Google Apps will allow Wagner College to gradually transition away from their Exchange mail system, while continuing to provide their users with email service.

"Today we concluded the migration to Google Apps, and I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for the hard work and late hours that your engineers put in. They went above and beyond the call of duty on this project. This was a huge deal for us and I always felt that we were in good hands. I know your team lost quite a few nights and a few weekends to get this done on our schedule and I admire the personal responsibility they took to meet our needs."

- Frank Cafasso, Network Operations, Wagner College