EchoSign and Patients Know Best

“The entire process is seamless. Both Google Docs and EchoSign help us work more efficiently and more effectively. This makes us look more professional and credible to everyone we work with."

Rippe & Kingston and Purple Trout

Company Overview

In addition to offering Google Apps deployment, integration and customization services for its clients, Rippe & Kingston Systems, Inc. is an Authorized Google Apps Reseller. By purchasing Google Apps Premier Edition accounts through Rippe & Kingston clients engage with an experienced Google Apps partner. Rippe & Kingston solutions focus on delivering a competitive advantage and business flexibility. Rippe & Kingston customers demand sophisticated, global business applications and services with low cost of ownership.

Purple Trout provides state of the art search engine marketing (SEM) services including: Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Search/Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, Social Media marketing, Video Search Engine Marketing, Usability Analysis, Conversion Tuning, Web Analytics, Competitive Analysis and more.

Challenge

Purple Trout enjoys the challenge of rapid growth and dispersed employees and writers across the United States. They decided to implement Google Apps Premier Edition in order to achieve significant cost savings, reduce administration overhead related to managing similar systems, and provide best-of-breed email and collaboration tools to their clients and employees. One major concern was the transition and the "potential" disruption of service even for a few minutes. Compounding the scenario was the need to change some independent contractors to employees and move their separate email accounts as well. With clients communicating primarily via email, they could not afford any issues so they turned to Rippe & Kingston for help with the migration process.

Solution

Rippe & Kingston worked with Purple Trout to migrate their domain and setup all of their employees on Google Apps. Part of the process included:

• Dual delivery of email during set up process
• Bulk provisioning of existing accounts
• Email and Contacts migration for existing users
• IMAP-based email migration for existing users
• POP3 activation and forwarding-configuration so that a sub-set of users can continue to access mail the same way they are accustomed to
• Creation of Nickname accounts

Results

The approach to implementing Google Apps at Purple Trout resulted in a lower than expected impact on its employees during the migration process. Rippe & Kingston established dual delivery for all email accounts so that email was delivered to current accounts as well as the new Google accounts. In addition, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook was used as a safety net since all users were using Outlook. The transition was pain free and everyone has decided independently to use the Google web interface instead of Outlook.

The Google Apps solution implemented by Rippe & Kingston will help Purple Trout save money, but that was not the driving force. "Google is clearly a far superior method of communicating, scheduling and collaborating with my employees and clients" said Steve Phillips, President of Purple Trout. He went on to say, "After one week all of my employees have turned off Microsoft Outlook even though Rippe & Kingston enabled us to continue to use it with Google should we desire. We are focused on client satisfaction and are pleased to say that Google and Rippe & Kingston share the same passion." You can truly say "Purple Trout is Hooked on Google Apps".

LTech and The College of Southern Idaho

Company Overview
LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

The College of Southern Idaho, established in 1965, is a public 2-year community college located in Twin Falls, Idaho. The school has approximately 7,000 undergraduate students, and offers associate and technical certificates in over 115 subjects.

Challenge
The College of Southern Idaho needed a way to improve communication between all students and staff on campus. Tired of expensive software licenses and limited storage space, they decided to switch their email system to Google Apps Education Edition for its superior webmail interface, integrated chat and calendar, and document sharing capabilities. CSI also wanted students to have more flexibility when logging in to their system. They came to LTech with a concept that would let students choose their login name from a list of options.

Solution

After deploying Google Apps, LTech worked with CSI to determine a custom Single Sign-On solution that would meet their needs. Within two weeks, LTech developed and implemented an on-demand provisioning system that would sample each student's name and generate a list of name combinations. When a student provisions their email for the first time, they can log in with their student ID number and then choose an email address from the list of identity options.

Results

By moving to Google Apps, CSI could provide their students with increased storage space and better collaboration tools. Since Google offers free server storage and maintenance to colleges, they were able to free up time and resources to focus on other computing objectives. LTech's Single Sign-On customization work was completed just in time for the CSI summer '09 semester.

"LTech was able to provide us development expertise that we enjoyed working with. We were able to brainstorm well with them, good give and take, with solid professional recommendations from them." - Jay Sneddon, Data Services Director

LTech and BodyBuilding.com

Company Overview
LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

BodyBuilding.com is a Sports Nutrition E-Retailer and Online Fitness Community. The site, which has been ranked as the most visited body building site in the world, motivates people to reach their fitness goals with informational resources, forums, editorial content, and a cyberstore of high-quality sports nutrition products.

Challenge

BodyBuilding.com was using a Google Mini to crawl and index their site and provide customers with the best possible search. As the site gained popularity, the content began to expand, drawing it closer to the document limit. After adding a new BodySpace site area for visitors to track their fitness progress, the Google Mini was no longer able to handle the amount of documents on the site. BodyBuilding.com upgraded to a standard GB-1001, but needed help replicating their current search structure.

Solution

After the upgrade, LTech configured the Google Search Appliance for BodyBuilding.com based on their specific requirements. The appliance was set up to crawl and index all of their documents, reproducing their previous site search. LTech added built-in KeyMatches to promote certain pages and created collections to let users search separate parts of the index. The search and results pages were customized to match the look and feel of BodyBuilding.com.

Results

As one of the top health and fitness websites with hundreds of products and a wealth of content, BodyBuilding.com wanted to provide their visitors with highly-refined search capabilities. With search powered by Google and LTech, BodyBuilding.com users are receiving fast, accurate results with the ability to query the entire site, or limit their search to stores, product reviews, blogs, groups and more.