Google Apps: Mastering Integration and Customization

268 Pages·2011·12.04 MB·English

by  Médéric Morel

Google Apps: Mastering
Integration and Customization
Scale your applications and projects onto the cloud with
Google Apps
Médéric Morel
Manuel Alves
Pascal Cadet
Pirmin Lemberger
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Google Apps: Mastering Integration and Customization
Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing
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First published: September 2011
Production Reference: 1070911
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-849692-16-8
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Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar ([email protected])
Credits
Authors Proofreader
Médéric Morel Aaron Nash
Manuel Alves
Pascal Cadet Indexer
Monica Ajmera Mehta
Pirmin Lemberger
Graphics
Acquisition Editor
Nilesh Mohite
Rashmi Phadnis
Valentina D'silva
Technical Editor
Ajay Shanker Production Coordinator
Shantanu Zagade
Project Coordinator
Alka Nayak Cover Work
Shantanu Zagade
About the Authors
Médéric Morel is Director of the practice “Enterprise Architecture” at Alcyonix.
Manuel Alves is the Alcyonix Manager at Paris.
Pirmin Lemberger is the Consultant in charge of R & D at Alcyonix.
Pascal Cadet is Alcyonix Manager at Geneva.
The authors would first of all like to thank their wives for their
patience and continuous encouragement during the writing of the
book. Their gratitude also goes to Yahya El Mir, Julien Mériaudeau,
respectively CEO and chairman of the SQLI Group who sponsored
the project.

They thank their colleagues, friends, and customers who were
kind enough to read the book and provide their feedback. In an
alphabetical order: Thierry Albain, Arnaud Deslandes, Arnaud
Damme, Gilles Godart, Olivier Larribe, Charles Le Gallic, David
Macchioni, Jean-Luc Raffaelli, J.Patterson Waltz.

Finally, special thanks go to Pascal Pignon, Regional Channel
Manager for Southern Europe at Google who has consistently
supported this project since the beginning and, in fact, made it
possible.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Part 1 – Cloud Computing in the Corporate IS
Chapter 1: Google and the Basics of Cloud Computing 11
A few words about Google 11
Google Figures 11
From online search to Enterprise computing 12
Google and Cloud Computing 12
Is Cloud Computing any different from ASP? 13
The nature of the players and billing 13
Internal solution architecture and access to hardware resources 14
The different hosting modes 14
Traditional In-House hosting 15
The Infrastructure as a Service—IaaS 15
The Platform as a Service—PaaS 15
The Software as a Service—SaaS 16
Conclusion 16
SaaS and software architectures 16
Centralized architectures 17
The client-server architecture 17
Web architectures 18
Standalone architectures 18
Private or public cloud? 19
Impact of the Cloud on the IS 20
The IS in the 2000s 20
The IS in the 2010s according to Google 21
The economic impact of Cloud Computing 22
A new economic approach to computing 22
Reducing costs and investments 23
Table of Contents
Reduced cash requirements 23
Improving cost visibility 23
Should the Cloud and Google be adopted now? 24
Summary 24
Chapter 2: Why Trust Google? 25
SaaS and data security 25
SaaS opportunities 26
What's Google's take? 27
The multi-layer security strategy 27
Google corporate security policies 27
Organizational security 28
Asset classification and control 29
Personnel security 29
Physical and environmental security 29
Operational security 30
Access control 30
Systems development and maintenance 31
Disaster recovery 31
Regulatory compliance 31
Security at the user level 32
Data privacy 32
The privacy principles that are implemented 32
What data is collected? 33
Use of personal information 33
Cookies 34
Connection data 34
Geographic location 34
Technical means 34
Availability of data and services 34
How difficult is it to leave Google? 35
Is it legal to use Google Apps? 37
Summary 37
Part 2 – The Google Apps Platform
Chapter 3: Communication Tools 45
A brief history of Gmail 45
Gmail in detail 46
How is Gmail different from traditional messaging tools? 46
Nothing to set up on the client machine 46
Constant improvements 46
No more mail servers! 47
[ ii ]
Table of Contents
State-of-the-art security tools 47
A high level of reliability 48
General information 48
A search- and conversation-oriented GUI 48
Spell-checking and formatting 49
The auto-completion feature 50
Import-export features 50
The main features 50
Labels 50
Searching for messages 52
Filters 52
Contact management 53
Anti-spam and Antivirus 54
Translation tools 55
IMAP and POP access 56
Google Calendar in detail 57
General information 57
Multi-calendar-oriented GUI 57
Predefined calendars 58
Import/export features 58
The main features 58
Creating calendars and events 58
Defining reminders and notifications 59
Sharing calendars and setting privacy levels 60
Resource planning 62
Publishing a calendar 63
Instant messaging with Google Talk 65
Integration with Gmail 65
Audio and video 66
Blocking a contact 66
Instant translation 66
Privacy 67
Standalone application 67
Other ways to access Gmail and Google Calendar 68
Mobile access 68
Gmail 68
Google Calendar 69
Access using a fat client 70
Gmail 70
Google Calendar 71
The offline mode 71
Gmail 72
Google Calendar 72
Summary 72
[ iii ]