Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Ron Brister, Senior Manager of Global IT Operations, and Arron Privatsky, System Administrator, of Serena Software as our guest bloggers today. Serena Software, a leading provider of software to accelerate application development, helps IT departments keep pace with the demands of the businesses they support.

We're usually very serious when we describe our take on cloud computing , but on Wednesday, June 24, we'll be letting our hair down and having fun with computing in the cloud. We've teamed up with Virgin America to launch the Day in the Cloud Challenge â€" the first-ever online scavenger hunt to be played simultaneously in the air and on the ground. If you fly for business or for pleasure, you've probably noticed that more and more airlines are rolling out in-flight WiFi,

On this blog, we usually focus on helping you make the most of the products we've designed specifically with IT departments in mind. But Google has lots of other tools that other parts of your organization )such as the sales and marketing teams( might find useful. So, in this post, we thought we'd go through a quick summary of the wide range of Google products that can help you do business. We've grouped these tips into three buckets: methods to optimize your website,

If your enterprise maintains one or more physical locations, you may already know that roughly 80% of consumers use search to find local businesses . But unless those customers are also visiting your website directly, you may not know much about how those customers are finding you, or where they're coming from when they visit one of your locations. That's because your site is just a part of your entire web presence. Users of Google Maps and Google Search, for example,

More than 3,000 businesses adopt Google Apps every day. They range from ten-person companies who switch in a few hours to large companies and universities that plan their move from on-premises servers over weeks and months. Ensuring a smooth change is a big priority for us, and we're making the transition a little easier for mobile users. We're pleased to announce the upcoming release of the Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry ® Enterprise Server .

I was among a team of Googlers who recently attended the Mid-sized Enterprise Summit in Miami, Florida. We enjoyed the sunshine, industry speakers, and above all the chance to talk with CIOs and IT leads from companies across a range of industries. Given the economy, the cost savings available through Google Apps gained a lot of interest. But we probably got the most "oohs" and " aahs " when we demoed our collaboration apps )Google Docs,

If you've ever checked out the nearest store with Trek bikes , planned a trip to a Crowne Plaza Hotel , or looked for the best local anything on Yelp , you know that many businesses use Google Maps to help people find where they're located. Maps can be deployed within your organization to help your employees make fast, informed decisions â€" such as assessing the location and performance efficiency of your vehicles and other mobile assets.

Listening to Google Apps admins talk â€" with us and with each other â€" made it clear: as IT professionals, admins wanted a way to connect online somewhere in the Google environment. We heard a clear call for a gathering place, or community â€" a meeting point where admins could meet one another, identify each other by business type or geography, discuss topics unique to their roles, and share learning and best practices in a way that helped in their professional roles.

Today we're excited to announce a little something to bring some flair to people's Gmail accounts for all editions of Google Apps . Google Apps now offers more than 30 Gmail account theme choices ranging from weather themes that are customized for your location, to nature themes that change with your timezone, to themes that are just plain fun and funky. Themes in Gmail give you a chance to customize your inbox,

Recent commentary on channel growth around cloud computing and the emerging business scenarios for trusted IT advisors are good examples the growing momentum around the ecosystem of channel partners like consultants, resellers and developers pursuing new models for doing business in the cloud. We're excited to share details of what we're seeing and are we're pleased to offer two ways to learn more about the benefits of cloud computing: For solutions providers, developers,

Google Site Search has now been included into an expanded version of the access provider program. The program was created last year for the web hosting community so they could easily integrate Google Webmaster tools into their customer's websites. Today we expanded the program to include three new services including AdSense, Custom Search, and Site Search under the program Google Services for Websites.

Thousands of developers have created gadgets since we first released the gadgets API four years ago, and millions of people use gadgets every week in Google Apps. Gadgets aggregate content from around the web and perform simple tasks like managing a to-do list. For developers, gadgets are easy to create with only basic HTML and JavaScript. Google Apps customers already use gadgets to add dynamic charts to Google Docs, and to embed rich media, retrieve feeds,

When we first launched Google Video for business in Google Apps, we aimed to apply Google's video technology to solving real business and education problems. Google itself, and Google Apps customers, have been using the product for everything from executive briefings to extending training events to its remote offices to sharing wacky office moments with coworkers. In fact, we've been using Google Video to save both time and money at Google,

What if we told you that a 35 minute tutorial would teach you everything you needed about keeping email systems safe from spam, malware, and viruses? We hope you'd believe us, and that you'd give our new "Nuts to Bolts" on Google Message Security , powered by Postini, a view. Don't have 35 minutes? We know the feeling. The topic overview )on the left( lets you pinpoint the subjects that interest you most.

On the heels of the Oscars, we're proud to have been named the best intranet search solution of the year by Intranet Journal. It's been a year filled with hard work, as we've seen the release of brand new search appliance software, as well as nearly ten new innovations in our Enterprise Labs . As those who tune in know, the Oscars aren't just about the movies â€" they're about the fashion . In some sense,

If you've ever looked at your existing email system and wondered if there might be a better way, tune in to Andy Nallappan's online review of his recent migration to Google Apps on Monday, March 2, at 10:00 AM PST )1:00 PM EST(. Andy, Director, IT, Engineering and Enterprise Infrastructure for Avago Technologies )which provides components and subsystems to equipment manufacturers( recently migrated 3,

For workers on the go, having up-to-date calendar and contacts information is crucial. Knowing about last-minute changes to schedules can mean the difference between winning and losing a big deal. Today, we're happy to announce two-way push sync of calendar and contact information for Google Apps users with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices. We're also releasing contact sync for mobile devices that support Sync ML . With Google Sync ,

Every month, we invite a featured customer to talk about their experience bringing Google Apps into their businesses, sharing insights and suggestions for other teams looking to bring Apps into the workplace. We invite you to join this conversation since it's a great opportunity to get "real world" answers to your questions about Google Apps. These talks are informal and open. We share an overview from our featured customer and a brief look at Google Apps, followed by Q&A.

We've heard quite a few requests for email list enhancements, so we know our users will be happy to hear that several new administrative features for email lists are available today. First, administrators can now assign permissions per email list that determine who can send email to that list. The sending of email can be restricted to members of the list, anyone in the domain, anyone in the world, or even a subset of members designated as list owners.

New Google Apps users quickly notice that Gmail uses labels instead of traditional folders for organizing email. Why this design decision? Put simply, you can organize and then find messages more efficiently with labels. Here's why: a message can be tagged with multiple labels like "Project Orion" and "Budget," so you can find that message in either context down the road. With folders,