Horizon Info Services More of IT for Less

WESTBOROUGH, MA – November 12, 2009 – Building on its growth as a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, Horizon Info Services (www.horizoninfoservices.com) announced its selection as the exclusive North American distributor for OffiSync (www.OffiSync.com).  OffiSync is an add-on for Microsoft Office lets users save, share, and collaborate using Google Apps from menus and toolbars within Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  OffiSync also includes content and image search features.

“The launch of OffiSync is another turning point in the evolution of Google Apps as a business computing platform,” notes Allen Falcon, CEO of Horizon.  “OffiSync lets businesses and individuals continue to use their current desktop productivity tools and Google’s innovative cloud-based applications — either as a migration path or as part of a long-term strategy.”

Users are more comfortable changing email software since many already use more than one email program – at work and personally.  Many users are not as comfortable changing word processing and spreadsheet applications.  OffiSync solves this problem.

In a recent interview with eWeek, Matt Glotzbach, Google Enterprise Product Management Director noted that “…it’s a great set of functionality and helps a business or enterprise bridge that experience gap between users that want to work in native Office apps and those users who want to work in the cloud.”

Horizon is actively signing up resellers throughout North America.  In addition to the community of Google Apps Authorized Resellers, Horizon sees strong interest from consulting companies and IT firms that help companies deploy and use Google Apps.  It is a win-win solution.  Customers benefit from easier migrations and better integration; resellers gain from accelerated sales and an incremental recurring revenue stream.

OffiSync is designed to work seamlessly with all versions of Google Apps used by companies, educational institutions, non-profits, and individuals.  Oudi Antebi, Founder and CEO of OffiSync adds that “We created a solution that works with all current versions of Microsoft Office and every version of Google Apps – Premium, Standard, and Education, as well as individual Google Doc and Google Site accounts.”

OffiSync is available as an annual subscription starting at $12 per year per user or under a traditional perpetual license starting at $30 per user.  Both licenses include support; the subscription includes enhancements, upgrades, and future releases.

About Horizon Info Services

Horizon Info Services is offers industry-leading technology services to small businesses at affordable prices, specializing in solutions for businesses and non-profits with 1 to 500 employees.  Based outside of Boston Massachusetts, Horizon is an Authorized Reseller of Google Apps and Google Postini Services and offers a range of online backup solutions.

About OffiSync Corp

OffiSync enhances the way information workers use productivity applications by bringing together their familiar desktop environment with innovative cloud computing services.  OffiSync extends the way users use desktop software and allows them to store their files on Google Apps for better collaboration and accessibility, as well as integrates with web and image search that make it easy to bring content from the web right into document and presentations.  OffiSync is an independent, privately held company headquartered in Seattle, Washington.

Push mail is now supported on iPhone and Windows Mobile devices using Google Sync.

Blackberry offers an enhanced Gmail plug-in that gives you the following capabilities:

With 25GB of inbox space for each user, managing space is rarely an issue. Company policies related to records retention, however, often create a need to enforce retention policies on email messages.

In Google Apps Premier Edition, you can not set a retention period for email. Once set, Gmail will automatically permanently delete all email messages older than the retention period.

If you want or need to limit user retention of emails, but need to retain corporate access to messages for legal or compliance reasons, we can add Google Message Discovery to your Google Apps service.

Google Message Discovery is an email archive/recovery/e-discovery service that offers secure, audited archives of all messages sent or delivered for up to 10 years. Message Discovery also works with most any in-house email system.

Click Here to learn more about Google Message Discovery or to view a product data sheet (PDF format).

It is no longer uncommon for some users to manage multiple email accounts. Whether covering email addresses for support or customer service, or providing administrative assistance to an executive the “on behalf of” label can be distracting to the email recipient.

Google Apps Premier Edition (and Education Edition) now allow users to send emails from multiple addresses without the “on behalf of” label in the sender address.

Click here to learn more …

Last week, the Gmail Team announced three new features related to labels within Gmail. As you may know, Labels are a way to organize and search messages. While they can be used like folders in most email systems, Gmail allows you to apply multiple emails to messages for more intuitive management.

The new features are:

• New Location: Labels are not located above the Chat box

• Hide & Show: You can now decide which of your labels you want to see by default, letting you keep often-used labels visible with all labels one-click away
• Drag & Drop Messages: Drag messages into a label will label and archive the message in one step

• Drag & Drop Messages: You can drag a label onto selected messages

Click here for details …

Last week, Google added a series of improvements to Google Contacts, primarily targeting business customers.

In addition to additional fields and improvements to the Contacts interface in Gmail and the Contacts screen, Google added new APIs that let administrators add fields and share contacts within the domain.

Click Here to learn more …

Following the release of Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, a number of issues were identified by the user community related to the installation and some of the settings. Last week, Google pushed out an update with the following fixes and improvements.

• You can choose between native Outlook Search and Windows Desktop Search; Windows Desktop Search is no longer prevented from searching Outlook data.

• You can now access Windows Live Hotmail via the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector plug-in when the Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook is installed
• Added an option to enable or disable auto-archiving during installation
• Improved installation to make it easier to know here data in other Outlook accounts is located

With these modifications, Google continues to improve the tools that help organizations migrate to Google Apps.

Click here to learn more …

While Google Apps Premier Edition users can integrate and access email for free on iPhone and Android devices, users may also use the Google Mobile App. Should you be without Internet connections (cell or WiFi), you now have better tools for offline email access.

As part of an update to Google’s mobile client app, Gmail gets:

• An updated the user interface,
• Faster message opens
• Batch actions (like archiving multiple messages at once)
• Basic offline support

With these updates, you can still get some work done while on the subway, in a plane, or any disconnected locale.

By now, you have heard about Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. You may also hear rumblings about less than 100% compatibility.

Yes, there are limitations. That said, the ability to use Outlook with Google Apps Premier Edition is an easy, powerful way to help companies transition from Exchange services (in-house or hosted) to Google Apps.

So you know …. the tool does not sync:

• Tasks (a shame since Google Tasks integrate with the inbox and calendar so well)
• Notes
• Journal
• Public Folders

Additionally, installing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook may change the way searching works within Outlook. According to Microsoft, it disables Outlook’s use of Windows Desktop Search, which Outlook uses to “any and all Outlook data”.

While the registry bit was not changed by the Google sync tool installation on any of our systems, here is the fix.

1. Run REGEDIT

2. Browse to: “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Windows Search”
3. Reset the value of “PreventIndexingOutlook” to “0” (without the quotes). To do this, right click on the “PreventIndexingOutlook” key, select “Modify…”, then change the value data to “0”.
4. Exit REGEDIT

Finally, Google is publishing a list of other Outlook Add-ins that may not be compatible with the sync tool. We are reviewing the information and will post an update later this week.

While some companies may find one or more of these limitations a “show stopper”, our experience tells us that most companies will still benefit from being able to use Outlook and Google Apps via the MAPI connection.