Minnesota Historical Society Talks Going Google with Agosto

It's gratifying to hear from happy clients, and is even more so when they are happy enough to speak on our behalf. Recently Rose Sherman, CIO of the Minnesota Historical Society, spent some time talking with us about her experiences working with both Agosto and Google Apps. She shared her challenges in searching for a solution to aging IT infrastructure, the risk of loss and downtime during disaster recovery and her hopes for a more collaborative solution for the MNHS.

You can view the results of the MNHS going Google experience with Agosto in our video case study. And a big thanks again to Rose and her staff of IT experts who are all such a great pleasure to work with.

Prepare Like Lance is Coming - Agosto’s Co-Founder Shares Advice

Left to right: Postini and Authentic8 Founder Scott Petry; Leadville 100 six-time winner
Dave Wiens, Agosto Director of Development Paul Lundberg; Agosto Co-Founder and
CTO Irfan Khan

Agosto co-founder Irfan Khan is racing today in the Leadville Trail 100, a grueling mountain bike race, all above 10,000 feet, across the high-altitude, extreme terrain of the Colorado Rockies. Part of the Lifetime Fitness Leadville Race Series, the race is for only the most determined athletes. Starting at 10,152 feet and climbing to 12,424 feet, those of us seated inside our air conditioned homes and offices securely right around sea level have little idea what kind of endurance the race takes. Agosto is sponsoring the race day videos that enable participants to see video clips of their progress at key points along the race. On a recent visit to Colorado, training for the race, Irfan and Agosto’s Director of Development, Paul Lundberg, caught up with Postini and Authentic8 founder Scott Petry and six-time Leadville 100 winner Dave Wiens.

Irfan asked Dave what was it like to race against Lance Armstrong, whom Dave beat in one of his Leadville 100 victories. Dave shared some insight into what it takes to win on and off the course. He didn’t know until about 10 days before the race that Lance was going to be there. His mechanic happened to talk to Lance’s mechanic, who let on that Lance would be doing the race. Once Dave found out, he knew his preparation was either going to beat Lance or it wasn’t, and that wasn’t good enough. He should have been preparing like Lance was coming, from the beginning.

These days, Dave and his kids have a saying around their house. He regularly asks his three boys, "How are we going to prepare?" The only answer is, "We're going to prepare like Lance is coming." Irfan got a great kick out of this, and the conversation led to the fact that we all need to bring our A-game to all that we do. Whether in our athletics, our work or our personal time, we should all prepare for big things to be coming our way. It's what Lance does, it's what the founders of Postini, Authentic8 and Agosto do and it's good advice.

If you'd like to see them, Agosto is sponsoring RaceDay videos, filming from multiple locations capturing each cyclist from the most epic spots along the Leadville Trail 100 race course. These free videos will be provided to participants with their personalized results soon after race day. Visit GoRaceDay.com to view results.

Brake Supply to save $1Million over 5 Years with Agosto and Google Apps

At Agosto, we’re fortunate to be in the business of helping our customers to solve business issues. Sometimes those efforts lead to really exciting stories with very positive outcomes. One such story is that of our clients at Brake Supply. If you’d like to read the whole case study, you can find it here.

Brake Supply Co., Inc., is a division of Koch Enterprises, Inc. Started in 1947 as a repair shop for automotive brakes, the company now rebuilds heavy duty off road powertain components and hydraulic cylinders, with an exchange inventory valued at over $30 million. This allows customers to keep their equipment up and running with minimal down time. Brake Supply has operations across the U.S. and Canada, with its headquarters and main operations in Evansville, Indiana, where they operate the largest non-OEM rebuild center in the world.

Brake Supply’s Director of IT, Alex Copeland, was in the process of reviewing replacement options for some aging IT infrastructure. He anticipated having to upgrade IT resources and was interested in new ways of improving the company’s overall approach to IT.

After an extensive total cost of ownership analysis comparing on-premise hosted Exchange versus cloud-based Microsoft 365 and Google Apps, Brake Supply selected Google Apps through an agreement with Agosto.

Alex explored several competitive options before going with Google and had a challenging experience with Microsoft. “They would have you believe that the easiest path is just to stay on their systems, but in all the white papers and case studies I read from their perspective, they didn’t demonstrate a deficiency with Google - except it just wasn’t Outlook. They didn’t seem forward-thinking and did not show me efficiencies. Their whole pitch was about their enterprise agreement and licenses. They never let me know how it was going to help my business.”

When Alex contacted Google, the discussion revolved around what Google Apps could do for his business, including cost savings estimates and how Google’s collaborative environment could increase productivity and innovation. The values were in line with what Alex was looking and he accepted an introduction to Agosto. As he went through the talks with Google and Agosto, he was reassured.

“I am a do-it-yourself kind of guy and we have built most of our infrastructure. I had imagined having to do a lot of work but with this project the value was there for me to actually say to Agosto, ‘just make my life easy, and let’s go Google,’ and that is exactly what has happened.”

Alex was impressed with Agosto’s project management and treatment of change management. Agosto set expectations accurately and training went well; Alex says it was actually entertaining and engaging. A month after training, Alex spoke to a colleague in a particularly change-resistant office, who told him to make sure to let the Agosto trainer’s boss know that he did an excellent job. To hear this from one of his toughest internal customers was really encouraging.

“Another impressive aspect of the transition to Google Apps was the availability of the Agosto sales engineer assigned to our project,” said Alex. “He was always there to help when we had a concern. In other situations, even where we supposedly had 24x7 maintenance, we’d call our provider only to hear them complain about inconvenient timing. With Agosto, we have always had a good support experience.”

The feedback about the Google go-live from Brake Supply’s work force and top management has also been positive. The whole company is working better with Google Apps, replacing antiquated workflows with real-time collaboration using documents, spreadsheets and other Google Apps. The good news about cost savings is exciting, too.

“Over the next five years, Brake Supply should save over a million dollars by using Google Apps, provided the company stands firm to not get stuck combining old technology with more efficient Google tools,” said Alex. “The transition to Google Apps with Agosto is one of the best things that we have ever done in our IT work at Brake Supply since I arrived here 15 years ago.”

Agosto Now Google Cloud Platform Services Partner

Agosto is announcing today that we have joined the Google Cloud Platform Partner Program as a Services Partner. By providing Google Cloud services and solutions including Google App Engine development, Google Cloud Storage, and Google APIs, Agosto is able to help our clients build and run applications, host sites and store and access data. Google works closely with services firms like Agosto that deliver custom applications and other infrastructure solutions on top of Google’s Cloud Platform.

The Google Cloud Platform offers a broad set of application development, cloud storage, large scale computing and big data capabilities that provides Agosto with the tools to create the scalable, customized programs and solutions that solve our clients business challenges. The Google Cloud Platform Partner Program enables us to enhance our cloud-based services and solution offerings for our manufacturing, retail and other business clients by building on the power of the Google Cloud Platform.

Several Agosto customers have implemented cloud-based applications developed by Agosto using Google cloud platform tools. We’re finding that these workflow applications are improving processes and efficiencies for our customers. Agosto’s custom solutions on Google’s cloud platform enables fully scalability and functionality and helps our customers work better, faster. Along with Google Apps, these companies are realizing additional benefits of cost savings, collaboration and innovation in real-time. Contact Agosto to learn more about how Google Cloud Platform custom applications can help you, too.

Agosto Sponsors Lifetime Fitness Lutsen 99er with Race Videos in the Cloud

Agosto was a proud technology sponsor of this year’s Lifetime Fitness Lutsen 99er bike race, providing a cloud-based video delivery system for participants.

Taking place in Duluth, Minnesota, the Lutsen 99er course winds through nearly 100 miles (a 39 mile option also offered) of beautiful forests along Minnesota's North Shore. Beginning at the Lutsen Ski Resort overlooking Lake Superior, the race consists of road and trail that the organizers say has as much moose traffic as people traffic at any given time.

Agosto’s development team devised the race day video system, rendering videos via IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) in the cloud, automatically scaling on demand as resources are needed. Participants were invited after the race to view themselves at various points along the race route. Using Google’s Cloud Platform, the Agosto team creates custom applications to help businesses improve efficiency and reduce costs.

In addition to the technology challenges of the day, Agosto CTO Irfan Khan participated in the race, which was made more challenging by the extreme weather in Minnesota this year. Duluth and the surrounding area experienced the worst flooding in decades just prior to the race. Local roads and resources were severely damaged across the region, but businesses remained open and tourism was encouraged as immediate volunteer and official repair efforts got underway.

“This year’s Lutsen 99er was a fun but tough race, made more difficult because of the wet ground,” said Irfan. “Agosto is proud to be a race sponsor, with our developers bringing the race day videos to the cloud and to race participants. We’re also proud of the people of Duluth, who have been pushing through the damage to the area’s infrastructure, and we wish them the best.”

To learn more about Agosto’s core Google Apps or Google Cloud Platform work, or to talk to us about how we can help your business, contact us.

Google, Agosto and Okta Host Top Minnesota Companies for Twins vs. Cubs Win

This past Friday night, Agosto, a Google Apps Premier Enterprise Reseller, and its partners at Google and Okta (a company that enables single sign on or SSO) hosted 20 VIP guests from some top Minnesota companies in a suite at Target Field for the Twins vs. the Cubs. To enhance the fun, guests were treated to food, drinks and gift bags loaded with loot from Agosto and Google as well as some of our current clients. Thanks to their generosity, in addition to the Agosto mini-bats and water bottles and Google’s notebooks and pens, there was coffee from Dunn Bros, golf towels from 2nd Wind and baseball hats from CATCO.

The evening kicked off with drinks from a smart bar, which automatically dispenses mixed drinks based on pre-programmed or on-demand recipes and brand preferences. The inventor and company owner, William Metropulus was even there to show us the ropes and it was a lot of fun for guests to pour their own cocktails without ever touching a bottle. We see this creation going a long way and wish the company all the best.

Google, Agosto and Okta presented an executive overview of Google Apps, along with our enabling capabilities and Okta’s SSO prowess. Guests were able to check out Google Apps with a customized single sign on login, which provided an opportunity to experience a sampling of all of the host companies’ offerings.

Using Google Sites and Google Spreadsheets, Agosto set up activities where, throughout the evening, guests had a chance to prove their baseball trivia knowledge and guess the outcome of the game. At the end of the game, two lucky winners took home the grand prizes of an iPad and a new Chromebook Series 5 550.

In a close game that went extra innings, the Twins beat the Cubs 8-7. When the Twins win, it’s a big deal. When the Twins beat the Cubs, it’s a party. Thank you to all of our guests for joining the party with Agosto, Google and Okta, and we look forward to seeing you again soon and to helping you hit a homerun with Google Apps and SSO.

Google Takeout: It’s Deliciously Simple to Get Your Data Out of Google

If you have ever wondered how to, or even if you could, get your data out of Google’s services, here’s how and yes, you can. Though we won’t name names, there are a lot of other businesses out there where once you put your data in (think about uploading a photo or chatting, for example) it remains forever with that business. Not so with Google.

There’s an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. They are quick to say that people usually don't look to see if they can get their data out of a product until they decide that they want to leave. That makes us agree that we should all ask ourselves a few questions before starting to use a product that will store our data:

• Can I get my data out in an open, interoperable, portable format?
• How much is it going to cost to get my data out?
• How much of my time is it going to take to get my data out?

Google.com/takeout is an online service run by Google engineers (the Data Liberation Front) where, once you put in your credentials, it’s easy to download a copy of, for example, all your Google Docs. It even converts them to the closest usable file formats (PDF, RTF, text, Word, HTML, etc.) and creates a single zip file with all of your files in it.

How long do you have to wait for Google Takeout to provide a copy of all of your data, you ask? The answer: minutes. Probably less time than you’d wait for the other kind of takeout from the restaurant down the street. It’s easy, it’s fast, and it’s free (or at least no more than you’re already paying, if you’re paying for Google Apps.)

At Agosto, one of the questions we are asked by our Google Apps prospects is, “what if in a year we don’t like Google Apps?” We advise that everyone of course should follow their licensing agreement, but that if they want out when the license period is over, Google cares enough to have created an entire program to help them get their data out, for good.

The Google Data Liberation Front believes that “you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product”, that it shouldn’t cost much and that it should be fast. We’re believers. You really can get your data out of Google’s services including Chat, Docs, Calendar, Voice - even YouTube videos. It’s also pretty darned easy to get your data in. That’s more our specialty here at Agosto. We can help you go Google quickly and easily and migrate data into Google Apps for your users.

Now that you know that you can get your data out if you need to, once you try Google Apps we’re still pretty sure you’ll never actually want to.

Microsoft Exchange vs. Google Apps: Installation Showdown

One of Agosto’s sales engineers just created a demonstration lab to be able to show on-premise tools for legacy systems. His goal was to be able to show the difference, online, between working with Microsoft Exchange and with Google on-premise tools. He wanted to be able to demonstrate Google’s Directory Sync tool, and what it’s like migrating data and synchronizing calendars while some users are still on Exchange, and others are already starting to use Google Apps. We’ll share more about that soon. For now, let’s just look at what it takes to install and maintain Exchange as a solution.

First you need servers, the Exchange server itself plus an active directory server. These have to be configured and licensed, updated and patched and then you can install Exchange. Our sales engineer went ahead and put these pieces together. He set up the servers, configured all, licensed, updated and patched all, and started installing Exchange on a Monday.

Nearly a week later, Exchange was still installing. All in all, it ended up taking about a week just get to the point of even being able to start comparing any capabilities of Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps.

Google Apps requires no servers, no patches and no special licensing, and takes about an hour to install and set up. There are hard and soft costs to every solution. Purchasing servers is expensive and the maintenance of legacy systems, like Exchange, can cost companies a lot more. The combined soft and hard costs of hardware, software updates, patches, time and staff to maintain things really add up.

Agosto and Google Ready for Business in Canada

After a lot of planning, scouting and strategy meetings it's official: Agosto has opened its Toronto office and the company is the first Google Apps Premier Enterprise and SMB Reseller to establish a local presence in Canada. Over the past few months, we have co-hosted several events with Google in Canada, where we have heard about the opportunities for a company like Agosto to provide both a strong partnership for Google Apps migrations and deployments. Agosto's managed service experience, spanning over 11 years, also uniquely positions Agosto to help create new and more cost-effective mobile apps, cloud-based services and solutions for our clients.

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Speaking of clients, as a Premier Reseller of the Google Apps suite of communication and collaboration tools, Agosto already helps companies in Canada including The Second City, to successfully deploy and use Google Apps. At Agosto, we serve clients of all sizes, from CIOs of the largest companies to the volunteer IT staff at small non-profits. A recent complex project included the migration of over 17,000 employees from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps, with employees located in 41 locations across four continents and training for users in eight languages. Agosto is pleased to be able to offer a high level of service to Canadian businesses.

Our new office is located in Suite 2500 of Toronto's beautiful Eaton Town Centre at 1 Dundas St. West, Toronto, ON M5G 1Z3, Canada. You can reach Agosto at sales@agosto.ca. Send us a message and let us know what IT projects have been lingering on your plate that you'd really like to see through, and let us lend a hand.

The Agosto Team is excited to be in Canada. Look forward to meeting with you soon at one of our events.

Agosto marks milestone in Google Apps partner ecosystem

Today marks a milestone in Agosto’s continued growth in the Google Apps partner ecosystem. In 2007 we became a Google Apps partner, in 2009 we became a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, and today we became a Google Apps Premier Reseller in both the Enterprise and SMB segments. Becoming a Premier Reseller is a monumental accomplishment requiring significant effort and dedication from the Agosto Cloud Services team. One of our last projects best captures our abilities: a complex migration from Exchange to Google Apps, 17,000 employees, in 41 locations, across 4 continents, and training users in 8 languages. I am very pleased with what we’ve accomplished and proud to be recognized as one of the top Google Apps partners in North America. I look forward to 2012 and continuing to help customers leverage Google Apps to further their business.

- Aric Bandy, CEO