Google's App Engine Platform

LTech, a little friend of Google's, has spun up the first Power Panel for Google Apps to give enterprises moving to the cloud central administrative functionality.

It's also announced Single Sign-On for Google Apps now that Google Apps are pushing deeper into the enterprise.

The Power Panel add-on, which LTech already know is gonna be popular, offers features such as Contact Journal, Shared Contact Search, Quick Links and an integration framework for CRM and enterprise data.

It's deployed on Google App Engine and secured in a customer's Google Apps domain. All features and functions are hosted directly in Google's cloud.

Contact Journal gives users a 360-degree view of their contacts and relationships inside and outside of the organization and serves as an integration point for CRM data from vendors like SalesForce.

Power Panel can be used to distribute links to commonly used workflow applications, forms and documents directly in the Gmail browser canvas via a centrally controlled gadget.

Shared Contact Search lets users add, edit and search organization-wide contacts.

It'll cost $3 per user a year.

Meanwhile, the Single Sign-On widgetry will let organizations leverage their existing ActiveDirectory- or LDAP-based directory investment to secure the cloud-based Google Apps collaboration platform.

The product supports password changes, rules and synchronization for end-user continuity and security.

It can be deployed on-premise inside a corporate firewall close to the Directory Server or on LTech's hosted platform complements of LDAP over SSL and it lets end users marshal their existing credentials to access Google Apps from a browser, mobile device or third-party mail clients like Gmail, iPhone and Microsoft Outlook.

It's meant to reduce the user's irritation at having to update multiple passwords, and let IT administrators enforce password strength and change management policies.

It features IMAP and POP access support, synchronization with mobile devices and third-party messaging clients, encryption, high-availability configurations and secure SAML support as well as sign-in, sign-out and change password pages.

Passwords are updated in both Google Apps and the enterprise directory, with support for advance password policy settings.

It's compatible with Windows Server 2003 and 2008 and integrates Postini and OpenID support to extend a company's security investment to multiple third-party applications.

Pricing starts at $5 a user in both on-premise or hosted configurations for Premier, Education and Partner Editions of Google Apps.

LTech claims the widgetry, which work in unison, provides the missing pieces in deploying Google Apps in enterprises, namely, role-based security and delegated administration as well as the integration of back-office data and CRM.

LTech, which has been around for eight years and was acquired recently by the Matlen Silver Group, an old-line IT service firm big with the Fortune 100, particularly the financial houses or what's left of them, also developed Google Docs Backup and provides implementation, configuration and support services, claiming dozens of Google Apps deployments. It has developed best practices for adopting and scaling cloud computing.