Earlier in the week, I chatted with BetterCloud‘s CEO, David Politis, to learn about their latest app. Called FlashPanel, it extends BetterCloud’s Google Apps portfolio–see our post on DomainWatch–with a new tool focused on email management. In case you haven’t noticed, Google Apps has been finding more of a home in the enterprise space.
Politis told me that with the success of DomainWatch, which has several hundred corporate users, he was getting feedback for new features. Ultimately users comments were transformed into the new FlashPanel product. While DomainWatch manages Google Apps resources, such as documents, calendars, and access rights, FlashPanel has its aim on email and user administration.
“FlashPanel helps with onboarding, it helps with de-provisioning users when you need to suspend someone’s account and backup their mailbox and let new people who are emailing know that person is no longer with the company. All of that is built into the product as predefined workflows,” Politis told me in our phone conversation.
Politis also emphasized the security aspects to FlashPanel, which included the ability to monitor email content. It’s a capability that companies who wanted to move from Microsoft Exchange–yes people, corporate email can be easily audited–to Google Apps had been asking Politis for.
In my own conversations over the last few months with IT directors, I have been more than a little surprised to hear Google Apps being mentioned. It’s especially popular at universities. Politis has seen the same thing, and in fact, has written a post for Mashable about growing up Google– you start out in college with Chat and Gmail, and then continue in the corporate world.
So with my beta login, I was able to play system admin with FlashPanel in my own mini Google Apps environment. In short: it’s got a Googley feel, and far simpler and easier to use than that other company’s software found in most Fortune 1000 servers.
Along with the new product, BetterCloud also pulled in $2 million in seed funding from angel investors with backgrounds in enterprise IT.
According to Politis, the money is being plowed into product development and also “on developing new channel partners as part of a longer term strategy.”