Google adds enterprise version of Google Voice to G Suite

On Day 2 of the Google Cloud Next conference, Google announced several enhancements to G Suite, including the addition of an enterprise version of Google Voice.

"Google Voice is already beloved by millions of consumers," Garrick Toubassi, VP of engineering for Google, said during the Day 2 keynote.

The enterprise-ready version, now available via an Early Adopter program, takes telephony beyond simple audio. Google is bringing in context and intelligence to offer features like voicemail transcriptions and call filtering. Prior to this, Google relied on third parties to provide telephony to its G Suite customers.

Additionally, Toubassi announced that Google Drive Enterprise is available for purchase as a standalone offering.

The offering will "immediately allow employees to be more productive and collaborative without disrupting mail or calendar or other legacy tools," he said, noting that Drive is on track to surpass 1 billion active users later this week.

Google is also introducing new functionality to Cloud Search in G Suite that helps companies securely index third party data beyond G Suite, whether it's stored in the cloud or on premise. The new functionality will ensure employees can only see the data they're supposed to.

Lastly, Google announced Wednesday that "new Gmail" is in general availability, bringing more G Suite customers revamped security warnings and other features like snooze and offline access.

Since last year, Google has added 1 million new businesses to G Suite, Toubassi noted Wednesday. For Next attendees who aren't yet sold on G Suite, Toubassi framed it as the preferred productivity suite of tomorrow's workforce. Eighty million students worldwide are learning G Suite, he said.

"They're in school, and they're using G Suite," he said. "It's what they're going to expect when in a few years they're working for you."