Google improves Hangouts for Apps customers w/ 24/7 support, new features, expanded Chromebox for meetings availability, more

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Google just announced that it’s improving the video call and meeting feature it offers to its Google Apps customers making the process of hosting video Hangouts much smoother. To kick things off, Google Apps for Business customers will now enjoy 24/7 phone support and a 99% uptime guarantee as Google movies Hangouts under the same Terms of Service as Apps. It’s also planning Google Apps Vault integration by the end of the year:

Hangouts is now covered under the same Terms of Service that support our other Google Apps for Business products, like Gmail and Drive. That means we’ve got your back with 24×7 phone support and a 99.9% guaranteed uptime, as well as ISO27001, SSAE 16/ISAE 4302 and SOC 2 certification. Additional enterprise integration with Google Apps Vault is coming by the end of the year.

In addition, Google has made some improvements to Hangout video meetings that will allow any Google Apps customer account to join including users without a Google+ profile. It’s also adding new support for other traditional videoconferencing platforms including Blue Jeans and InterCall. New call dialling support will let users make calls to traditional phones from Chromebox for meetings. And speaking of Chromebox for Meetings, Google’s hardware solution for video conferencing in the enterprise, Google has some big improvements arriving for the platform in the months to come:

In larger conference rooms, you can connect two displays to one Chromebox for meetings device to see your audience and project a presentation at the same time. And if you’ve ever wanted a dedicated setup for video meetings for your home, new personal calendar integration means you will be able to easily set up Chromebox for meetings outside the office.

Another improvement comes for IT admin, which will now be able to “better manage meetings right from the Google Apps Admin Console with options like remotely starting, muting and ending a meeting.”

Lastly, Chromebox for meetings is arriving in new countries in the weeks to come including the UK and Japan just as Dell prepares to begin selling its own Chromebox for meetings product in September. Currently Google sells one Chromebox for meetings package in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with the main Chromebox hardware manufactured by Asus.