L.A. Adopts Google Email for Staff of 30,000

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Los Angeles is replacing GroupWise with Google Apps.

The LA City Council Tuesday approved a multi-million dollar deal that will see the City of Los Angeles' 30,000 employees rely on Google Apps for e-mail and other Internet services.

However, while most are labeling the $7.2 million deal as a big win for Google, a significant amount of people are talking about what the unanimous vote means for Microsoft. The AP reports that the Council chose Google's offer over competing bids from Microsoft and more than a dozen other technology firms.

Analyst Rob Enderle spoke to the AP about Microsoft's failure to seize the Los Angeles contract, detailing that the loss represented a setback in its efforts to compete with Google for Web-based e-mail and other applications.

"Losing something of this size has to be really painful," Enderle said. "It's not the death knell for them, but it's a big red flag."

Then again, Microsoft isn't the only one suffering because of LA's decision to go Google. The new deal ends a 7-year agreement with Novell Inc. City workers complained that the company's GroupWise software was slow and crash-prone. According to the AP, Novell's senior VP said during the Council hearing that many city departments were not using the most recent version of GroupWise and reiterated an offer to provide additional services for free but alas, it was not to be.

Does your company use Google Apps for email and other web-based services? Let us know in the comments below!

Check out the full story here.

Jane McEntegart
36 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sstym
    Microsoft is based in Washington and Google is a California company. It's no surprise the biggest city in California would favor a (semi-)local provider. And that could be a tie-breaker even if the solutions were comparable in every other way (which they probably aren't).
    Reply
  • jerreece
    I wonder if L.A. employees will now have their Google/Gmail accounts "hacked" and have their emails posted online... (eg, Sarah Palin & Yahoo).
    Reply
  • deadlockedworld
    If I were LA I would pick google too after the recent Sidekick fiasco.
    Reply
  • deadlockedworld
    jerreeceI wonder if L.A. employees will now have their Google/Gmail accounts "hacked" and have their emails posted online... (eg, Sarah Palin & Yahoo).
    Sarah Palin didn't get "hacked". She was a moron that had her email security question set as her town of birth. All they did was reset her password and the media called it "hacking."
    Reply
  • mlopinto2k1
    No, my company does not use Google Apps. Just letting you know.
    Reply
  • tektek
    Ohhhhh so finally Ca is not outsourcing ... seems everything else is either from outside the state or country!
    Reply
  • pita
    My university in Ohio has migrated to Gmail service starting from the current semester. My undergrad university in Canada has also switched Alumni mail to Gmail.
    Reply
  • dman3k
    Good luck managing employee passwords, LA!
    Reply
  • bydesign
    They may regret this nothing important is ready for cloud computing. Any in-house solution is a better choice, well maybe not groupwise...
    Reply
  • Drag0nR1der
    According to the full article "Under the deal, Google will provide e-mail, calendar, online chatting and other services to 30,000 city employees."

    It mentions nothing about office apps, so I presume they will still be running the almost ubiquitous MS office.

    Also their previous calender/email client was groupwise (a horrible evil nasty piece of software that anyone should want to replace) and only turned down a 'bid' from MS to use theirs (presumably outlook, which is wierd if they are already using office... maybe they aren't, but it would be highly unusual).

    The most interesting thing about this article is the issues they raise surrounding security on a cloud based system, that these concerns were raised (and by all accounts quite loudly) but that it went through anyway shows that either 1) the people making the deal didn't understand the issues, or 2) google were able to satisfy them that these issues were able to be dealt with... if this second alternative is the case, then I'd like to hear more on how they achieved it.
    Reply