LA approves $7.2 million Google Apps deal

The city council in Los Angeles on Tuesday unanimously approved a $7.2 million deal to use Google Apps.

(Credit: City of Los Angeles)

The contract is tentative, contingent on integration provider Computer Sciences Corp.'s agreement to pay a penalty in the event of a security breach, according to the Associated Press.

A week ago, the City Council's Budget and Finance Committee delayed taking action on the deal citing cost concerns.

Security concerns featured prominently in the debate over the contract, which calls for moving from Novell to Google's hosting service for e-mail and office applications.

Los Angeles police officials and the LA City Attorney's Office were concerned about the potential for security breaches with sensitive information located in the cloud as opposed to being on city servers.

LA joins the District of Columbia as one of the largest government adoptions of Google Apps. The contract is a win for Google in its competition with Microsoft for enterprise customers.

[Super2online]

If they are moving away from Novell to Google, how is that a loss for Microsoft. It seems to me thats a loss for Novell. I know there are those who will say, well Microsoft didn't get them so it's a loss for them, but the company that had the contract already was Novell, not Microsoft.

[drobosson]

I believe that it would be safe to suggest that Microsoft would have been in the original list of application service providers.

[surferstevo]

Looks like they don't have a good history of making IT decisions, after all they are using Novell. Whats that saying, so deep in the forest can't see the trees. Maybe if somebody sold them a cloudy redtape server...

[SixString16]

It's a loss for Novell, but also a loss for Microsoft as they lose out on the cloud contract.

[ranpha]

The provider should be made to pay if Google Apps has extended downtime too in addition of security breaches. The LA city council should at least demand 99.99% uptime at least from the provider (this could become a source of income too).

[slecalvez]

They will go to Microsoft after they realize Google Apps are horrible and just a fad. (at the moment)

[captain_numerica]

I'm by no means anti-MS. (Check my comment history for proof) But I highly doubt they'll make another move in the near future. Migrating from one system to another is hugely expensive from planning to execution to training and support.

Even if a magical company 'XYZ' comes out with the "perfect" solution in 3 months, there will be a lot of fiscal reasons as to not consider migrating again for some time.

That said, I don't have much love for Google Apps. I think they're decent but not great. But moving to GA from Novell is an improvement nonetheless! :)

[abcd9009]

@captain_numerica

I completely agree with you and yes Google Apps is a huge improvement to Novell but not even close to Exchange or Office.

[Maclover1]

@abcd9009 Not even close to the cost of Exchange or Office. Google Apps premium is $50 a user per year. I am sure they probably got a deal.

Exchange requires a CAL, and a Windows Server CAL, and Exchange server software price, Winodows server price, hardware for all of it, plus Office Cals. Plus you would need Anti-Spam and Anti-Virus for Exchange and that server it runs on.

With gmail you dont have the hardware or software cost. They own Postini which is probably the best Antimalware solution around for email.

Big time $$$$ saved.

Besides 80% of Exchange/Outlook/Office users use 20% of the applications.

[Vegaman_Dan]

The time it takes for any government agency to make moves like this is glacial. I don't really expect LA to move from Google even if they find it a complete and utter failure for them just because of the huge undertaking such a move can be. Short of Google closing down the service, they will keep using it no matter how bad it may become.

Then the politicians will all use it to point blame and fingers at their political opponents over it.

It's just the way government works.

[slecalvez]

@Maclover1 - Have you heard of Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS)? All office applications including Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint and Sharepoint for LESS than 50 USD per user per year? Get up to date on your facts man.

[fazalmajid]

It's a loss for MS because the city of LA opted for neither a conventional Windows + Office solution nor for Office Live (which is the real Microsoft competitor for Google Apps). Every deal Microsoft loses reduces its aura of inevitability for enterprise productivity apps deployments. This also opens the way for LA to ditch Windows PCs altogether and use any Web-enabled client OS (e.g. Linux, OS X, ChromeOS) if they so wish.

[SixString16]

The real loss for MS will be if this works well and Google can demonstrate they have a a viable platform, it will eat into the marketshare that MS has. I'm not sure what Google is charging per user, but I believe they aren't priced as high as Microsoft (which makes sense right now as Office is the current market leader in office productivity).

If this works for a large entity such as the City of Los Angeles, you can bet other city halls around the country will start looking too.

[AppleSuxLeo]

I have been one of Windows biggest supporters but...
Just had a thought to throw out there...
Could not Google be the one that finally makes Linux on the desktop a resounding success.
Has anyone else thought of this ?
Just look at what Android has accomplished in short order. It is based on Linux.
Not an enterprise OS...just a consumer OS...Google OS.
If Chrome and Android are indicators of their potential , I think they could pull it off. I`m serious.
Google has the brains/money to do it , and PC`s would be cheaper to purchase.
If Google got behind Linux , I bet the manufacturers would take note and we would have the drivers we need in short order. The Linux code is free and open. Nobody is hiding anything.
Comments ?

[cary1]

The difference between Android and Linux is that Android goes on cell phones and by itself is self sufficient. you can get 90% functionality without installing any apps. Phones do not connect to cameras, printers, scanners and graphics cards. Compare that to desktop OS, most of the time you use apps that are not part of the OS. You need to use a lot of peripherals (for which you need drivers) and that's where Linux seriously lags behind.

[Police_States_of_America]

>Could not Google be the one that finally makes Linux on the desktop a resounding success.

if they can monitize it the way they do android (indirectly), yes undoubtedly

[Maclover1]

Google has a chance for a few reasons.

First the cloud. The more apps that are accessed via a browser interface the less you need Windows. Try zoho office (google it). Its much better than Google apps and shows you where Google apps will probably be soon. At my company so many current apps we use are moving to a web based front end as we upgrade them. 90% of those are shrink wrapped apps from big name vendors. Windows GUI apps are going away slowly for many things. Even MS is going to release a web based version of Office.

Second. OS X is UNIX with a gui. There is lots of drivers for printers and many other things that run on OS X. Since Linux is UNIX at its root as well, making a OS X driver say for a HP printer work on Ubuntu is not that much of a stretch. The success of OS X has paved the way for drivers of a popular Google, Linux based OS.

Same for apps. Photoshop for OS X is really Photoshop for BSD Unix. How hard would it be to port it to a Ubuntu or Google Linux OS? Adobe wont because sales today wont pay for the porting. However if a Google/Linux OS became popular they just might do that.

[sanenazok]

I don't see what would make Google different from the Ubuntus or Redhats of the world. Uttering the phrase "cloud computing" and "paradigm shift" doesn't suddenly make Linux something it wasn't before - ready for corp. desktop use. The only way you'll get people off Windows if they are using something else at work. It's how the technologically inferior MS-DOS cornered the market.

@Maclover1: OS X is clearly a success in terms of earning your affections, but worldwide it hasn't made much of a dent. Also, drivers from OS X and other nix flavors are not compatible. While it's not a "stretch" that one could be made from another, does Apple release source code on drivers? Hah of course not. So the OS X drivers are only useful to see that something could be done, but of course everyone knew that already.

[SixString16]

Great observation and I guess only time will tell. Microsoft has been short on answers to open source so this is going to get way more interesting. As a person who likes the open source community and what it has to offer, this would be quite a thing to see.

The jury's still out on android (but I'll be getting my phone soon now that verizon's getting a couple of android devices), but to see what's happened in the last two years is amazing.

[nimer55]

If adobe doesn't port it, google will prob compete. Spend like a billion making a photoshop equivalent open source, web based software... Idesign, dreamweaver, everything will be web- based for free...

Googles got brains, and money... It's amazing..

[kaiman75]

@nimer55

Actually, Googles got no brains, and money... It's not that amazing...

@sanenazok

I agree with you to a point, although I think RedHat and Ubuntu are excellent in their own right. My fear is that like Apple and Cisco, Google is going to take the Open-Source Unix/Linux base and use it for their own proprietary software which will cripple it (see SIP versus SCCP for example), but gain them some leverage and more money (as if they need it) and putting them in the class with the IT monopolies like Cisco and Microsoft who control the market but make crappy products.

[cnouri987]

Is this a win just for Google?

Here at Rackspace we believe this is a big win for the entire cloud computing industry now that a big bureaucratic organization like the Los Angeles city government see's the benefits of moving to the cloud.

<a href="http://www.rackspace.com/email_hosting/blog/2009/10/congratulations-google-your-win-in-los-angeles-is-a-win-for-us-all/">So congrats to Google and Los Angeles</a>

[jlopezcnet]

I worked for an institution that dropped MS Exchange to go with Google Apps. We had about 600 users and it was H E 1 1. The final straw was when someone suggest I needed to go to google apps training to support the users. What is there to learn? The interface and features are worse than the MS Office v6 (the office that shipped during Windows 3.1 days)

I left shortly there after and now support Novell Groupwise. It may not be the best system in the world but at least our engineers can work with the issues.

[kevingower]

Software as a Service (SaaS) is now widely viewed as the way forward to get substantial return on investment over the heavy single role applications of the past and that includes the functional rich applications that Microsoft have been so successful at. Consolidating all your applications into one single sign like Google Apps in a social network context is the future!

We think nothing now of using other social networking system such as facebook, Linkedin and MySpace so why not a ?social office? way of doing business that Google now provides. The global financial crisis has prompted demand in order to reduce costs and that has seen new players such as SocialGo and BlueSpidy positioning themselves as the next big thing. It is now only a matter of time that the best marketed product will win.