The City of Los Angeles uses Google Apps

I mentioned LA’s move to Google Apps briefly in yesterday’s post, but I think I need to share some more detail. If a small business or even a large business moves to Cloud Computing it’s a big thing – but when an entire City does, then I think we should take note.

In October 2009 the City of Los Angeles moved it’s 34, 000 employees to Google Apps, replacing its Novell GroupWise system. The move has costed around $7.25 million, but Los Angeles officials believe that it will save millions of dollars in software licensing, maintenance, and storage costs while improving security.

Patrick Thibodeau reported in a Computerworld article:

Los Angeles spent months negotiating a contract with Google that includes a provision providing the city with unlimited damages if its nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is breached by Google, said Kevin Crawford, the assistant general manager of IT for Los Angeles and the person who is managing the transition…Los Angeles data will be administered from inside LA’s firewall by city staffers through an administrative console built by Google, said Crawford. “We have control of our portion of the data….”We’re going to have a more secure system then we have today,” said Crawford, noting that Google personnel does more work on security “than we could ever afford to do.”

The same article reveals an interesting decision about Microsoft Office:

Los Angeles isn’t forcing employees to abandon Microsoft Office, since it already owns licenses for it. But the city won’t be buying new Office licenses for the next 12 months, and then will assess with various departments about whether they still need it, said Crawford. “Our best guess is that for somewhere between 60% and 80% of the staff, Google apps will meet all of their office productivity needs,” he said.

Los Angeles is the second largest city in the US, but not the first to adopt Google Apps. It has been preceded by Washington DC and Orlando, FL.

Randi Levin, Chief Technology Officer, City of Los Angeles:

Google Apps will also help conserve resources in the city’s Information & Technology Agency (ITA), which is responsible for researching, testing & implementing new technologies in ways that make Los Angeles a better place to live, work and play. Because the email and other applications are hosted and maintained by Google, ITA employees who previously were responsible for maintaining our email system can be freed up to work on projects that are central to making the city run.

That’s the beauty of Google Apps. It means all your staff do not need to worry about email and related applications. That’s Google’s problem now. What about the savings…

By ITA estimates, Google Apps will save the city of Los Angeles millions of dollars by allowing us to shift resources currently dedicated to email to other purposes. For example, moving to Google will free up nearly 100 servers that were used for our existing email system, which will lower our electricity bills by almost $750,000 over five years. In short, this decision helps us to get the most out of the city’s IT budget.

This is phenomenal! Many companies don’t realise that Google Apps brings savings on items like servers (and remember these have huge maintenance costs too), as well as electricity.

This installation, across 34 city departments, was scheduled over a few months. Now keep in mind that the installation does not consist of any physical hardware. This is Cloud Computing. What takes time is adding users, creating groups, providing training, transferring data, and that sort of thing. A change to a City cannot happen in one day, even if the new infrastructure resides totally on the Internet.

Kevin Crawford, Assistant General Manager, Information Technology Agency, City of Los Angeles:

Google Apps is going to provide us capabilities mostly in the collaboration, disaster recovery, and archiving that we don’t currently have today…The product is going to make it easier for people to work together….Somebody’s on vacation, somebody’s on a business trip somewhere, they can sign into their Google system just as they can from their desk in their office.

The important points of collaboration and mobility are pointed out here. Google Apps makes this all so easy.

What does Randi say about email?

Email is vital to the inner workings of the city. There was a general dissatisfaction with our current email system. It can’t work on certain devices, people’s frustrations with the size of the mailboxes have really reached a peak. I didn’t want something that was going to require hours and hours of training. I wanted something that was going to be easy for them to use, intuitive, and something they can have when they’re at their desk, and when they’re out in their car, or when they’re out in the field.

And the big ROI question? And productivity?

Our ROI could be upwards to about $20 million, which includes increased productivity… With the Google solution, because of the way the whole system is architected, the availability of the system is increased. We’ll have more security, our data’s going to be much safer with the new system… For example they could do video chat and do their meetings that way as opposed to people driving into City Hall every day for a meeting… We’re going to see huge productivity savings, particularly when we train the organisation on how to use shared documents.

What makes things even more interesting, is that just last week Google launched the Google Apps Marketplace. I blogged about it here.

Does Google Apps implementation have to cost $7.25 million? Of course not. LA has 34, 000 employees. It’s likely your company is not that big.

Do you want to simply your communication, documentation, and collaboration processes? Do you want to eliminate server hardware and application software costs? Do you want to eliminate in-house and contracted IT support costs? Then Google Apps is for you. If you’re interested, contact us, we’ll get your hooked up.

For now, why don’t you watch this video of the City of Los Angeles’ move to Google Apps…