Steve Staso - Computing Solutions Strategist

Despite recent hacking attempts on Google, the City of LA is committed to progress with moving their 30,000 users to Google Mail and Apps. It is going to be MORE secure than their current environment and will cost less within a short timeframe. They are serving as a model while 50 other governments are asking them for more information on how they are doing this. Part of the agreement includes liability protection from Google if security is breached. Additionally, all data is stored in the US, encrypted, and managed by City staff. That satisfies many of the typical security and privacy and compliance issues that hinder organizations from adopting the cloud.

Congratulations to those that are making this decision.

Read more here:
http://www.cio.com/article/519138/LA_s_Move_to_Google_Apps_is_Underway?s...

Randi Levin, CTO, City of Los Angeles and Kevin Crawford, Assistant GM of the Information Technology Agency (ITA) share their views on why they chose Google Apps for their 30K employees.

The City is currently running at a $400M deficit and needs to increase efficiency and cut costs.

They awarded the multi-year contract to CSC who will get assistance from SADA Systems in North Hollywood, CA.

The 30,000 employees are distributed among its 44 departments and will gain many new capabilities and benefits by moving their Email and Document collaboration into Google Apps. They expect 65-85% of the employees will not need any other email or document collaboration apps.

Right now, The City Email is not available from many mobile devices and the mailbox size (quota) is very limited.

They needed a solution that was No/low training, easy to use, intuitive, accessible from mobile devices. Collaboration, Disaster Recovery, and Archiving are among the main benefits that will come with this solution. Along the way, they pick up better availability, security, maintainability, and remote access - all because of the cloud-based solution.

They expect to save $5.5M over the 5 year contract lifetime. When you count all the time, energy, and efficiency gained or saved, they could see an ROI of $20M.