Google Apps Not the DC Success Many Believe? 139
theodp writes "Google touts its partnership with the District of Columbia government, presenting it as quite the Google Apps success story. So as part of his coverage of last week's Gmail outage, nextgov's Gautham Nagesh called the DC government, but was told they hadn't heard of any reports of outages among city employees. Nagesh wrote this off to safeguards put in place for the government by Google, but readers tipped him off to another explanation: 'Despite all the press releases trumpeting Google in DC,' an anonymous commenter wrote, 'Exchange is still the city's primary email system.' Nagesh followed up, and was surprised to learn that there is indeed no Gmail in DC government. This all seemed rather strange to Nagesh, considering how much attention former DC CTO and current Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has received for implementing Google Apps for District employees. Reporting separately, CNET's Elinor Mills was told by a DC spokeswoman that while Google Apps is available to 38,000 DC city employees, only 4,000 are actively using it. The spokeswoman added that Gmail could potentially replace Microsoft Exchange, 'but this decision has not been made yet.'"
This is a DC problem, not a Google problem (Score:1, Informative)
I live here, unfortunately, and the whole DC government is corrupt and inefficient. This is really not surprising to anyone familiar with the local government.
Re:User Inertia (Score:4, Informative)
You don't really work with SharePoint, do you? I mean, this isn't even true and hasn't been for some time.
We have a number of 3rd party apps that are very SharePoint aware. You see, if you really worked with SharePoint, you'd understand that out-of-the-box MOSS/WSS is a very basic product that will do small or simple office needs. SharePoint has a fairly powerful and open API. It did have problems with documentation but most of that is in the past. If you want integration, go with a company that provides SharePoint awareness, or you can write your own stuff (Isn't that what geeks do? Isn't that what the Linux guys like to say? "If it doesn't do what you want it to do, write your own plug-in/module/web part/feature.")
If you are going to make a point, use talking points that don't come from SharePoint 2001.
Re:What does this say about Vivek Kundra? (Score:2, Informative)
Dvorak? Isn't he famous for trolling[1] people to get more ad hits?
He makes insinuations that Vivek might not have the degree he claimed to have. But he doesn't do a thorough investigation, and just shoots his mouth first.
Maybe the UMD newsdesk is wrong (they could be after all), but they did say that:
"Vivek Kundra moved from chief technology officer of D.C. to being the first federal chief information officer, working in the White House. Kundra holds an undergraduate degree from UM in psychology and a master's of science in information technology. "
See: http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/facts/mm/08-09/mar.cfm [umd.edu]
Perhaps the UMD newsdesk was sloppy, but given the other stuff I see, it just looks like Dvorak is trolling again.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMQv0j29WHA [youtube.com]