LA's Move To Google Apps Slows As "Apps For Gov't." Announced 98
Several readers noted Google's announcement yesterday of Google Apps for Government: "The new version is a variant of Google Apps Premier edition, and includes the same core apps: Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Groups, Video, and Postini. Pricing is the same as for Google Apps Premier: $50 per user per year. The certification says that Google Apps qualifies for is called a FISMA-Moderate rating, which means that it's authorized for use with data that's sensitive but unclassified. In addition, Google says that it's storing government Gmail and Google Calendar on servers that are isolated from those used for non-government customers, and which are located in the continental US." This service might be just what the city of Los Angeles needs (though the price may not be right). LA started migrating months ago to Google Apps, and the process is experiencing some delays, as pointed out by reader theodp. "In December, Google tooted its own horn as it celebrated edging out rival Microsoft to win a high-profile, ironically Microsoft-funded contract to supply email and collaboration software to the City of Los Angeles. Now comes word that the search giant has missed a June deadline for full implementation due to lingering security concerns. Google downplayed reports of the delay, saying it was 'very pleased with the progress to date' which has allowed 10,000+ of the City's 34,000 employees to use Google Apps."
Re:Seems odd (Score:3, Informative)
No Google is cheaper because it economizes such things. Think about it, Google is already running data centers with thousands of computers in them, it's cheap for them to add another rack or two for what you need. They've probably already got the backup capacity, the redundant data center. They've got hundreds of skilled technicians, programmers, and admins on staff already. They're specialists. All they know is data centers, and it works because they're selling you a data center (or at least a little piece of theirs). They don't have to document your setup, it's just like all the other setups and if the guy who runs yours picks up and leaves he can be replaced by the guy next to him.
The downside of this is that you get what Google gives you. It's not a perfect system. You can't call up IT and ask them to whip up a new CRM, or change out your mail server for something different. You have certain options, sure. Certain menus of choices, but not the near complete flexibility of in house IT. It seems to me that their are two main questions you want to ask when it comes to using a cloud provider for theses services:
1) Will it actually save you money? Don't discount this, it will save many organizations lots of money. Google does what they do well, and has definite economy of scale on its side. Do a fair comparison and see if it will save your company money.
2) Can you afford to lose the flexibility. Lots of companies can. You have to think about this one, do you really need this level of flexibility, or are you holding onto it because it seems "safe"?
There's lots of other things to consider of course. There's the level of trust that you, personally, have for the cloud provider. How much money you'll be saving vs. how much pain it's going to cost. But really it all pretty much boils down to: Will it save me money, and will it accomplish what I need. Assuming the answer to both questions is yes, it's probably something that should be looked into.
Additional requirements not in original contract (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but it looks like at least part of the reason for the delay are "unforeseen requirements" that weren't in the initial arrangement with the city that Google's had to deal with. For example:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/26/google-city-of-los-angeles-apps-delay-is-overblown/ [techcrunch.com]
As for the delay, Google says that they are working with with the City of LA to "address requirements that were not included in the original contract." One example of these possible requirements that came up is that the LAPD wants to conduct background checks on all Google employees that have access to Google Apps data in the cloud. Doing these checks of course add more time to the adminstrative clock.
LAPD background checks on Google employees may very well be a reasonable request, but things like this add time to the schedule and weren't part of the original contract.
Re:LA - Buying? How? (Score:3, Informative)
(Trust me I'm not MS fan-boi.)
For the time period 2007-2009, my department spent an estimated $1,100,928 developing and enhancing two primary systems. This included all development and hardware costs. These systems take in between $300M and $400M per year in taxes and fees and are the largest of the kind by number of transactions processed in the US.
Vendor systems in this range have been quoted to us as costing between $4M and $6M outright with $500K to $800K/year in maintenance.
(Our accounting system - which is crap IMO - runs on a shared server and cost $160M.)
Here's how I came up with the figures.
Development Costs for JEDI System November 2007 - January 2009
Software
MSDN $50,000.00
Team Foundation Server $10,000.00
Janis Controls $20,000.00
Atlasoft Controls $20,000.00
Analysts
Specifications $138,622
Documentation $110,856
Training $52,100
Testing $146,178
Programmers
Development: $523,172
Management
Oversight: $30,000.00
Total: $1,100,928.00
Now, you can add in the overhead costs for servers and the personnel to cover the servers. We currently have 89 servers on racks in our server room. These servers must be up 18/6 and are absolutely essential during certain time periods. We have four staff members running the servers and an additional six staff members maintaining our 800+ workstations, LAN and six remote locations.
I’m a taxpayer also, and cannot stand to see money wasted. If I were to move to the cloud – the ultimate in vaporware IMO – we’d be moving to a service level that is set by the vendor and not in our control. We already have some services moved to the cloud. IIRC, the department spent around $1M on a vendor-hosted system that has been less than reliable and very expensive to maintain.