Microsoft is based in Washington and Google is a California company. It's no surprise the biggest city in California would favor a (semi-)local provider. And that could be a tie-breaker even if the solutions were comparable in every other way (which they probably aren't).

I wonder if L.A. employees will now have their Google/Gmail accounts "hacked" and have their emails posted online... (eg, Sarah Palin & Yahoo).

If I were LA I would pick google too after the recent Sidekick fiasco.

Sarah Palin didn't get "hacked". She was a moron that had her email security question set as her town of birth. All they did was reset her password and the media called it "hacking."

No, my company does not use Google Apps. Just letting you know.

Ohhhhh so finally Ca is not outsourcing ... seems everything else is either from outside the state or country!

My university in Ohio has migrated to Gmail service starting from the current semester. My undergrad university in Canada has also switched Alumni mail to Gmail.

Good luck managing employee passwords, LA!

They may regret this nothing important is ready for cloud computing. Any in-house solution is a better choice, well maybe not groupwise...

According to the full article "Under the deal, Google will provide e-mail, calendar, online chatting and other services to 30,000 city employees."

It mentions nothing about office apps, so I presume they will still be running the almost ubiquitous MS office.

Also their previous calender/email client was groupwise (a horrible evil nasty piece of software that anyone should want to replace) and only turned down a 'bid' from MS to use theirs (presumably outlook, which is wierd if they are already using office... maybe they aren't, but it would be highly unusual).

The most interesting thing about this article is the issues they raise surrounding security on a cloud based system, that these concerns were raised (and by all accounts quite loudly) but that it went through anyway shows that either 1) the people making the deal didn't understand the issues, or 2) google were able to satisfy them that these issues were able to be dealt with... if this second alternative is the case, then I'd like to hear more on how they achieved it.

I disagree, I think email and internet applications are... in some ways by their very nature they always were, it just took the comms hardware time to really allow it to take off.

Sucks to be Microsoft and for sure this is a bad rep for Novell Inc. but it serves them right! Wake up and offer good, modern, and reliable communication solutions to your users (clients). Congrats Google, don't get too comfy because the next guy will beat you out the second you start to think you rule the World... Just keep the Microsoft legacy in the back of your minds dear Google execs!

The contract makes Computer Sciences Corp. liable if there is a security breach.

I like my free Gmail account. No junk mails. Same with Lycos. I still get lots of junk mails with Hotmail and Yahoo. But not as bad as years back. Not complaining. Happy as a clown.

I wish the DOD would get Google Apps.

Google is picking up customers in this regard left and right. A fair amount of decent sized companies and many municipalities are making the switch to them. Obviously, Google is doing something right.

This is just another nail in Microsoft's coffin.

Bill bailed before the going got tough.

I fail to see how this could possibly be the end for MS, as they moved from a Novell system to a google one. MS possibly lost out providing outlook and server software plus support. Now considering using gmail, all is outsourced, less IT overheads, there is still quite the likelihood that outlook is still used for organising mail and passwords/accounts. This could possibly be up to the individual.

At my place of work we use an engmail system for webmail and outlook to access on your own workstation. engmail is terrible faux hotmail on intranet and hotmail itself cannot be used by corporations in it's current form and has no IMAP ability. A good webmail is great for hotdesking and outlook is terrible for it. MS has never been great in this area, it's services just aren't together enough now. Whoever lost out it was really in the engmail (possibly an MS product) and mail server arena. Now if they were moving 30,000 employees to linux, that would be a nail gun sounding off in the distance...

This is great news for cloud computing in general, not just for Google. This really validates what cloud providers have been saying for a while now: moving to the cloud can save huge amounts of money. Congrats Google!

http://www.rackspace.com/email_hos [...] or-us-all/

It's a Derecession(half depression/half recession currently). Organizations need to INCREASE THE BOTTOM Line. This quote says it all "proponents repeated a City Administrative Officer estimate that the new contract would save the city some $5 million in service costs over five years, in addition to allowing the city's technology department to shed nine positions".

What "other internet services" are they talking about. Could it be this: http://www.google.com/tisp/
It would be fitting. :-)

I personally like the Plumbing Hardware Dispatchers (PHDs)!!!!!

I'm surprised the article didn't mention if the Los Angeles City Council brought up any cloud computing concerns with the whole Microsoft mess so being sorted out.

Google was chosen because they are a Jewish company, not because they are located in California.

By definition, gaining any unauthorized access to any electronic information is "hacking". It may be the easiest hack ever, but its still hacking none the less.

Cloud Computing sounds like a pretty phrase for outsourcing. Google isn't going to call their email system "e-mail outsourced" that would be a tough sell to many people. The fact is all of the data is still stored on the same type of hardware just in a different location. A colleague of mine has an interesting perspective in regards to cloud computing. As an IT professional he says to me "If I design and build the system and it fails, I lose my job. If another company designs and builds the system and it fails, I lose my job. At least in the first scenario I have control over whether or not I lose my job."

Nevertheless it's interesting. LA will certainly be a feather in Google's hat if it pans out as a success. Only time will tell.

Cloud computing is the way to go. Saves redundant hardware that you have to upgrade at the local level every few years. Cuts down on maintenance cost since that is taken care of by the cloud service your business uses. Finally it is ultra portable and can be accessed from any place with a internet connection. The only hitch that is both a plus and minus is "Security". The plus being all critical updates and antivirus services are centrally controlled and monitored providing information assurance managers more control over what is intalled or allowed into the network. The bad thing is what makes the good thing so great...all your eggs are in one basket. If the cloud gets compromised it can potentially result in a great deal of personal information and business information getting into the wrong hands. I'd go cloud computing regardless with the right in depth security measures and redundant back ups in place together with who will pay for what in a contract if they screw up.

Note the quotation marks he placed around the word "hacked".

This clearly implies that it was not actually hacked, but as you mentioned. Not that I could expect anyone to comprehend English language nowadays.

*this clryh imply's th@ wuz nto hxd, but u said: lol cant expect u plebs 2 talk good newayz.....

Oh dear heavens. Are Tom's readers this dense? I'm sorry, not trying to be a jerk... but get with it people.

I put the word hacked in quotation marks for a reason. Apparently you folks don't understand what it means to put something in quotation marks anymore. Our public schools are failing still....

Of course it wasn't really hacked, that's why I wrote "hacked" instead of hacked. See the difference?

So... soo.... sad.

Thank you. I'm glad someone else was taught the proper use of punctuation marks, and actually understands them as well.

What bothers me more so, is that LA is still using Novell for their network OS'. O-K.. Groupwise was dead 8 years ago, they just didnt realize it themselves. So now they are going to GMAIL. Sweet. YET again, no Directory Service Security. Email password= whatever , versus network login authentication, and WORSE.. NOW it is apparant that with 30,000 LA employee's using a WEB enabeled email application, means 30,000 possible places for email spam/virus's.. AS a city / government entity, i realllly hope that google is like NOT SCANNING that email. In house wether the expense = MAIL IS THERE, under their policy, control.. VIA Cloud= YOU HOPE IT IS THERE, YOU HOPE IT ISNT SCANNED, or violated.
HAPPEND everywhere, but like aposter already posted.. IF it is in meh house, and it fails, that is on me, BUT if it is google-boogle land, and it failes, YAH it is still on me, YET some outsourced programmer in india was responsible for MEH job.. I dont like this idea not 1 bit.