The City of Los Angeles is to plough on with its move to Cloud Computing after a vote by the council unanimously decided to continue to migrate all 30,000 LA city workers over to Google apps.
The council revisited the planned move after Google and its implementation parter CSC failed to meet a transition deadline of 30th June amid security concerns voiced by some of its agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
But in a brief statement posted on Google's Enterprise Blog, Google Operations Director Jocelyn Ding wrote that "the Los Angeles city council voted unanimously in favor of completing the City's move to Google Apps."
The council also confirmed that Google has agreed to cover the cost of the existing Novell system until the move over to Google is complete, a deal which could cost Google around $415,000.
But Google remains upbeat about the deal which was a major victory over Microsoft and its public sector Cloud ambitions. Microsoft lobbied hard to win the LA contract itself. Ding wrote: "Within a few months and in less than a year since the project began, we expect that all 30,000 city employees, including the 13,000 members of the Los Angeles Police Department and other public safety officials, will be migrated to Google Apps. We’re very pleased with the progress to date, and are committed to making this a great success for Los Angeles and a milestone for Cloud Computing.”
They're not so pleased over at Microsoft, of course, where Andrew Kisslo, an Office senior product manager used a company blog to dismiss Google Apps as 'New Coke'. He wrote: "A year ago, Google launched their attack advertising campaign dubbed 'Gone Google'. Extolling the virtues of software's 'New Coke,' Google has been attempting to gain credibility with paying customers (businesses) who may want to rely on the search vendor for their software needs...
“While it's been an interesting twelve months for the entire industry, I do believe the burden of proof has shifted from Microsoft to Google. There is no doubt that we are delivering an extremely high bar for productivity tools in the industry and the accolades continue to mount to this effect. Google will likely claim 'disruptor advantage' but in my opinion until they find the DNA it takes to be productivity leader, customers will continue to describe their solutions as 'unmanageable', 'consumer', 'ultimatum', and 'not worth it'.”
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