It was billed as a major proof point that Cloud Computing had a future in the public sector – and as a blow to Microsoft – but the City of Los Angeles Google Apps roll out seems to have run into trouble.
In October of last year, L.A. City Council voted to adopt Google Apps after a fierce bidding war with Microsoft. The financial value of the deal was only $7.25m, but the propaganda value for Google was invaluable, striking a blow into the Microsoft public sector heartland.
Google had a 30 June deadline to get all of Los Angeles' city employees up and running on Google Apps, but that deadline came and went. One of the key issues behind the delay: security concerns by the city's police department.
According to a report filed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) earlier this month, while a technology like Google Apps "may represent savings in hardware purchases and maintenance, and software administration, it also poses certain security concerns". The police department is reported to have concerns about Google Apps' data encryption, "segregation of city data from other data maintained by Google", and background checks for Google employees with access to police department information.
While security concerns are routinely bandied around as an inhibitor to Cloud adoption in both the private and public sectors, the LAPD is also said to be concerned about delays experienced during the pilot phase in receiving emails to their Blackberry devices. Delays of such a nature would impact on the operational efficiency of the police force and its ability to respond to incidents.
Speed bump ahead
Los Angeles City Council is now keeping employees on an old Novell system while the problems with the Google roll out are resolved. Google estimates that the delay will cost around $135,000, but the Council has reportedly put the figure at closer to $400,000 or more. Google is said to have agreed to pay for the old Novell licences until November, when the implementation is now expected to be completed.
This may well appease City councillors who were not impressed by the idea of the extra cost. "Google comes in with this sweetheart deal that was supposed to be state of the art... and obviously they haven't performed," Councilman Dennis Zine said during a July council meeting. "I don't see why we are required to take care of their inability to measure up."
He added: "We've had a lot of technical issues, some we've created and some we haven't. We underestimated the amount of time it was going to take."
A City Council review of the contract was due to take place this week, but has been pushed back to 4 August. There's no question of LA backing away from the deal with Google. To date, more than 10,000 of the city's employees have switched to the new Google Apps with another 6,000 scheduled to transition by mid-August. This delay has been described as "a speed bump" on the journey to the Cloud.
A Google spokesman said: "The city government's migration to the Cloud is the first of its kind, and we're very pleased with the progress to date, more than 10,000 employees are already using Google Apps, and we're working closely with CSC and the City to ensure the project is a great success for Los Angeles."
Google government
Google has grand ambitions in the government market. This week it introduced Google Apps for Government, a suite of Cloud-based business applications equipped with extra security precautions based on the US Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) security standards specified by the US government. Microsoft does not have this certification for the online version of Exchange but says it is close to receiving it.
"The federal government's General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorisation to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation," noted Kripa Krishnan, technical program manager for Google Apps for Government. "This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the Cloud with confidence."
Berkeley Labs, which is part of the US Department of Energy, started using Google Apps earlier this year. More than 4,000 employees and 1,000 research partners are using Google Docs & Sites to collaborate and 4,000 are using Google Mail. "Berkeley researchers collaborate with scientists around the world, so emailing version upon version of documents among collaborators and trying to juggle disparate files is difficult," explained Khrisnan. "Berkeley Labs researchers have been using Google Apps to share documents that live in the Cloud, and can view and edit documents and spreadsheets simultaneously knowing they are always working from the latest information."
Google also has plans to produce a government-certified version of its Chrome web browser. Dave Girouard, president of Google's enterprise division, said government represented a significant opportunity for the company. The federal government spends $76bn on technology, according to Google.
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