10 ms·

City of Boston drops Microsoft for Gmail

128 points by myko 13y ago

didyousaymeow 13y ago
I think you meant Microsoft Exchange, not Outlook.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
supernovae 13y ago
They will be back..
- walshemj 13y ago
  Yeh just as soon as MS comes up with a chunky discount :-) Though the question has to be asked would all of the users in local government be OK to use Gmail from a legal perspective? for example police or social services might have more stringent data protection requirements.
  - blocke 13y ago
    "Though the question has to be asked would all of the users in local government be OK to use Gmail from a legal perspective?" Sufficiently large organizations don't just accept the click-through EULA. Get a contract and sue if it's breached.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      Ah yes just like the hard bargains and successful contracts the UK Govt has with Capita etal :-)
  - jonknee 13y ago
    Do you really think this hasn't been asked by Boston or any of the other very large Google Apps deployments? The answer is a single Google Search away... https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.html https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.h... > Google Apps for Government includes dozens of security features specifically designed to keep your data safe, secure and in your control. This segregated system, for government customers in the U.S. only, was the first cloud-based email application to receive FISMA accreditation from the U.S. federal government.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      MM I think you will find that Boston is a city in the commonwealth of massachusetts and not a "federal agency".
    - alyx 13y ago
      Office365 is also FISMA accredited no? http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/2012/05/03/fisma-security-certification-office-365.aspx http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/...
incision 13y ago
I've witnessed an abortive attempt bring a large city from MS to Google - good luck. I'm truly all for it conceptually, but in my experience this kind of project tends to be full of false expectations and bad math, but plenty of press.
jonheller 13y ago
I'm surprised that they're moving to Google Docs as well. From my experience Google Docs does not fare very well in government & enterprise settings where people are used to Microsoft Word.
- mpyne 13y ago
  From what I can tell in government (my side of the vast government) no one uses Word beyond the sheer basics. No macros, no fancy "decimal tabs", WordArt, gradients everywhere, any of that. For what 95% of people are doing Google Docs is more than sufficient.
  - duck 13y ago
    That might be true in general as far as client features go, but I do know that at least the DoD is a heavy user of the identity and access management services which effects what you can do with an Office document. That rules out Google Docs for anyone that is already or planning to do that.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Shipmate, I'm in the DoD. Maybe you're talking about OSD, JS, Army, Air Force or something else though. Edit: Also, doesn't Google Docs have controls to limit sharing of online documents to certain persons, groups, or teams? The big concern I can think of is PII spillage, but honestly I think I trust Google more than I trust random GS-13s with their externals and laptops. DoD at least has PKI but in the Navy we're recommended to also use a password-based certificate for encrypted externals in case the CAC is lost, which kind of defeats the point since I'm sure the password is not going to be high-entropy.
  - rz2k 13y ago
    Hopefully, advanced users are using features like merges, automation of data sources, templates and address validations rather than WordArt and gradients. With minimal studying on their own, a smart office worker can be pretty efficient doing analysis with Excel Pivot Tables while avoiding a lot of red tape. I could see the switch to an office suite with reduced features getting in the way of work done by a lot of behind the scenes, unsung heroes. I think that when actual exposure to how people use software is largely comes from support calls, it is easy to get an inaccurate picture of bumbling and general incompetence, rather than creative solutions to often arbitrary constraints on their tool sets.
chayesfss 13y ago
Google is killing microsoft in the government sector, since I'm helping pay for all this I can't tell you how happy I am that they're saving money. GSA went Google and is saving millions.
- cooldeal 13y ago
  And yet, Office revenues are up 7% in the last quarter and Google's revenues from Apps/Docs/Email is still only a few percent. The government is a lot bigger than a few departments.
  - recoiledsnake 13y ago
    The primary purpose of Gmail seems to be get people to sign in so that all their web searches can be tracked by Google across computers to users' Google Accounts so that ads can be targeted, not to mention to force Google+ on users. I think it is pretty successful at making people do that.
    - superuser2 13y ago
      And the primary purpose of Exchange Server is transfer gobs and gobs of money from unsuspecting organizations to Microsoft. Locally hosted Exchange is insanely wasteful. Organizations continue to believe that a $25 lock on some closet is "more secure" than a real datacenter and insist on paying 3+ intermediaries' markup on outrageously expensive software licenses and servers, racks, UPSes and other accessories. They buy servers which they barely use, and what cost savings there is gets wiped out by VMWare licensing fees if they decide to do virtualization. Then they've got to pay another company to bring technicians out to maintain the server, change the UPS batteries, etc, at a cost of $100+/hour. All of this could be so much more cost-efficient at scale. GMail may be a privacy concern, organizations' insistence on hosting their own email is maddeningly, mind-bogglingly wasteful considering they could get the same functionality for a few hundred bucks a year. Someone needs to make a real open-source competitor to Exchange so people who insist on hosting their own stuff can at least stop throwing away money that could employ people on Exchange licenses. I understand that IMAP exists, but no one actually wants to use Thunderbird.
nivla 13y ago
As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google, I think it is a great move in terms of savings. Although I don't see the switch to Google Docs from the Office Suite ending well. Also if they are going through such great lengths to switch everything to Google, then why not save even more by using the Chrome OS instead of Windows?
- stock_toaster 13y ago
  > As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google I very nearly sprayed coffee on my screen when I read that. Well played.
  - raldi 13y ago
    Google already guarantees timely customer support for organizations willing to pay for it: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/upgrade.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/upgrade.html https://cloud.google.com/support/packages https://cloud.google.com/support/packages
    - recoiledsnake 13y ago
      That appears to be Google App Engine support and not Google Apps/Docs support?
      - raldi 13y ago
        Edited my post to also include the link to the Google Apps 24/7 customer support.
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    I've worked at several companies who paid for Google Apps; I have spoken to a live support rep when issues have occurred. Problem?
    - Thing_Two 13y ago
mtgx 13y ago
Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term, but I still wish all government institutions would switch to open source software wherever possible. And by wherever possible I don't mean that some users might be "inconvenienced" by some menu change. I mean when an open source alternative actually exists. But even then, if the government is willing to spend money to get people or companies to build that software, they should make it open source after that.
- slg 13y ago
  I agree with your general principle. However, Boston is purchasing a service and not a software product. There is a lot of overhead and expertise needed to purchase and maintain the machines that would run any open source competitor. That isn't as big of a problem when going with something like Gmail.
- incision 13y ago
  >And by wherever possible I don't mean that some users might be "inconvenienced" by some menu change. I mean when an open source alternative actually exists. I don't understand what you mean to say here.
- 300bps 13y ago
  >Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term, I know that's what the article says, but I'm wondering if they truly put Google Apps up against Office 365 which would be an apples-to-apples comparison? It seems more like they put Google Apps up against an on-premises Exchange + locally installed productivity software suite which is not a good comparison Microsoft has actually been forced by their competitors (especially Google) in offering a competing offering by way of Office 365. You can have hosted Exchange for $4 per user per month. It's been in production for years, and in the last year has really worked well for my organization.
  - thrownaway2424 13y ago
    I saw some blog recently claiming that Office 365 downtime was 100x more abundant than Gmail downtime. http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-office-365-a-comparison-of-gmail-and-exchange-system-availability/ http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-offic...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
recoiledsnake 13y ago
Hope it doesn't end up like this deployment. http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-for-google-apps/ http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-for-... ""Google's record with the city is nothing but broken promises and missed deadlines," the letter reads in part. "The Internet giant simply has not done what it said it would do and has tried to buy its way out of the mess it has made by covering the unbudgeted costs of the LAPD's GroupWise System that the department has been forced to continue using." The mayor's office did not have any immediate comment as of press time." Edit: Somewhat ironic that Google Docs and Drive are currently down. https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src=typd https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src... "Google Drive documents list goes empty for users " http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-documents-list-goes-empty-for-users/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=statusnet http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-do...
- nostromo 13y ago
  I once convinced a CEO of a company with a few hundred employees to move from Outlook to Gmail. For a while after I was a social pariah. My expense reports would go missing (want to find a Microsoft fan? look in accounting). My calls to IT (staffed with MCWhatever certified individuals) unanswered. The controller pulled me aside and said in a menacing Brooklyn accent I didn't know he had in him, "I would appreciate it if you would make this go away." I learned a valuable about switching costs that day.
  - rubyrescue 13y ago
    wow please tell more. "for a while" means people's anger passed? or you guys switched back?
    - nostromo 13y ago
      I wasn't at the company for much longer after that. No, I wasn't fired. ;) The company was very East Coast, very sales-driven, not very tech-driven at the time. I don't like using age as a proxy for tech-savviness since there are plenty of tech-savvy older folks, but this was a bit of an older organization as well. But yeah, people adapt. They will kick and scream and claim that their world is ending and then a month later they'll forget about the old way of doing things. (Or, as was often the case, IT just set up their Outlook to pull their emails from Gmail's servers.) And then the anger subsided.
dhawalhs 13y ago
Google drive seems to be down: http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1368212487427 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1...
CmonNoReg 13y ago
Random decision by a random person.
mwcampbell 13y ago
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." -- The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again" I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider running free software".
- cooldeal 13y ago
  >I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider running free software". That is because, for some, it's less about promoting software freedom and more about taking Microsoft down. That's why we have SJVN on the ZDNet "Open Source" blog promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than Windows and MS Office because of being completely locked down and being tied to Google's Cloud. For a even better example, see Ubuntu's Bug #1. As usual, Linus has pithy insight. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/07/linus-torvalds-microsoft-hatred-is-a-disease/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/07/linus-...
  - mwcampbell 13y ago
    The problem with having the goal of taking Microsoft down is that some new, potentially abusive, power will probably rise in its place. What really matters is people's freedom. You seem to realize this, but I thought it would be worth pointing out anyway.
  - myko 13y ago
    > promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than Windows and MS Office Google Docs goes out of its way to import/export to various formats, including Microsoft's. Given this I think the above statement is hardly fair.
    - improv32 13y ago
      He means that the source for GDocs is private.
jusben1369 13y ago
"$800K to make the switch. Save $240K per year." Interesting they got that deal done. Assume for safety sake a 20% to 30% overrun and now you're at $1 million. And if for some reason your savings take a little longer than you thought to get there (don't they always?). Plus add in the opportunity cost of having to focus on this and retrain your workforce on Google vs MSFT that they all know. Then there's always the risk that any big project is the 1 in 10 that goes completely haywire. I just don't usually see enterprise deals with this long of a payback window getting done (based on $$'s alone anyway - without some other compelling reason) Just curious on the dynamics of the deal not the Google vs MSFT component.
- hashbanged 13y ago
  I agree, I'd be interested to see what happened in negotiations. Also, while they may save $240k per year in money they don't pay to Microsoft, I imagine anyone selling enterprise software would argue that there is money you will save from a theoretical increase in productivity from using their products, after everyone's been trained.
  - jusben1369 13y ago
    I think the productivity argument favors MSFT. The time to retrain current employees. The fact that 85% of new employees will have "Proficient in MSFT Word, Excel and Powerpoint" on their application/CV/resume too. "Google Apps? Ain't nobody got time for that!" (ok maybe I shouldn't have added that)
  - taopao 13y ago
    What if Microsoft does something stupid, like making all menu and toolbar muscle memory obsolete with that damn Ribbon?
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      Or worse: an interface designed for touch, rather than a mouse...
- 13y ago
SatvikBeri 13y ago
Hope this doesn't turn out like the last time Boston tried a significant migration away from Microsoft. "When the state information technology chief of Massachusetts announced in 2005 that the state was going to standardize its computer document format to be more compatible with open-source software-software that isn't controlled by a company-than with Microsoft products, loud choruses of support and outrage ensued, closely followed by the announcement of an investigation into the chief's apparently perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in open-source software conferences, followed by a new state-government announcement that it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the company's document formats, followed by an announcement from Microsoft that it would bring its document format closer to an open-source format." [0]: A Perfect Mess: http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-ebook/dp/B00CAUHGB4/ http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-ebook/d...
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > followed by the announcement of an investigation into the chief's apparently perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in open-source software conferences, followed by a new state-government announcement that it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the company's document formats In other words, it's just safer to stay with Microsoft. You really don't want well-funded groups investigating every single activity, making you dig up every single receipt, and sponsoring your opponents, do you? Looks like textbook Microsoft tactics.
gdulli 13y ago
I sincerely miss Outlook now that I'm at a company that uses Google Apps. The gmail web interface just isn't usable the way a real mail client is, and using an IMAP client is never as good an experience as native Outlook/Exchange. And that's just for mail. When you add in calendaring Outlook gets even better in comparison.
- pivo 13y ago
  Huh, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. I find the gmail interface much faster and easier to use, plus searching email actually works. Have you enabled the advanced keystrokes in gmail? As far as calendaring, I never really figured out how to use it that well in Exchange, Google's seems so much easier to me.
  - WayneDB 13y ago
    Easier in what way? Can you give us an example? How are "advanced keystrokes" in Gmail going to be easier or better for someone when all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely inconsistent with every other application (web or otherwise)? Here they are - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en&ctx=mail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en&ctx=ma... I just can't imagine how anyone could find Gmail to be easier, given that all of the functionality is hidden behind unlabeled, non-obvious buttons that are spread out all over the screen. In Outlook and Thunderbird, the vast majority of action-inputs are very clearly labeled and keyboard access is made obvious by an underlined letter or a tool-tip that shows you the shortcut (unlike Gmail). How could it be easier, when I can drag three attachments into a new Outlook message and hit send quicker than Gmail can even upload the attachments that I dragged to it? How could it be easier, when I click "Inbox" and then I can't use the keyboard arrows (or Tab) to move to "Starred", "Important", "Sent Mail", etc? I guess I have to learn some non-obvious keyboard shortcut.
    - lallysingh 13y ago
      Huh? Have you hit the ? mark? Gmail's key-bindings are set up to be as fast as possible, and are faster to type than a normal desktop app, as you don't have to worry about eating up characters meant for a text box somewhere. I really suggest you give it a fair shot. I like it a lot better than any desktop mail app I've ever used (and that's been quite a few). For example: To go to "Starred" hit "g" then "s". To go to an arbitrary label, hit "g" "l" and then you have a drop-down list of labels, with autocomplete. Seems nicer than tabbing about. To compose, hit "c".
drorweiss 13y ago
Good for Boston & Google. I guess nobody wants to administer mail these days...
- lallysingh 13y ago
  I've seen enough horrors first (but mostly second) hand of small shops (admittedly not like the story, but I'll talk about what I know) running their own systems. They'll have 2-3 people running everything. From the mail server to setting up printers to replacing bad hardware components. If I were in that boat, I'd beg and plead to put everyone on a disposable internet-only type machine and run webapps only. Then I could worry about security and reliability, which sadly gets last priority in most places :(
mzr 13y ago
"What’s more, Cain said, Google’s contract terms are much simpler than dealing with Microsoft. And since Google updates its software via the Internet, which Microsoft only recently started doing with some of its products, it means clients won’t be working for years on outdated applications." This is just willfully ignorant. If you have Exchange, you probably have Active Directory. You can update Office various ways. I updated 1000 computers from Office 2003 to 2010 without touching any of them. I can also push an update to all our computers only downloading the patches once, not with 1000 computers downloading the same thing all at once. I haven't seen Google Docs mass controls, but with AD and Office I was able to fix a PowerPoint video acceleration issue with a subset of our machines. Otherwise I'd have to change a setting for every person who logged into these particular machines. I realize that I may not have had this problem with Google Docs. However, we've found that we can't replicate what is done with PowerPoint in Google Docs.
- termie 13y ago
  I'm sure many people were pissed with Office 2010 since the 'upgrade' from Office 2003 to 2010 was a full-price affair (see http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dumps_upgrade_pricing_for_Office_2010 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dum...). (EDIT: that was for retail, but you get the idea). So, while your 1000 machine deployment was technically straight-forward, it was probably ~ $100,000 for the software, plus your time (with patching!) financially. Lots of large companies and government find that cost not worth it given the benefit and they ultimately end up with outdated versions.
newman314 13y ago
Two words: "Google Support" Yes, you can can read it both ways...
zeidrich 13y ago
"The city estimated it costs about $100 a year per employee to use its current roster of Microsoft products." $100 per year is such an insignificant cost for something as vital to their productivity as their software. If the employees lose any time at all to learning to operate in the new environment it is all but wiped out. While saving $280,000/year sounds pretty significant, with 20,000 staff as the article suggests you only have to make a difference of 14 dollars per year to realize those savings. 14 dollars per year is maybe 0.03% of an city employee's salary. I don't have a concern if they wanted to move for technical reasons, or if it was because it was more efficient, or if they just thought it was better software. But to save 14 dollars per employee per year and only recover the cost of migration after 3 years. That's dumb. But it's definitely worth it for google.
- breck 13y ago
  The original announcement on boston.gov: http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=6123 http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=6123 It's clear the decision was made to boost productivity. The dollar savings are just a bonus.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
msutherl 13y ago
I've recently been forced to use the whole Microsoft ecosystem and it's awful. So many basic UX mistakes that make daily use painful. For instance in Outlook there's no clear indication of which emails I've read and which I haven't, so I just constantly miss emails. Looking forward to more of the world switching to Google. I hope that one day the notion of enterprise products will disappear completely so that everybody can happily use well-designed consumer products.

128 points by myko 13y ago

didyousaymeow 13y ago

I think you meant Microsoft Exchange, not Outlook.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

supernovae 13y ago

They will be back..

walshemj 13y ago
Yeh just as soon as MS comes up with a chunky discount :-) Though the question has to be asked would all of the users in local government be OK to use Gmail from a legal perspective? for example police or social services might have more stringent data protection requirements.
- blocke 13y ago
  "Though the question has to be asked would all of the users in local government be OK to use Gmail from a legal perspective?" Sufficiently large organizations don't just accept the click-through EULA. Get a contract and sue if it's breached.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    Ah yes just like the hard bargains and successful contracts the UK Govt has with Capita etal :-)
- jonknee 13y ago
  Do you really think this hasn't been asked by Boston or any of the other very large Google Apps deployments? The answer is a single Google Search away... https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.html https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.h... > Google Apps for Government includes dozens of security features specifically designed to keep your data safe, secure and in your control. This segregated system, for government customers in the U.S. only, was the first cloud-based email application to receive FISMA accreditation from the U.S. federal government.
  - walshemj 13y ago
    MM I think you will find that Boston is a city in the commonwealth of massachusetts and not a "federal agency".
  - alyx 13y ago
    Office365 is also FISMA accredited no? http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/2012/05/03/fisma-security-certification-office-365.aspx http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft_office_365_blog/archive/...

incision 13y ago

I've witnessed an abortive attempt bring a large city from MS to Google - good luck. I'm truly all for it conceptually, but in my experience this kind of project tends to be full of false expectations and bad math, but plenty of press.

jonheller 13y ago

I'm surprised that they're moving to Google Docs as well. From my experience Google Docs does not fare very well in government & enterprise settings where people are used to Microsoft Word.

mpyne 13y ago
From what I can tell in government (my side of the vast government) no one uses Word beyond the sheer basics. No macros, no fancy "decimal tabs", WordArt, gradients everywhere, any of that. For what 95% of people are doing Google Docs is more than sufficient.
- duck 13y ago
  That might be true in general as far as client features go, but I do know that at least the DoD is a heavy user of the identity and access management services which effects what you can do with an Office document. That rules out Google Docs for anyone that is already or planning to do that.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Shipmate, I'm in the DoD. Maybe you're talking about OSD, JS, Army, Air Force or something else though. Edit: Also, doesn't Google Docs have controls to limit sharing of online documents to certain persons, groups, or teams? The big concern I can think of is PII spillage, but honestly I think I trust Google more than I trust random GS-13s with their externals and laptops. DoD at least has PKI but in the Navy we're recommended to also use a password-based certificate for encrypted externals in case the CAC is lost, which kind of defeats the point since I'm sure the password is not going to be high-entropy.
- rz2k 13y ago
  Hopefully, advanced users are using features like merges, automation of data sources, templates and address validations rather than WordArt and gradients. With minimal studying on their own, a smart office worker can be pretty efficient doing analysis with Excel Pivot Tables while avoiding a lot of red tape. I could see the switch to an office suite with reduced features getting in the way of work done by a lot of behind the scenes, unsung heroes. I think that when actual exposure to how people use software is largely comes from support calls, it is easy to get an inaccurate picture of bumbling and general incompetence, rather than creative solutions to often arbitrary constraints on their tool sets.

chayesfss 13y ago

Google is killing microsoft in the government sector, since I'm helping pay for all this I can't tell you how happy I am that they're saving money. GSA went Google and is saving millions.

cooldeal 13y ago
And yet, Office revenues are up 7% in the last quarter and Google's revenues from Apps/Docs/Email is still only a few percent. The government is a lot bigger than a few departments.
- recoiledsnake 13y ago
  The primary purpose of Gmail seems to be get people to sign in so that all their web searches can be tracked by Google across computers to users' Google Accounts so that ads can be targeted, not to mention to force Google+ on users. I think it is pretty successful at making people do that.
  - superuser2 13y ago
    And the primary purpose of Exchange Server is transfer gobs and gobs of money from unsuspecting organizations to Microsoft. Locally hosted Exchange is insanely wasteful. Organizations continue to believe that a $25 lock on some closet is "more secure" than a real datacenter and insist on paying 3+ intermediaries' markup on outrageously expensive software licenses and servers, racks, UPSes and other accessories. They buy servers which they barely use, and what cost savings there is gets wiped out by VMWare licensing fees if they decide to do virtualization. Then they've got to pay another company to bring technicians out to maintain the server, change the UPS batteries, etc, at a cost of $100+/hour. All of this could be so much more cost-efficient at scale. GMail may be a privacy concern, organizations' insistence on hosting their own email is maddeningly, mind-bogglingly wasteful considering they could get the same functionality for a few hundred bucks a year. Someone needs to make a real open-source competitor to Exchange so people who insist on hosting their own stuff can at least stop throwing away money that could employ people on Exchange licenses. I understand that IMAP exists, but no one actually wants to use Thunderbird.

nivla 13y ago

As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google, I think it is a great move in terms of savings. Although I don't see the switch to Google Docs from the Office Suite ending well. Also if they are going through such great lengths to switch everything to Google, then why not save even more by using the Chrome OS instead of Windows?

stock_toaster 13y ago
> As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google I very nearly sprayed coffee on my screen when I read that. Well played.
- raldi 13y ago
  Google already guarantees timely customer support for organizations willing to pay for it: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/upgrade.html http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/upgrade.html https://cloud.google.com/support/packages https://cloud.google.com/support/packages
  - recoiledsnake 13y ago
    That appears to be Google App Engine support and not Google Apps/Docs support?
    - raldi 13y ago
      Edited my post to also include the link to the Google Apps 24/7 customer support.
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  I've worked at several companies who paid for Google Apps; I have spoken to a live support rep when issues have occurred. Problem?
  - Thing_Two 13y ago

mtgx 13y ago

Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term, but I still wish all government institutions would switch to open source software wherever possible. And by wherever possible I don't mean that some users might be "inconvenienced" by some menu change. I mean when an open source alternative actually exists. But even then, if the government is willing to spend money to get people or companies to build that software, they should make it open source after that.

slg 13y ago
I agree with your general principle. However, Boston is purchasing a service and not a software product. There is a lot of overhead and expertise needed to purchase and maintain the machines that would run any open source competitor. That isn't as big of a problem when going with something like Gmail.
incision 13y ago
>And by wherever possible I don't mean that some users might be "inconvenienced" by some menu change. I mean when an open source alternative actually exists. I don't understand what you mean to say here.
300bps 13y ago
>Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term, I know that's what the article says, but I'm wondering if they truly put Google Apps up against Office 365 which would be an apples-to-apples comparison? It seems more like they put Google Apps up against an on-premises Exchange + locally installed productivity software suite which is not a good comparison Microsoft has actually been forced by their competitors (especially Google) in offering a competing offering by way of Office 365. You can have hosted Exchange for $4 per user per month. It's been in production for years, and in the last year has really worked well for my organization.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  I saw some blog recently claiming that Office 365 downtime was 100x more abundant than Gmail downtime. http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-office-365-a-comparison-of-gmail-and-exchange-system-availability/ http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-offic...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

recoiledsnake 13y ago

Hope it doesn't end up like this deployment. http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-for-google-apps/ http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-for-... ""Google's record with the city is nothing but broken promises and missed deadlines," the letter reads in part. "The Internet giant simply has not done what it said it would do and has tried to buy its way out of the mess it has made by covering the unbudgeted costs of the LAPD's GroupWise System that the department has been forced to continue using." The mayor's office did not have any immediate comment as of press time." Edit: Somewhat ironic that Google Docs and Drive are currently down. https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src=typd https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src... "Google Drive documents list goes empty for users " http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-documents-list-goes-empty-for-users/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=statusnet http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-do...

nostromo 13y ago
I once convinced a CEO of a company with a few hundred employees to move from Outlook to Gmail. For a while after I was a social pariah. My expense reports would go missing (want to find a Microsoft fan? look in accounting). My calls to IT (staffed with MCWhatever certified individuals) unanswered. The controller pulled me aside and said in a menacing Brooklyn accent I didn't know he had in him, "I would appreciate it if you would make this go away." I learned a valuable about switching costs that day.
- rubyrescue 13y ago
  wow please tell more. "for a while" means people's anger passed? or you guys switched back?
  - nostromo 13y ago
    I wasn't at the company for much longer after that. No, I wasn't fired. ;) The company was very East Coast, very sales-driven, not very tech-driven at the time. I don't like using age as a proxy for tech-savviness since there are plenty of tech-savvy older folks, but this was a bit of an older organization as well. But yeah, people adapt. They will kick and scream and claim that their world is ending and then a month later they'll forget about the old way of doing things. (Or, as was often the case, IT just set up their Outlook to pull their emails from Gmail's servers.) And then the anger subsided.

dhawalhs 13y ago

Google drive seems to be down: http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1368212487427 http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1...

CmonNoReg 13y ago

Random decision by a random person.

mwcampbell 13y ago

"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." -- The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again" I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider running free software".

cooldeal 13y ago
>I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider running free software". That is because, for some, it's less about promoting software freedom and more about taking Microsoft down. That's why we have SJVN on the ZDNet "Open Source" blog promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than Windows and MS Office because of being completely locked down and being tied to Google's Cloud. For a even better example, see Ubuntu's Bug #1. As usual, Linus has pithy insight. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/07/linus-torvalds-microsoft-hatred-is-a-disease/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/07/linus-...
- mwcampbell 13y ago
  The problem with having the goal of taking Microsoft down is that some new, potentially abusive, power will probably rise in its place. What really matters is people's freedom. You seem to realize this, but I thought it would be worth pointing out anyway.
- myko 13y ago
  > promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than Windows and MS Office Google Docs goes out of its way to import/export to various formats, including Microsoft's. Given this I think the above statement is hardly fair.
  - improv32 13y ago
    He means that the source for GDocs is private.

jusben1369 13y ago

"$800K to make the switch. Save $240K per year." Interesting they got that deal done. Assume for safety sake a 20% to 30% overrun and now you're at $1 million. And if for some reason your savings take a little longer than you thought to get there (don't they always?). Plus add in the opportunity cost of having to focus on this and retrain your workforce on Google vs MSFT that they all know. Then there's always the risk that any big project is the 1 in 10 that goes completely haywire. I just don't usually see enterprise deals with this long of a payback window getting done (based on $$'s alone anyway - without some other compelling reason) Just curious on the dynamics of the deal not the Google vs MSFT component.

hashbanged 13y ago
I agree, I'd be interested to see what happened in negotiations. Also, while they may save $240k per year in money they don't pay to Microsoft, I imagine anyone selling enterprise software would argue that there is money you will save from a theoretical increase in productivity from using their products, after everyone's been trained.
- jusben1369 13y ago
  I think the productivity argument favors MSFT. The time to retrain current employees. The fact that 85% of new employees will have "Proficient in MSFT Word, Excel and Powerpoint" on their application/CV/resume too. "Google Apps? Ain't nobody got time for that!" (ok maybe I shouldn't have added that)
- taopao 13y ago
  What if Microsoft does something stupid, like making all menu and toolbar muscle memory obsolete with that damn Ribbon?
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Or worse: an interface designed for touch, rather than a mouse...
13y ago

SatvikBeri 13y ago

Hope this doesn't turn out like the last time Boston tried a significant migration away from Microsoft. "When the state information technology chief of Massachusetts announced in 2005 that the state was going to standardize its computer document format to be more compatible with open-source software-software that isn't controlled by a company-than with Microsoft products, loud choruses of support and outrage ensued, closely followed by the announcement of an investigation into the chief's apparently perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in open-source software conferences, followed by a new state-government announcement that it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the company's document formats, followed by an announcement from Microsoft that it would bring its document format closer to an open-source format." [0]: A Perfect Mess: http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-ebook/dp/B00CAUHGB4/ http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-ebook/d...

rbanffy 13y ago
> followed by the announcement of an investigation into the chief's apparently perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in open-source software conferences, followed by a new state-government announcement that it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the company's document formats In other words, it's just safer to stay with Microsoft. You really don't want well-funded groups investigating every single activity, making you dig up every single receipt, and sponsoring your opponents, do you? Looks like textbook Microsoft tactics.

gdulli 13y ago

I sincerely miss Outlook now that I'm at a company that uses Google Apps. The gmail web interface just isn't usable the way a real mail client is, and using an IMAP client is never as good an experience as native Outlook/Exchange. And that's just for mail. When you add in calendaring Outlook gets even better in comparison.

pivo 13y ago
Huh, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. I find the gmail interface much faster and easier to use, plus searching email actually works. Have you enabled the advanced keystrokes in gmail? As far as calendaring, I never really figured out how to use it that well in Exchange, Google's seems so much easier to me.
- WayneDB 13y ago
  Easier in what way? Can you give us an example? How are "advanced keystrokes" in Gmail going to be easier or better for someone when all of the keyboard shortcuts are completely inconsistent with every other application (web or otherwise)? Here they are - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en&ctx=mail https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6594?hl=en&ctx=ma... I just can't imagine how anyone could find Gmail to be easier, given that all of the functionality is hidden behind unlabeled, non-obvious buttons that are spread out all over the screen. In Outlook and Thunderbird, the vast majority of action-inputs are very clearly labeled and keyboard access is made obvious by an underlined letter or a tool-tip that shows you the shortcut (unlike Gmail). How could it be easier, when I can drag three attachments into a new Outlook message and hit send quicker than Gmail can even upload the attachments that I dragged to it? How could it be easier, when I click "Inbox" and then I can't use the keyboard arrows (or Tab) to move to "Starred", "Important", "Sent Mail", etc? I guess I have to learn some non-obvious keyboard shortcut.
  - lallysingh 13y ago
    Huh? Have you hit the ? mark? Gmail's key-bindings are set up to be as fast as possible, and are faster to type than a normal desktop app, as you don't have to worry about eating up characters meant for a text box somewhere. I really suggest you give it a fair shot. I like it a lot better than any desktop mail app I've ever used (and that's been quite a few). For example: To go to "Starred" hit "g" then "s". To go to an arbitrary label, hit "g" "l" and then you have a drop-down list of labels, with autocomplete. Seems nicer than tabbing about. To compose, hit "c".

drorweiss 13y ago

Good for Boston & Google. I guess nobody wants to administer mail these days...

lallysingh 13y ago
I've seen enough horrors first (but mostly second) hand of small shops (admittedly not like the story, but I'll talk about what I know) running their own systems. They'll have 2-3 people running everything. From the mail server to setting up printers to replacing bad hardware components. If I were in that boat, I'd beg and plead to put everyone on a disposable internet-only type machine and run webapps only. Then I could worry about security and reliability, which sadly gets last priority in most places :(

mzr 13y ago

"What’s more, Cain said, Google’s contract terms are much simpler than dealing with Microsoft. And since Google updates its software via the Internet, which Microsoft only recently started doing with some of its products, it means clients won’t be working for years on outdated applications." This is just willfully ignorant. If you have Exchange, you probably have Active Directory. You can update Office various ways. I updated 1000 computers from Office 2003 to 2010 without touching any of them. I can also push an update to all our computers only downloading the patches once, not with 1000 computers downloading the same thing all at once. I haven't seen Google Docs mass controls, but with AD and Office I was able to fix a PowerPoint video acceleration issue with a subset of our machines. Otherwise I'd have to change a setting for every person who logged into these particular machines. I realize that I may not have had this problem with Google Docs. However, we've found that we can't replicate what is done with PowerPoint in Google Docs.

termie 13y ago
I'm sure many people were pissed with Office 2010 since the 'upgrade' from Office 2003 to 2010 was a full-price affair (see http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dumps_upgrade_pricing_for_Office_2010 http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dum...). (EDIT: that was for retail, but you get the idea). So, while your 1000 machine deployment was technically straight-forward, it was probably ~ $100,000 for the software, plus your time (with patching!) financially. Lots of large companies and government find that cost not worth it given the benefit and they ultimately end up with outdated versions.

newman314 13y ago

Two words: "Google Support" Yes, you can can read it both ways...

zeidrich 13y ago

"The city estimated it costs about $100 a year per employee to use its current roster of Microsoft products." $100 per year is such an insignificant cost for something as vital to their productivity as their software. If the employees lose any time at all to learning to operate in the new environment it is all but wiped out. While saving $280,000/year sounds pretty significant, with 20,000 staff as the article suggests you only have to make a difference of 14 dollars per year to realize those savings. 14 dollars per year is maybe 0.03% of an city employee's salary. I don't have a concern if they wanted to move for technical reasons, or if it was because it was more efficient, or if they just thought it was better software. But to save 14 dollars per employee per year and only recover the cost of migration after 3 years. That's dumb. But it's definitely worth it for google.

breck 13y ago
The original announcement on boston.gov: http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=6123 http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=6123 It's clear the decision was made to boost productivity. The dollar savings are just a bonus.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

msutherl 13y ago

I've recently been forced to use the whole Microsoft ecosystem and it's awful. So many basic UX mistakes that make daily use painful. For instance in Outlook there's no clear indication of which emails I've read and which I haven't, so I just constantly miss emails. Looking forward to more of the world switching to Google. I hope that one day the notion of enterprise products will disappear completely so that everybody can happily use well-designed consumer products.