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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-angele

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.
    - 3825 13y ago
      >IT just set up their Outlook to pull their emails from Gmail's servers I've noticed that using IMAP on multiple devices can cause Gmail to say that you're using too much resources. Tripped me when I first saw the limitations. I had not thought there were limits on Gmail. How did they handle issues where people might want to access Gmail from various devices? Google has some numbers and recommendations here[1] but I'm interested in how you handled situations like this in the real world. [1] https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1071518 https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=...
- recoiledsnake 13y ago
  >want to find a Microsoft fan? look in accounting I seriously doubt Accounting has Microsoft fans as such. They're very wedded to their tools and workflow in order to do their job because they spend their entire day on email and spreadsheets. Take away those and replace them with crippled alternatives like only Excel on the web, and they'll still hate it even if made by Microsoft. How would a developer react if one day their vim editor was removed and replaced by EMACS or vice versa because of a mandate from the CEO?
  - quanticle 13y ago
    No, it's worse than that. At least Emacs is roughly on par, in terms of capability. Replacing Excel with Google Docs Spreadsheets is like replacing vim with Notepad.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      Maybe in accounting (who should have better tools, anyway) Excel is irreplaceable, but most other Excel users make all kinds of idiotic tables with it, all of them without even a single mathematical operation. And that's to say nothing on the idiocy when those users decide they are empowered by their tools and decide they'll do math with them. I've seen more than one case where the AVG function was replaced with SUM and COUNT.
- andrewljohnson 13y ago
  I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a telephone pole and we lost email for 2 days.
  - ghaff 13y ago
    I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think Gmail had sublabels at the time.)
    - jrpt 13y ago
      I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better answer is teaching people about archiving and search. People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful. Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.
      - graeme 13y ago
        My issue with gmail search is that it's incomplete, and I don't know how incomplete. I've downloaded my mail to mac's mail app. With identical search strings, the Mail app finds more messages. This includes searching by sender email, which yields incomplete results in gmail. There have been many occasions where I've only sent someone one email, or vice versa. Gmail often misses these. So for anything I must find (e.g. tax documents) I label them.
        wlesieutre 13y ago
magicalist 13y ago
It's notable that that quote is not a quote from anyone from the LA government, but from Consumer Watchdog, the same group responsible for that weird Eric Schmidt ice cream man video. AFAIK it was only the LAPD that didn't switch over. A much better article on the subject: http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/google-apps-hasnt-met-lapds-security-requirements-city-demands-refund/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/google-apps-hasnt-me...

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.
  - 3825 13y ago
    >IT just set up their Outlook to pull their emails from Gmail's servers I've noticed that using IMAP on multiple devices can cause Gmail to say that you're using too much resources. Tripped me when I first saw the limitations. I had not thought there were limits on Gmail. How did they handle issues where people might want to access Gmail from various devices? Google has some numbers and recommendations here[1] but I'm interested in how you handled situations like this in the real world. [1] https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1071518 https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=...
recoiledsnake 13y ago
>want to find a Microsoft fan? look in accounting I seriously doubt Accounting has Microsoft fans as such. They're very wedded to their tools and workflow in order to do their job because they spend their entire day on email and spreadsheets. Take away those and replace them with crippled alternatives like only Excel on the web, and they'll still hate it even if made by Microsoft. How would a developer react if one day their vim editor was removed and replaced by EMACS or vice versa because of a mandate from the CEO?
- quanticle 13y ago
  No, it's worse than that. At least Emacs is roughly on par, in terms of capability. Replacing Excel with Google Docs Spreadsheets is like replacing vim with Notepad.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    Maybe in accounting (who should have better tools, anyway) Excel is irreplaceable, but most other Excel users make all kinds of idiotic tables with it, all of them without even a single mathematical operation. And that's to say nothing on the idiocy when those users decide they are empowered by their tools and decide they'll do math with them. I've seen more than one case where the AVG function was replaced with SUM and COUNT.
andrewljohnson 13y ago
I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a telephone pole and we lost email for 2 days.
- ghaff 13y ago
  I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think Gmail had sublabels at the time.)
  - jrpt 13y ago
    I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better answer is teaching people about archiving and search. People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful. Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.
    - graeme 13y ago
      My issue with gmail search is that it's incomplete, and I don't know how incomplete. I've downloaded my mail to mac's mail app. With identical search strings, the Mail app finds more messages. This includes searching by sender email, which yields incomplete results in gmail. There have been many occasions where I've only sent someone one email, or vice versa. Gmail often misses these. So for anything I must find (e.g. tax documents) I label them.
      - wlesieutre 13y ago

magicalist 13y ago

It's notable that that quote is not a quote from anyone from the LA government, but from Consumer Watchdog, the same group responsible for that weird Eric Schmidt ice cream man video. AFAIK it was only the LAPD that didn't switch over. A much better article on the subject: http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/google-apps-hasnt-met-lapds-security-requirements-city-demands-refund/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/google-apps-hasnt-me...