4 ms·

What is the current cost of LAs email system? How much is LA supposed to save by switching? How long are the terms of the deal?

raintrees 17y ago
And what happens if Google loses interest in this product? <Edit> My first line comes across as snarky, and I apologize. But it still concerns me about relying on on-line services when I have read so many articles about one company or another either losing information, selling the product to someone else who has a different agenda, or deciding to abandon a product (among other actions).
- elblanco 17y ago
  This is a good point. As much as I like google, I've been bitten by the "google discontinues service xyz" problem a couple times in the past.
  - jonknee 17y ago
    Not services that you had a 5 year SLA agreement for.
- mcav 17y ago
  That's why you should only trust services that let you export your data. Fortunately, both GMail and Google Docs can do so, as noted recently in another thread.
Barnabas 17y ago
Since the assumption is that MS costs more, I thought I'd dig up some links to prove/disprove that. I learned that MS actually provides hosted Exchange services, which is more of an apples-to-apples comparison with Gmail: http://www.microsoft.com/online/buy.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/online/buy.mspx From that link, there was a "Microsoft Online Services Cost Estimator" (http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx). I input 30,000 users for Exchange and it estimated $228,000/month. If we assume that the $7.25 million was for 5 years, then Gmail for 30,000 users costs only $120,833/month, which is theoretically $1.3 million/year less than MS hosted Exchange. For some context on how much of a big deal this is or isn't, according to the LA city budget (http://budget.lacity.org/ http://budget.lacity.org/), their total IT budget is about $100 million/year.
- DenisM 17y ago
  It's so nice to see someone with actual numbers. Keep it up!

raintrees 17y ago

And what happens if Google loses interest in this product? <Edit> My first line comes across as snarky, and I apologize. But it still concerns me about relying on on-line services when I have read so many articles about one company or another either losing information, selling the product to someone else who has a different agenda, or deciding to abandon a product (among other actions).

elblanco 17y ago
This is a good point. As much as I like google, I've been bitten by the "google discontinues service xyz" problem a couple times in the past.
- jonknee 17y ago
  Not services that you had a 5 year SLA agreement for.
mcav 17y ago
That's why you should only trust services that let you export your data. Fortunately, both GMail and Google Docs can do so, as noted recently in another thread.

Barnabas 17y ago

Since the assumption is that MS costs more, I thought I'd dig up some links to prove/disprove that. I learned that MS actually provides hosted Exchange services, which is more of an apples-to-apples comparison with Gmail: http://www.microsoft.com/online/buy.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/online/buy.mspx From that link, there was a "Microsoft Online Services Cost Estimator" (http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/online/estimator/default.aspx). I input 30,000 users for Exchange and it estimated $228,000/month. If we assume that the $7.25 million was for 5 years, then Gmail for 30,000 users costs only $120,833/month, which is theoretically $1.3 million/year less than MS hosted Exchange. For some context on how much of a big deal this is or isn't, according to the LA city budget (http://budget.lacity.org/ http://budget.lacity.org/), their total IT budget is about $100 million/year.

DenisM 17y ago
It's so nice to see someone with actual numbers. Keep it up!