Google Apps – A Messiah for Government Institutions
by amed
Cloud computing, which is a forthcoming computing technology, is now offering those governments across the countries lacking sufficient money, a beautiful chance to upgrade their backdated infrastructure to a highest level of development and also saving a handsome amount in the whole process. So it’s all benefits.... for today's cash-strapped local government.
Google’s Apps, ( www.google.com/apps) offers a commercial platform that supports email, chat, calendar, documents, intrasites, and about 40 other Google add-ons. Small business under 50 users can sign up with Google Apps Standard Edition for FREE. As for larger deployments, Google Apps Premier Edition offers a fixed user cost of $50/year with SLA Agreement. Education, Non-Profits and Government entities receive discounts for Premier Edition.
Conrad Cross, CIO - City of Orlando got attracted to the many advantages that were on offer with the Google Apps as Conrad was orchestrating the migration of its 3000+ city employees from Lotus Notes to Google Apps including city's emergency departments. The City was facing a time of crisis as it has to confront with a list of problems from license renewals to major upgrade costs and to add salt to the injury there was also a 12% reduction in staff so it was the right move to explore Google Apps.
City of Orlando chose Google’s new offering as it lessen the work loads on IT staffs so that they can focus on more important efforts. Conrad Cross was happy with delivering a far better service with far less resources according to him the time was perfect for applying Google Apps. Another institution that tasted the usefulness of Google Apps is Interstate-95, which is the 11th largest school district in US,is also shifting all 200,000+ students, faculty staff to Google Apps platform.
Another success story comes from, New Mexico, where Attorney General’s Office which mainly rely on emial, document management and archiving. Previously they were using Microsoft Exchange platform which had many drawbacks when it comes to the question of security of their client’s sensitive emails, since email is the only lifeline for communication and they used emails for their day-to-day file and case management, they then decided to switch over to Google Apps. Their 120 attorneys and 200 full-time employees start using Google Apps for emailing to their clients, storing data, and document management, now the employees no longer need to delete mail because of unlimited email storage capacity or worry about backing up sensitive information. The data was instantly available whenever they want it and they're more productive.
Google Apps became the solutions of choice to Camille Wehs Canton Georgia's only IT staffer, migrated 150+ employees to Google Apps without wasting much time and money on licensing. With additional reliability, disaster recovery, flexibility and anywhere access to information - she now sleeps better at night.
District of Columbia found two reasons to switch the D.C. Government over to email, document management of Google Apps: first, it’s the costs that saved the taxpayer money by avoiding bloated software contracts, purchase of additional infrastructure, training and all other expenses associated with in-house solutions. Second, Google will help ensure business continuity and the safety of data in the event of a disaster or disruption.
Those of you who are interested to benefit from Google Apps visit: www.google.com/apps
Those of you who are interested to benefit from Google Apps visit: www.google.com/apps
