Los Angeles Bureaucrats Question The Transition To Google Apps
In December, Google touted a big win for Google’s cloud-based communication and collaboration suite, Google Apps: the City of Los Angeles planned to equip its 34,000 employees with Google Apps. This would replace Novell’s GroupWise system, the e-mail technology provider that LA had previously been using. LA had evaluated 14 e-mail technology providers for a revamp of the city government’s communication and collaboration platform, and ended up picking Google Apps. The deal was reported to be worth $7.2 million. But it hasn’t been a smooth transition for LA to move over from GroupWise to Google Apps; and it appears that the City administrators are questioning the move thanks to productivity, security and slowness issues with Google Apps.
In an inter-departmental correspondence sent from LA City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana to the Chair of the Information Technology and Government Affairs Committee in mid-April, Santana wrote that current pilot users of Google Apps were experiencing “issues and problems that have negatively affected their productivity and department operations,” which could cause the delay of the Citywide implementation of the “Google system.”
According to the letter:
In February, selected staff from several City departments began to use the Google system on a pilot basis. Currently, 2,405 participants in 32 departments and nine elected officials’ offices are in the pilot. On March 23, 2010, the working group invited all pilot participants to discuss their experiences with the Google system. At the meeting many of the departments expressed concerns about both the performance and the functionality of the new system. Performance concerns focused on the slowness with which e-mails were sent, received, and accessed in the new system. Functionality concerns focused on features currently available in GroupWise that are unavailable, or significantly different, in Google’s system. Further, the Los Angeles Police Department indicated that several security issues have yet to be resolved, and that a pilot of its technical support staff must be successfully completed before it can be expanded to the rest of the LAPD. Some pilot participants also identified new capabilities that were not available to City staff using GroupWise, including collaboration tools, chat, and compatibility with a wider range of mobile devices.
The new Google Apps system is reportedly operating more slowly than GroupWise did. LA’s Information Technology Agency added that the City’s data networks may have contributed partially to the slowness issues and that the City’s requirement to keep both GroupWise and Google operational concurrently could have effected performance. Another cited issue is that Google Apps works best with Chrome, but most City staff currently Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Firefox.
LA has extended the pilot program in order to determine “whether Google’s system will adequately serve the City’s e-mail needs.” Also addressed in the memo was the fact that a delay of the full implementation of Google Apps will result in significant expenses that could reach nearly $1 million. This not good news for the financially troubled LA city government.
Clearly, the fault doesn’t solely lie with Google on the performance of its Apps product. But the predicament does highlight one of the ongoing bureaucratic issues that Google may have in trying to transition local governments with outdated systems and data connectivity problems to their modern product. Los Angeles isn’t the first government to bring their e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications to the cloud with Google Apps. Washington D.C. and Orlando, FL had earlier made the same move.
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Google offers 3rd party “consultants” that will go onsite. No idea if LA chose to do that.
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But in this case, Google Apps really isn’t fit for a big city like LA. It really is slow and buggy, have you used this pile before?
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Speaking as an admin who has deployed Google Apps on a couple of domains, I would say that it really isn’t ready for prime time. Even if you upgrade to enterprise support, it can take as long as 24 hours for someone to get back to you on issues. Google didn’t deploy their service like you’d expect for Exchange or just postfix, instead they did things their own way and it isn’t exactly the best way. If you are an Outlook user, dear god, don’t migrate away from Exchange! Google Apps sync is terrible!
If you are an org considering Google Apps, just stick to Exchange, especially if you are a big city like LA. Hell, I’d say that LA should have stuck with even GroupWise.
In short, I’ll never suggest Google Apps to any org. If you think otherwise I’d really like to know how you pulled off the migration without any complaints.
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Actually the google marketplace is one of the most clamored app service on the web today. Review: http://bit.ly/google-app-marketplace-reactions
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gmail does not have chat? Gimme a break.
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Seriously, yeah. Google is dealing with a different userbase. Less tech-savvy, more task-oriented. Less inclined to use the mouse’s scroll-wheel. Mostly accustomed to staring at their intranet.
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The Obama administration’s transition team had huge problems initially trying to integrate new technology into the White House when it moved in. Look at the amazing stuff they’re cranking out now. Give it time, Los Angeles. Pretty much anything else is better than living with Groupwise. Heck, most of my industry peers are surprised Novell still even exists.
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Jim Greco makes a great point. There’s nothing surprising or newsworthy here. They are rolling out new technology and these complaints all seem to be exactly the sorts of kinks and issues that would be encountered anytime you switch out a key system like this.
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This news on the heals of Yale possibly reversing its move onto Google’s platform (http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/03/30/its-delays-switch-gmail-community-input/) may cause other institutions to rethink plans of using Google.
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Employees always always bitch about new technologies in the beginning. It’s “slow”, it takes forever to do something, it doesn’t do feature X that product Y used to have, yadda yadda yadda. No new product, no matter how great it is, ever rolls out with everyone liking it. It’s always the case that they are so absorbed in the minutia of their day to day work that they never take an hour or two to familiarize themselves with the software.
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While I am not familiar with some of the larger operations, I sometimes wonder if google tries to do everything online, rather than send out a team to assist with the transition. Anyone have any idea if this might be a part of the problem?
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