A big win for Google’s cloud-based communication and collaboration suite: the company has announced that the City of Los Angeles has equipped 34,000 employees with Google Apps.
According to Google’s blog post, the city – which is replacing its Novell GroupWise system – 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, which includes servicing done in partnership with CSC, has a three-year base period and two one-year options.
The deal was unanimously approved by the city council in Los Angeles at the end of last month and is worth $7.2 million.
Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States, is far from the first government to go with Google Apps to bring their e-mail, calendaring, document sharing and chat applications to the cloud. Washington D.C. and Orlando, FL had earlier made the same move.
Randi Levin, CTO for the City of Los Angeles and general manager of the city’s Information Technology Agency, provides more information about the decision here.
Another sign that cloud services are maturing, or a security disaster waiting to happen?
