City of Westerville Does More with Google Apps, and for Less Money
Todd Jackson, Director of Information Services and CIO, City of Westerville
Bryan Mundy, Network Operations Manager, City of Westerville
Dan Israel, Product Marketing, Google Agenda
Overview of Google Apps
City of Westerville, Ohio
Q&A Google Solutions for IT
Develop innovative user-centric technology for organizations Backed by Google’s core research and development 1000+ people focused on serving IT customers 20,000+ enterprise search customers 3,000+ organizations sign up for Google Apps daily Over 60% of the world’s top brands have ―Gone Google‖
*Based on Google's Enterprise customers listed in Business Week's 2008 "100 Best Global Brands List."
3 Google Apps Premier Edition – for your domain
Messaging Collaboration • Built-in spam protection • Easy web publishing • 25GB storage • Wikis, team space, blog GMail • Fast search Sites • Permission-based sharing
• Personal, shared, public • Real-time collaboration $4.17 user/ • Resource scheduling • Word processing Month* Calendar Docs • RSVPs and updates • Spreadsheets, presentations
• Video, voice, IM • Web-hosted video • Presence • YouTube for your domain Talk (IM) Video • Browser-based access • Secure, internal sharing
Disaster recovery, web-based Admin controls, usage reporting. With content monitoring and filtering, anti-virus/spam by Postini.
365/24/7 support — 99.9% Uptime — Mobile options — Integration APIs — Partner program — Ad-Free For details: http://www.google.com/apps/government
* Annual charge is $50/user/year. GSA schedule pricing is available. 4 Best-Laid Plans...
• Published Strategic Action Plan for 2010-2014 • Evaluate Cloud Computing Potential o Community Data Center, Virtualization, backup, Email o Community Cloud • Police RMS/Computer Aided Dispatch • Time and Attendance • Advanced Meter Infrastructure • Upgrade enterprise email solution to most current version • ... Prior Email Environment =
• Email - GroupWise 8 SP1 (clustered system on Linux) • Collaboration - Novell Teaming (limited deployment) • Archive - Messaging Architects • Mobility solution - Intellisync to allow Windows Mobile Devices to sync with GroupWise • A fragmented enterprise solution at best Motivation to "Shop Around"
• Experienced some small issues with reliability and security • Lack of support for mobility • Resources required to maintain and advance the system were becoming too time consuming (remember the action plan) • Budget - Prior experience with Postini showed us how much power the cloud can leverage • Budget - interested in the cost savings associated to the "Cloud" Forecast for Westerville...Mostly Cloudy (it's a good thing)
First step - Pilot Project (test o Discovery, Decision, drive) Recommendation . Looking for - o Evaluation team (50) Enterprise Email consisted of a cross Solution section of City staff from . Found - Enterprise all city departments Collaboration Services o 2 week time ramp-up period Second Step - Adoption o Weekly meetings o Price...Cost...Value o Implementation o Duration - 4 weeks o Migration o Training Adoption - Migration - Training
• Selected by the evaluation Team (not Information Systems) o Representing a cross section of the City’s employment sectors (secretaries, technicians, through the various levels of management, and elected officials) • Green Field vs. Complete Migration • Internal team performed migration of all existing data o E-mail, address books & calendar appointments • Accomplished using the Google import features (Imap import, Vcard import, ICal import) • Migration of 500 users (including training) within 4 weeks o Team of two also continued to perform day-to-day responsibilities Things That Make You Say Hmmm - Configuration Caveats
During the pilot phase concerns arose on how to accomplish certain things • Leverage Active Directory database using Google Directory Sync o Enables simple management of users and groups o Creates a Global Address Book o Enables administrator to manage user information from one place (Phone number, title, etc)
• He who hesitates is replaced... o Archive vendor Communicating Google to the City
• Pilot team provided update to executive team o Communicated the migration path... . Schedule . Training (Group, Drop-in, one-on-one) • A support site was built using Google Sites for quick access to training and reference materials • The pilot team proved to be instrumental in helping new users get on board o Message provided by a peer o Translated and described for the specific audience
o Change agents By the Numbers...
Moving to Google Apps reduced the City's email/collaboration costs by 42% • This number is based solely on the cost of licensing software and hardware
Moving to Google Apps freed up 1TB of data • Storage was immediately reassigned to our GIS system saving time and money
Moving to Google Apps removed 4 servers from our data center • Now we can focus on other projects • Freed up resources that can be assigned to other needs (people and hardware) Google Apps Suite (swēt) not rancid or stale; fresh
Improving collaboration • Google Docs has been great for our team for internal documentation • Google talk is an excellent IM product.
o Accessed from a browser, application, or mobile phone! • Google video is used to redistribute internal training • Calendaring "...is easy to use and understand" • Google Sites allows us to create quick sites to share project information and distribute training material First Impressions
• Uptime of the total system has increased tremendously o no more server crashes and unscheduled downtime to interrupt the work process
• Ubiquitous user interface makes working from anywhere a reality
• Tremendous mobility options o We have android, windows mobile, blackberry, apple, and even SMS messaging for alerts working on mobiles
• Google Docs lets us work on files and documentation from any computer with only a web browser as a requirement
Lessons Learned
• Keep it simple during the deployment phase
• Offer training before, during, and after deployment
• Make sure your pilot group gets the idea of Google Apps not just email
• Be careful if/when you have both e-mail systems functioning simultaneously, try to limit this time to avoid false issues when both are being used. What Could be Improved
Even though we have a successful 100% deployment of Google Apps there is room for improvement
• Communication
• Accountability (Make training mandatory for all staff)
• Product knowledge (takes time) Closing Thoughts
• Going Google is a real possibility Ingredients for a successful pilot • Low risk proposition in a and implementation... commodities market o Invest more time in high o Engaged employees value efforts o Cutting-edge products o o Provides the.. Fun . Unique o and it doesn't hurt to reduce (Cloud Enterprise costs by 42% while adding Collaboration Services) functionality, stability and performance (that's for your . Remarkable (time and Finance director) money) . Human (the reclaimed resource) • You don't need a large user base to see savings and benefits Bringing Benefits of the Cloud to Government
Now available! Google Apps for Government
1. A new edition of Google Apps, with the same applications & price as Premier Edition
2. The industry's first cloud computing suite with US government security certification
3. With new policy & security measures to meet specific government requirements Security at Google
• 4th largest server manufacturer in the world - hardened, custom Linux stack Quick facts • Billions of $ flowing through our systems • Millions of credit card numbers
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People Process Technology o Data shared across servers On demand webcast: FISMA - US federal o Data obfuscation on disk “How Google Tackles IT Security” government certified o Data replication
Find out more at: www.google.com/apps/security
20 Google Apps customers
Enterprises — Public Sector — Fortune 500 Government & Higher Education
Over 2 million organizations Thousands of new businesses & governments each day
More customer webcasts: Google Apps Innovators series on Youtube
21 Sign Up For A Free 30-Day Trial Today
http://www.google.com/apps/government http://www.google.com/apps/exchange http://www.google.com/apps/notes
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