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Google pulled off a coup last year when it was awarded a contract worth $7.25 million by the City of Los Angeles to move 30,000 employees to its cloud-based email solution. It was a huge triumph not only because CSC’s (Computer Sciences Corporation) proposal for Google Apps – both companies have joined forces for this project – was picked from 15 proposals but also due to the fact that Microsoft was among those snubbed. This was seen as an alarming development for Microsoft’s popular Office productivity suite.
Google and CSC’s victory celebrations are long over and the June 30 deadline history, but so far only 10,000 city employees have been moved to Google apps while the rest, including 13,000 L.A.P.D members, are still stuck with a traditional email solution provided by Novell. The delay stems from the security concerns raised by the Los Angeles Police Department, which is particularly worried about data encryption.
"We've had a lot of technical issues, some we've created and some we haven't," said Los Angeles CTO Randi Levin. "We underestimated the amount of time it was going to take." According to a MarketWatch report, the two companies have agreed to compensate the city for all costs it incurs during the course of the delay.
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PawBear
July 24, 2010 at 7:01am
The rational for this is admirable, ease of use, cost savings, etc., but the implementation is frightening. In no way, shape, or form will this be secure. The federal government can't lock down it's own systems, banking systems are broken into. Some dumb civil servant is going to surf porn while logged in on unsecured wireless.
When are the major tech players going to go to default end-to-end encryption? Why do storage devices not auto encrypt and system not require passwords to function?
Personal records are moving online. Tech is in a sad state. More effort is put in DRM than system security.
roninnder
July 24, 2010 at 11:33pm
You have to balance security with accessibility. What happens once all your storage is encrypted and someone loses their password?
Nailer669
July 23, 2010 at 8:24pm
I had to look since I was pretty sure Novell has two 'L's, but I can't believe they still sell Groupwise. The only implementations I know of are old ones that I feel sorry for. Novell was great back in the 4.11 days, but that was loooooooong ago.
Vernak
July 23, 2010 at 8:12pm
Does it make me a giant nerd if I immediately recognized the Assistant General Manager's desktop background as Vortec Space? Because if it does, I'm ok with that.
