

Google loses deal to MSFT in its backyard - kenjackson
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=89202

======
kluikens
I'll repost here what I commented on the article:

\--------------------------------------------------

Down here in Tucson, at the University of Arizona, we've been nothing but
plagued with problems using this service. I hope the city of San Francisco has
a better experience and receives more support than we have.

I don't remember when the migration to the cloud platform started (the
university was/is running their own Exchange install), but the deadline to
switch over for all staff was early March. The migration process was afflicted
with many problems: it was slow (you hoped it finished overnight), buggy
(multiple attempts were necessary), there was often data loss and there were
mis-deliveries or message loss for a few days after. That March deadline was
postponed more than once and currently, the whole process has been halted
leaving us with part of the staff on the cloud system and the other on our IT-
managed install.

A month or so ago (probably more), there was a town-hall meeting here with
representatives and developers from Microsoft to apologize and to try and
resolve some issues in person. The university gave them a two dozen item list
of requirements before we proceeded any further with the service. Within the
last three to four weeks there have been numerous outages, leaving those
already angered here surely even more furious.

If the Microsoft team can't meet our requirements and do it relatively soon,
it's very possible that we'll drop this service. (A good chunk of the
requirements are for legal compliance).

Meanwhile in my department, we've started the move from a self-hosted Zimbra
install to Google Apps for our domain a couple days ago as we can't use the
Microsoft solution. Only problems so far are two administrators who use some
features in Outlook that we can't replicate with Gmail without shoving a
cylinder into a square hole. We might keep the open source version of Zimbra
around just for them. What I do love about Google Apps is the ability to
script it. I've already written code so that when a given Google Form is
submitted, it creates other documents that would've had to have been done by
hand, emails people and other things. Over time, this ability to script
between Google Apps is going to invaluable for my department.

Anyway, g'luck to the city!

------
Luyt
No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft software.

~~~
archangel_one
What about the ex-CEO of the London Stock Exchange with their whole TradElect
debacle:
[http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_aban...](http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform)

~~~
zdjohn
It happened on 2008 but the failed platform is Windows Server 2003, Microsoft
SQL Server 2000. There is one big problem in the that event called "Update"!

~~~
archangel_one
I'm not sure I understand you fully - are you suggesting that the main
problems with that project would have been solved by simply updating to
Windows / SQL Server 2008? I can't believe that would possibly be the case.

~~~
zdjohn
What I mean is, there is obvious a negligence in the system solution that used
in this case, especially for LSE. No system would be working for ever without
proper systematical update and tuning. Every system has flaws from time to
time. Based on the Server they use, they are at least 5 years behind the time.
Why they keep sticking with it? That is the question I have in first place. I
am not defending MS. But I don’t think LSE off load MS systems, is purely just
because it’s Microsoft. y

------
brudgers
It's not really surprising that Google didn't get it given their lack of a
significant track record providing enterprise level services compared to IBM
and Microsoft. I'll add that the backyard angle probably wouldn't have been
mentioned if IBM had been selected over Google even though Armonk is a whole
continent away.

~~~
jrockway
What's Microsoft's track record here? "We're retiring XP even though everyone
is still using it."? "We will only give you security updates on the first
Tuesday of the month, even if it's currently the first Wednesday. Enjoy being
hacked."?

I find that Microsoft doesn't care much about its users.

(I bought a netbook a year or so ago. It had Windows 7, which I decided to try
instead of immediately installing Linux. The first thing I wanted to do was to
change the desktop background. The control panel informed me that I needed to
upgrade to Windows 7 Somewhat Awesome Edition in order to do that. The cost
was $80.

Friendly or not, the box now runs Debian.)

~~~
m0nastic
You know they launched XP in 2001, right?

and that it'll be supported until 2014?

I think that's actually a remarkably good track record of supporting an
operating system (for comparison, Debian EOL'd 2.2 in 2003)

I also think Microsoft cares entirely too much about it's users (to the
detriment of advancing the platform for fear of incompatibility).

Putting Debian on that Netbook was a smart move though, Windows 7 Starter
Edition is an embarassment (it's very close to being cripple-ware), and while
all I hear from people who use Netbooks is that "they perform just fine for
surfing the web and emailing", I didn't find that to be the case with Windows
7 installed (but it really does run fine with Linux).

~~~
dman
At some time microsoft might have to realise that creating gimped editions of
windows makes people assume windows is gimped.

------
VladRussian
it seems the value here isn't a meager 1M/year, it is the bragging rights.
Google boys sound like children : "We're disappointed we didn't have an
opportunity to compete for San Francisco's business". Welcome to the big boys
world. That was the opportunity to compete.

~~~
mtogo
Exactly. It seems pathetic to me that Google would sue over something like
this.

------
veb
What? "The city will pay the Redmond, Wash. software company a little more
than $1 million per year for the new product."

But surely they could use Hotmail or something right? That wouldn't cost $1
million a year?

I'm missing something.

~~~
lmkg
I would assume that the City(/County) of San Francisco IT Department also gets
access to and control of the backend, in a similar manner as if they were
hosting it themselves. This would include things like privacy policies,
security and account recovery, spam filter, attachment policies/malware
scrubbing, recovery/removal of email when an employee is terminated, usage
logs, and some way of obtaining an employee's email in the event of a lawsuit
or disciplinary action. Optional possibilities include stronger guarantees
about the provider's (in)ability to access the emails, and filtering tools to
alert about suspicious (corruption, child porn) or non-work-related (hate
speech, regular porn) email content.

