
City of Boston drops Microsoft for Gmail - myko
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/05/09/boston-goes-google-its-drops-microsoft-mail-services/atkfJhGz82wstRzXUTPw4O/story.html#__sid=0
======
zeidrich
"The city estimated it costs about $100 a year per employee to use its current
roster of ­Microsoft products."

$100 per year is such an insignificant cost for something as vital to their
productivity as their software. If the employees lose any time at all to
learning to operate in the new environment it is all but wiped out.

While saving $280,000/year sounds pretty significant, with 20,000 staff as the
article suggests you only have to make a difference of 14 dollars per year to
realize those savings.

14 dollars per year is maybe 0.03% of an city employee's salary. I don't have
a concern if they wanted to move for technical reasons, or if it was because
it was more efficient, or if they just thought it was better software. But to
save 14 dollars per employee per year and only recover the cost of migration
after 3 years. That's dumb.

But it's definitely worth it for google.

~~~
breck
The original announcement on boston.gov:
<http://www.cityofboston.gov/news/default.aspx?id=6123>

It's clear the decision was made to boost productivity. The dollar savings are
just a bonus.

------
SatvikBeri
Hope this doesn't turn out like the last time Boston tried a significant
migration away from Microsoft.

"When the state information technology chief of Massachusetts announced in
2005 that the state was going to standardize its computer document format to
be more compatible with open-source software-software that isn't controlled by
a company-than with Microsoft products, loud choruses of support and outrage
ensued, closely followed by the announcement of an investigation into the
chief's apparently perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in
open-source software conferences, followed by a new state-government
announcement that it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the
company's document formats, followed by an announcement from Microsoft that it
would bring its document format closer to an open-source format."

[0]: _A Perfect Mess_ : [http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-
ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Mess-Benefits-Disorder-
ebook/dp/B00CAUHGB4/)

~~~
rbanffy
> followed by the announcement of an investigation into the chief's apparently
> perfectly legal state-funded travel for participation in open-source
> software conferences, followed by a new state-government announcement that
> it would work with Microsoft to stay compatible with the company's document
> formats

In other words, it's just safer to stay with Microsoft. You really don't want
well-funded groups investigating every single activity, making you dig up
every single receipt, and sponsoring your opponents, do you?

Looks like textbook Microsoft tactics.

------
gdulli
I sincerely miss Outlook now that I'm at a company that uses Google Apps. The
gmail web interface just isn't usable the way a real mail client is, and using
an IMAP client is never as good an experience as native Outlook/Exchange. And
that's just for mail. When you add in calendaring Outlook gets even better in
comparison.

~~~
pivo
Huh, my experience is the exact opposite of yours. I find the gmail interface
much faster and easier to use, plus searching email actually works. Have you
enabled the advanced keystrokes in gmail?

As far as calendaring, I never really figured out how to use it that well in
Exchange, Google's seems so much easier to me.

~~~
matwood
How do you sign and encrypt emails in the gmail web interface?

~~~
Tobani
There are browser extensions that help with this (especially for chrome).

------
jusben1369
"$800K to make the switch. Save $240K per year."

Interesting they got that deal done. Assume for safety sake a 20% to 30%
overrun and now you're at $1 million. And if for some reason your savings take
a little longer than you thought to get there (don't they always?). Plus add
in the opportunity cost of having to focus on this and retrain your workforce
on Google vs MSFT that they all know. Then there's always the risk that any
big project is the 1 in 10 that goes completely haywire. I just don't usually
see enterprise deals with this long of a payback window getting done (based on
$$'s alone anyway - without some other compelling reason)

Just curious on the dynamics of the deal not the Google vs MSFT component.

~~~
hashbanged
I agree, I'd be interested to see what happened in negotiations.

Also, while they may save $240k per year in money they don't pay to Microsoft,
I imagine anyone selling enterprise software would argue that there is money
you will save from a theoretical increase in productivity from using their
products, after everyone's been trained.

~~~
taopao
What if Microsoft does something stupid, like making all menu and toolbar
muscle memory obsolete with that damn Ribbon?

~~~
rbanffy
Or worse: an interface designed for touch, rather than a mouse...

------
mwcampbell
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss." -- The Who, "Won't Get Fooled
Again"

I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software
vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by
something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider
running free software".

~~~
cooldeal
>I don't see why a city government migrating form one proprietary software
vendor to another is considered newsworthy. I would be more impressed by
something like, "City of Boston drops Microsoft for local hosting provider
running free software".

That is because, for some, it's less about promoting software freedom and more
about taking Microsoft down. That's why we have SJVN on the ZDNet "Open
Source" blog promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than
Windows and MS Office because of being completely locked down and being tied
to Google's Cloud.

For a even better example, see Ubuntu's Bug #1.

As usual, Linus has pithy insight.

[http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2009/07/linus-...](http://arstechnica.com/information-
technology/2009/07/linus-torvalds-microsoft-hatred-is-a-disease/)

~~~
myko
> promoting Chromebooks and Google Docs which are less "free" than Windows and
> MS Office

Google Docs goes out of its way to import/export to various formats, including
Microsoft's. Given this I think the above statement is hardly fair.

~~~
improv32
He means that the source for GDocs is private.

------
mtgx
Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term, but
I still wish all government institutions would switch to open source software
wherever possible.

And by wherever possible I don't mean that some users might be
"inconvenienced" by some menu change. I mean when an open source alternative
actually exists.

But even then, if the government is willing to spend money to get people or
companies to _build_ that software, they should make it open source after
that.

~~~
300bps
>Money wise, it's good since it saves them a lot of money in the long term,

I know that's what the article says, but I'm wondering if they truly put
Google Apps up against Office 365 which would be an apples-to-apples
comparison? It seems more like they put Google Apps up against an on-premises
Exchange + locally installed productivity software suite which is not a good
comparison

Microsoft has actually been forced by their competitors (especially Google) in
offering a competing offering by way of Office 365. You can have hosted
Exchange for $4 per user per month. It's been in production for years, and in
the last year has really worked well for my organization.

~~~
thrownaway2424
I saw some blog recently claiming that Office 365 downtime was 100x more
abundant than Gmail downtime.

[http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-
offic...](http://blog.cloudsherpas.com/hot-topics/google-apps-vs-
office-365-a-comparison-of-gmail-and-exchange-system-availability/)

------
incision
I've witnessed an abortive attempt bring a large city from MS to Google - good
luck.

I'm truly all for it conceptually, but in my experience this kind of project
tends to be full of false expectations and bad math, but plenty of press.

------
nivla
As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google, I think it
is a great move in terms of savings. Although I don't see the switch to Google
Docs from the Office Suite ending well. Also if they are going through such
great lengths to switch everything to Google, then why not save even more by
using the Chrome OS instead of Windows?

~~~
stock_toaster

      > As long as they are promised a timely customer service from Google
    

I very nearly sprayed coffee on my screen when I read that. Well played.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I've worked at several companies who paid for Google Apps; I have spoken to a
live support rep when issues have occurred. Problem?

~~~
Thing_Two
Same here. I think most of these folks have never used paid Google Apps
accounts, and extrapolate from their gmail.com experience. Google has follow-
the-sun, toll-free support and those folks generally do know their stuff.

------
mzr
"What’s more, Cain said, Google’s contract terms are much simpler than dealing
with Microsoft. And since Google updates its software via the Internet, which
Microsoft only recently started doing with some of its products, it means
clients won’t be working for years on outdated applications."

This is just willfully ignorant. If you have Exchange, you probably have
Active Directory. You can update Office various ways. I updated 1000 computers
from Office 2003 to 2010 without touching any of them. I can also push an
update to all our computers only downloading the patches once, not with 1000
computers downloading the same thing all at once.

I haven't seen Google Docs mass controls, but with AD and Office I was able to
fix a PowerPoint video acceleration issue with a subset of our machines.
Otherwise I'd have to change a setting for every person who logged into these
particular machines. I realize that I may not have had this problem with
Google Docs. However, we've found that we can't replicate what is done with
PowerPoint in Google Docs.

~~~
termie
I'm sure many people were pissed with Office 2010 since the 'upgrade' from
Office 2003 to 2010 was a full-price affair (see
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dum...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9143103/Microsoft_dumps_upgrade_pricing_for_Office_2010)).
(EDIT: that was for retail, but you get the idea). So, while your 1000 machine
deployment was technically straight-forward, it was probably ~ $100,000 for
the software, plus your time (with patching!) financially. Lots of large
companies and government find that cost not worth it given the benefit and
they ultimately end up with outdated versions.

------
chayesfss
Google is killing microsoft in the government sector, since I'm helping pay
for all this I can't tell you how happy I am that they're saving money. GSA
went Google and is saving millions.

~~~
cooldeal
And yet, Office revenues are up 7% in the last quarter and Google's revenues
from Apps/Docs/Email is still only a few percent. The government is a lot
bigger than a few departments.

~~~
chayesfss
Nice try, microsoft "data from 2012 that shows of 42 federal government
contracts that both Microsoft and Google competed for during the year, Google
had more than twice the success than Microsoft. Of the deals, 23 were won by
Google and 10 by Microsoft."

~~~
josefresco
Interestingly, the GSA which supplied that data to the NY Times has also moved
to Google Apps in 2011: [http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/07/gsa-has-
gone-go...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/07/gsa-has-gone-
google.html)

~~~
chayesfss
I know, we provide their SSO & 2fa solution for access
(mail.google.com/a/gsa.gov is a public website as is secureauth.gsa.gov) along
with many other government agencies. I've done many identity provider
installs, google apps always goes great, office 365, not so much. MS requires
them to have adfs which is basically a horrible offering (want to get rid of
exchange, here, install all of these adfs servers on premise). Don't get me
started.

~~~
clauretano
Isn't it fun to explain that to provide SSO to Office 365 you effectively need
8+ ADFS servers and a couple of pairs of load balancers (or NLB) spread across
at least two data center locations?[1]

At least now dirsync is 64-bit so they've removed the "don't run this on your
ADFS server" bit.

[1][https://devcentral.f5.com/blogs/us/big-ip-and-adfs-
part-1-nd...](https://devcentral.f5.com/blogs/us/big-ip-and-adfs-part-1-ndash-
ldquoload-balancing-the-adfs-farm-rdquo)

~~~
chayesfss
and there's the little part about adfs not including any integrated two-factor
for external users. Someone can basically sit here all day and bang away at
mail.google.com/a/doi.gov with accounts like Bob_Abbey@ios.doi.gov or
Ken_Salazar@ios.doi.gov (just google @ios.doi.gov) and it'll never lock out
access from your ip.

------
dhawalhs
Google drive seems to be down:
[http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1...](http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=status&ts=1368212487427)

------
jonheller
I'm surprised that they're moving to Google Docs as well. From my experience
Google Docs does not fare very well in government & enterprise settings where
people are used to Microsoft Word.

~~~
mpyne
From what I can tell in government ( _my_ side of the vast government) no one
uses Word beyond the sheer basics. No macros, no fancy "decimal tabs",
WordArt, gradients everywhere, any of that.

For what 95% of people are doing Google Docs is more than sufficient.

~~~
duck
That might be true in general as far as client features go, but I do know that
at least the DoD is a heavy user of the identity and access management
services which effects what you can _do_ with an Office document. That rules
out Google Docs for anyone that is already or planning to do that.

~~~
mpyne
Shipmate, I'm _in_ the DoD. Maybe you're talking about OSD, JS, Army, Air
Force or something else though.

Edit: Also, doesn't Google Docs have controls to limit sharing of online
documents to certain persons, groups, or teams?

The big concern I can think of is PII spillage, but honestly I think I trust
Google more than I trust random GS-13s with their externals and laptops. DoD
at least has PKI but in the Navy we're recommended to _also_ use a password-
based certificate for encrypted externals in case the CAC is lost, which kind
of defeats the point since I'm sure the password is not going to be high-
entropy.

------
msutherl
I've recently been forced to use the whole Microsoft ecosystem and it's
_awful_. So many basic UX mistakes that make daily use painful. For instance
in Outlook there's no clear indication of which emails I've read and which I
haven't, so I just constantly miss emails.

Looking forward to more of the world switching to Google.

I hope that one day the notion of enterprise products will disappear
completely so that everybody can happily use well-designed consumer products.

------
supernovae
They will be back..

~~~
walshemj
Yeh just as soon as MS comes up with a chunky discount :-)

Though the question has to be asked would all of the users in local government
be OK to use Gmail from a legal perspective?

for example police or social services might have more stringent data
protection requirements.

~~~
jonknee
Do you really think this hasn't been asked by Boston or any of the other very
large Google Apps deployments? The answer is a single Google Search away...

[https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.h...](https://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/government/benefits.html)

> Google Apps for Government includes dozens of security features specifically
> designed to keep your data safe, secure and in your control. This segregated
> system, for government customers in the U.S. only, was the first cloud-based
> email application to receive FISMA accreditation from the U.S. federal
> government.

~~~
walshemj
MM I think you will find that Boston is a city in the commonwealth of
massachusetts and not a "federal agency".

------
newman314
Two words: "Google Support"

Yes, you can can read it both ways...

------
didyousaymeow
I think you meant Microsoft Exchange, not Outlook.

------
drorweiss
Good for Boston & Google.

I guess nobody wants to administer mail these days...

~~~
lallysingh
I've seen enough horrors first (but mostly second) hand of small shops
(admittedly not like the story, but I'll talk about what I know) running their
own systems. They'll have 2-3 people running _everything_. From the mail
server to setting up printers to replacing bad hardware components.

If I were in that boat, I'd beg and plead to put everyone on a disposable
internet-only type machine and run webapps only. Then I could worry about
security and reliability, which sadly gets last priority in most places :(

------
recoiledsnake
Hope it doesn't end up like this deployment.

[http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-
for-...](http://betanews.com/2011/10/20/los-angeles-wants-refund-for-google-
apps/)

""Google's record with the city is nothing but broken promises and missed
deadlines," the letter reads in part. "The Internet giant simply has not done
what it said it would do and has tried to buy its way out of the mess it has
made by covering the unbudgeted costs of the LAPD's GroupWise System that the
department has been forced to continue using."

The mayor's office did not have any immediate comment as of press time."

Edit: Somewhat ironic that Google Docs and Drive are currently down.
[https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src...](https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=google%20drive&src=typd)

"Google Drive documents list goes empty for users "
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-
do...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57583952-93/google-drive-documents-
list-goes-empty-for-
users/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=statusnet)

~~~
nostromo
I once convinced a CEO of a company with a few hundred employees to move from
Outlook to Gmail.

For a while after I was a social pariah. My expense reports would go missing
(want to find a Microsoft fan? look in accounting). My calls to IT (staffed
with MCWhatever certified individuals) unanswered. The controller pulled me
aside and said in a menacing Brooklyn accent I didn't know he had in him, "I
would appreciate it if you would make this go away."

I learned a valuable about switching costs that day.

~~~
andrewljohnson
I once recommended a 12 person company move from a self-hosted, internal
exchange server to Google for email. They ignored me until a truck hit a
telephone pole and we lost email for 2 days.

~~~
ghaff
I worked for a similarly sized firm a few years ago and we also moved from
Exchange to Gmail, partly because we had had a few severe outages with
Exchange for various reasons. From a technical perspective, the migration went
pretty smoothly. But there were at least a couple non-technical people on the
business side who always hated the new system, partly because Gmail didn't
have the hierarchical folder system they were used to. (And I don't think
Gmail had sublabels at the time.)

~~~
jrpt
I feel you, nested labels is the easy answer to this. However, the better
answer is teaching people about archiving and search.

People used to folder their emails because searching was terrible. Gmail's
search is pretty good, so the best workflow in my opinion is to archive email
once you're done with it, and search if you need something specific. I do use
labels too, especially auto-labels, but I've found search to be more useful.

Still, some people are reluctant to change, and just want to do things the way
they've always done it. So that's why nested labels exist.

~~~
graeme
My issue with gmail search is that it's incomplete, and I don't know how
incomplete.

I've downloaded my mail to mac's mail app. With identical search strings, the
Mail app finds more messages.

This includes searching by sender email, which yields incomplete results in
gmail.

There have been many occasions where I've only sent someone one email, or vice
versa. Gmail often misses these.

So for anything I _must_ find (e.g. tax documents) I label them.

~~~
wlesieutre
Are you sure that isn't due to duplicates in Apple Mail? If I'm remembering
right, things with labels (including "Inbox") will have copies in All Mail as
well as each of their label "folders."

IMAP and POP use hierarchical folders and don't understand that a tax email
might be marked as both "Government" and "Finances", or whatever your filing
system happens to be.

~~~
graeme
I'm sure that could be an issue as well, but it's not causing the problem in
my case.

I've found 1-2 emails in mail from a particular sender, where gmail was unable
to find any results, even with their exact address.

I've likewise found perhaps 7/10 of a set of emails in gmail, and found the
remaining 3 in mail (while confirming they had unique information not listed
in gmail).

