Google had promised to have city employees in Los Angeles switched over to Google Apps by June 30. Tens of thousands of employees were to get upgraded, but it sounds like the plan will not be fully executed until sometime in mid August.
The problem with that is that costs to run LA’s existing Novell setup while Google works on the transition will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $135,000. Google has agreed to pay for the cost of keeping things running smoothly.
The roots of the delay come from the L.A.P.D, and their concerns over security. They want to make sure their data is not mixed in with any other data maintained by Google — probably not something Google is excited about since their data centers naturally serve many clients from the same machines and data stores. They also want background checks for Googlers who can access L.A.P.D data. These all seem like reasonable requests.
In addition to security concerns, Google is also being taken to task over email delays. Another good point is made by the L.A.P.D according to Marketwatch:
“Given that the L.A.P.D. is a 24/7 operation, which relies upon email/Blackberry notifications for public-safety-related incidents across the city, these delays are not acceptable.”
It will be interesting to see if these problems can be sorted out in a timely fashion.
