So Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has beaten Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) to win a $7.25 million contract to furnish cloud-service email to the city of Los Angeles, Calif. By next June, the city plans to replace a Novell Groupwise system for 30,000 employees with Google's service.
While not huge by government contract standards, this award is significant for Google, since LA is one of the country's biggest cities -- and the win was against a key competitor.
The news is reminiscent of another recent win for Google with U.K. conglomerate Rentokil. And it has sparked fresh attention for one of the key issues IT managers face when it comes to cloud computing: security.
Companies are interested in cloud services, no doubt about it. In a recent poll on Internet Evolution, over 50 percent of 177 respondents said they were ready to start getting enterprise applications from Google and other cloud vendors:
Source: Internet Evolution. Results of poll of 177 respondents at press time.
The FISMA guidelines are aimed at suppliers of all kinds dealing with federal government agencies whose data is sensitive. The issue of FISMA certification came up in the LA/Google contract because the city's police department will be part of the email system. Reportedly, that department is still ambivalent about putting sensitive data in Google's cloud -- though, as the record shows, the group is willing to give it a go.
At press time, Google did not respond to requests for comment on the agreement it made with the LA City Council and on the status of its FISMA certification. Requests for detail from the council itself also went unanswered.
But at least source says there were other demands from the council related to security: "The City Council had several other requirements
as well -- the government data will be encrypted, it will be
segregated, it will be stored in the U.S., and access will be limited," states Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a Washington, D.C.-based research group focused on information privacy.
In general, Rotenberg applauds the LA council for its diligence in demanding a separate amendment to the contract to cover security. "It's forward-looking on the part of the LA City Council to consider the risks of cloud computing and to establish incentives for secure
implementations," he writes in an email to Internet Evolution. "More government agencies need to work through the privacy and security risks before moving to a cloud computing model for applications services."
Despite reservations, the LA council apparently thinks Google is ready to handle its email. And that sends a message to other enterprise users: Cloud services are at least as reliable as your in-house system. They're worth a try.
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Interesting article and discussion about the LA Win.
Two things struck me as key to acceptance:
1. "...the government data will be encrypted, it will be segregated, it will be stored in the U.S., and access will be limited..."
2. FISMA certification
The second item will look good on paper, but the first one is the key set of requirements most businesses will want:
It is secured
It is segregated from other customers/businesses
It is physically restricted in access
One has to consider that a lot of sensitive and confidential information (not to mention Privacy Act-related information) reside in e-mails and the government entities have a higher standard to protect data than companies but most companies now realize that they should safeguard access and control of that information better.
The terminology is unfortunate, I think. It's like virtualization, another term that many IT pros have been uncomfortable with because it implies something that isn't tangible. And if something's not tangible, engineers think it's smoke and mirrors and, of course, not reliable.
Prediction: The term cloud will be replaced this year by other terms that are more solid and businesslike. I don't know what those may be, but we'll start to see them by midyear 2010. And then, a campaign against the term "cloud computing" will begin. Vendors will start to resist it, claiming to have moved beyond it to better things.
I think it's the marketing term of the "cloud" that makes me distrustful of it. It's all so new and all, supposedly new, and the pushing of it by Google and other vendors makes me even more distrustful of it. I only have a gmail account and a yahoo account because they insist I have one to access their other services (I guess those are clouds, too). But these accounts and those from my websites don't work for me because I have a Mac. Whenever I try to connect through Microsoft Entourage, I always get an error. But I check everything over with the name servers and even the IT guy did a check, too. I had everything correct but for some reason, it wouldn't work. One time on my laptop, we did get it to work for a while, but after a crash, it stopped working and hasn't worked again in three years. So all the e-mail accounts I have redirect to my AOL account, which I still pay the minimum for so I have emergency dial up access if needed and I still prefer the old AOL software, not the awful webmail. So I want my own e-mail on my own computer, none of this "cloud" stuff.
Oh, wait, isn't AOL technically a cloud service, just not with the trendy name and at least 15-20 years old? And I can say that at least the only good thing Sprint did was make their crappy phones AOL friendly, so I can access my e-mail from anywhere, even if it is a struggle without a QWERTY keyboard, and isn't that what all the fuss is about, anyway?
Kevin Crawford, the general manager of the IT department for the City of Los Angeles, just told me that the Washington, DC, case was a big factor in helping LA to decide in favor of Google.
My small non-profit has about 35 work stations and is firmly entrenched in MicroSoft business software. Email is an Exchange server, the network server is a Windows box, MS office is installed on all the computers.
I am the webmaster and web development project manager, so nearly from the moment I got here, I was moving the web properties to an offsite linux server. The point is; I have been pushing for the google apps concept for over a year now. Currently there is no effective way to colloborate, getting to your files from a remote location is problematic and unreliable, even checking email from another location is a difficult and not very robust process.
Lately, I have decided to leave well enough alone. I cannot convert enough management to see the benefits of cloud computing and I shudder at the thought of re-training all the employees to make use of the new system. I suspect this very same condition is a primary reason for MS to be so dominant in offices all over the world. Moving people away from their comfort levels is difficult, and time consuming.
A perfectly competent and professional person gets very upset when faced with using a new computer application. They are comfortable with what they have always used and upsetting that equilibrium causes workflow problems, frustration and eventually costs money.
I love the cloud idea, and feel that it is as secure as anything else out there. Using a system such as google apps would also save costs in software and hardware and in the long run, time. Maybe someday enough companies will take the road Los Angeles has gone down and realize there are very good choices out there beyond MS products and systems.
While certainly smaller than LA, Washington DC has been running on Google Apps for some time now. Whether this was a factor in their decision, I cannot say. I have met DC staffers, however, that talk about "email is email", but the collaboration tools give them new ways to work with the public. It will be interesting to see if LA uses Google Apps just for email, or takes advantage of the publication capabilities of Google Sites.
I would love to hear from anybody closer to the situation.
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Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) wants enterprise business. And if your shop is like most, it will be up to you as an IT professional whether to take up the vendor's offer.
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During a long keynote session at the Computer Electronics Showcase (CES) in Las Vegas today, executives from Ford Motor Company held forth on what's turned out to be a near-term success story driven -- as it were -- by Web-based technology.
Smarter Collaboration: How to Thrive in a Challenging Business Environment Market conditions are changing faster than ever, and organizations need to improve their agility and adaptability in order to provide better service and improve processes. The ability to work with customers, business partners, and employees as effectively as possible - while at the same time holding down costs - is a key to success. READ THIS eBOOK
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In the final episode of this series about the death of Internet anonymity, Saunders describes how the Internet of the future will start to attain a level of intelligence that requires no human intervention. Scary.
What can users today do to protect their online privacy? The simplest and most obvious option is to not use the Internet – at all. However, once all digital information is consolidated over the Internet, trying to protect digital identity by simply unplugging from the Internet becomes impossible – a fact that has manifest implications for civil liberties, Saunders says.
By 2011 the number of Internet-connected sensors will exceed 1 trillion, making your chances of doing anything or going anywhere unnoticed pretty much zero. Saunders talks about how the 'sensortization' of the Internet is eliminating the traditional divide between online and offline populations.
The 20th Century Internet was characterized by the ability to interact with other people and information on the Internet largely without anyone knowing who you were. The Internet of this century, conversely, will be defined by identity. Saunders explains how Internet users are unwittingly contributing to the demise of the anonymous Internet.
Techies are going crazy over the possibility that Google might design and sell its own Android phone. Some writers say it's a very big deal. Reiter questions whether it will happen and, if it does, whether it even matters.
E-discovery is the requirement to make available all digital information related to, and in conjunction with, a legal proceeding. An appeals court ruled recently to limit the scope of e-discovery searches, which gives corporate counsel and IT executives a bit more power over the e-discovery process.
Google Chrome isn't pretty like other OS GUIs, but it's the first OS ever designed from the Internet inward to the desktop instead of the other way around. Crochet a nice border for a Chrome OS window if you like, as long as you realize the world of the cloud will change our conception of desktop computing forever.
Industry initiatives and government stimulus funds are giving enterprise software vendors a great opportunity to help build out and manage smart grid technologies.
Research shows that the youth of today like Facebook – but not blogging or Twitter. Does that mean Facebook has won, or just that it's not yet out of favor? Will all the services we see today fade into Ovaltine-or-Wheaties status in just a few years?
What kinds of companies are doing the most innovation in the data center? Turns out it's midtier enterprises that are taking the "Just Right" approach.
Ray Kurzweil's Blio and Apple's iPad tablet will make it easier than ever to have books "read" to us, says Dr. Kim, who believes that talking tablets will become interwoven into our consciousness as we "merge" with the increasingly elegant machines we hold in our hands.
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