This time it is the city of St. Louis in the USA. Speaking with talkincloud.com, the St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay said: “With an email system that held us back, we wanted to find a new system. After evaluating several competitive bids, the City of St. Louis selected cloud-based Google Apps for Government because it best suits our needs for a reliable, secure, and cost-effective email system…”
He added: “Because Google is a familiar and trusted brand (and many employees currently use Gmail for their personal email), I’m confident that this will be a smooth transition.”
Interestingly, it was a Google reseller called Daston that secured the contract with the City of St. Louis. Daston specialises in a number of cloud-based solutions so was well placed to offer the city administrators what they wanted. As such, it was success all round.
That said, this particular deal is not a one-off for Daston. In fact, the company has managed to negotiate great deals with other local governments across the USA. For instance, the city of Pittsburgh in Philadelphia also migrated 3,000 staff to Google Apps for Government away from Microsoft. So, not only was this move a success for both Google and Daston, it was also another nail in the coffin for Microsoft’s Exchange Email service.
The move is also expected to save Pittsburgh City Council 25% in annual costs.
Moves such as this, and that of St. Louis, are a demonstration of how the cloud is beginning to shape the way not only how businesses operate, but also government organisations.
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