The City of Boston Moves to Google Apps – Will it Back Up its Data?

On Friday, the city of Boston announced it would ditch Microsoft and move its government employees to Google Apps. The transition will cost $800,000 but save the city $280,000 per year going forward.

Boston is not the first city to adopt Google Apps to save money.  In fact, governments in 45 states across the US have gone Google, including the states of Wyoming and Colorado, the US Department of the Interior, the US Naval & Coast Guard Academies, the cities of Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Orlando, St. Louis, and many more.  The transition for Colorado alone was forecasted to save the state $2 million annually.  States are not the only government entities who capture value from migrating to Google Apps; entire ministries of education have employed the cloud-based productivity suite nationwide.

The benefits of using Google Apps for government employees are clear.  Given governments’ constant need to cut costs, it makes sense to implement Google Apps which can save thousands of dollars a year in IT infrastructure costs. For example, with Google, IT teams no longer need to purchase and then maintain costly servers as they have traditionally done.

Microsoft has condemned such transitions criticizing Google for being insecure, as it claims that Boston citizens deserve better security than they can get through Google Apps. What Microsoft failed to recognize in its criticisms are that while Google Apps does have world class security, there are additional solutions customers can implement to gain the security they need.  For instance, adding a cloud-to-cloud backup solution can combat security fears and ensure reliable, secure second copies of its data.  We look forward to learning whether Boston will backup its Google Apps and become cloud confident.  So what’s it going to be, Mayor Menino?  Your backup solution is right in your backyard.