Slashdot Mirror
Los Angeles Goes Google Apps With Microsoft Cash
Dan Jones writes "The Los Angeles City Council has approved a US$7.25 million, five-year deal with Google in which the city will adopt Gmail and other Google Apps. Interestingly, just over $1.5 million for the project will come from the payout of a 2006 class action lawsuit between the City and Microsoft (Microsoft paid $70 million three years ago to settle the suit by six California counties and cities who alleged that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge for software). The city will migrate from Novell GroupWise e-mail servers. For security, Google will provide a new separate data environment called 'GovCloud' to store both applications and data in a completely segregated environment that will only be used by public agencies. This GovCloud would be encrypted and 'physically and logically segregated' from Google's standard applications. Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?"
I thought "Microsoft Cash" was a new marvellous Redmond product I hadn't heard of.
Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?
No. Someone's just getting a dedicated data center hosting scalable web apps. Nothing new.
Of all the places on the interwebs, I would hope /. could refrain from the marketing babble.
Developers: We can use your help.
Has cloud computing stepped up to prime time?
No.
What it has done is given IT administrators the opportunity to pass the buck when there's a problem with a system. Now when the e-mail system goes down for hours and employees can't access crucial data, the IT admin simply points at Google and says "it's not my fault or my problem".
That's all cloud computing offers. Unless you're a bit paranoid, in which case it also provides a single-point of attack for the government to eavesdrop under the banner of "keeping America safe".
You neglect the effect of the close call that MS experienced that tempered, somewhat its proclivity for using the Mafia business model. Remember even under the W, supposedly MS was under judicial restraint. Those factors had to play a role in allowing competition to reappear*.
* However, if you look at the netbook experience where Linux suddenly vanished (supposedly completely) from its initial dominance one can see hints that MS is probably back to its old game, but the environment has altered in the interim.
The is the whole point of a "monopoly position", they didn't just make a product, they eliminated all other reasonable alternatives to their product, creating an artificially high price.
Your JK Rowling analogy is missing the part where JK Rowling buys up every other publishing company, shuts them down, turns the book industry into a harry Potter monoculture, and makes Harry Potter the only book series on the planet aside from a few hold outs that have the creativity to write their own books.
"This GovCloud would be encrypted and 'physically and logically segregated' from Google's standard applications." I'm sure the gmail outages are the reason for this part. Physically and logically segregated means that if gmail goes down, GovCloud won't. If your exchange team had to manage the email for millions of users they would be having more outages then gmail.