Is the City of Los Angeles Google Deal with CSC on the Rocks?

Matthew Weinberger

October 19, 2011

2 Min Read
Is the City of Los Angeles Google Deal with CSC on the Rocks?

google apps reseller

A letter from City of Los Angeles CTO Randy Levin to Google partner CSC indicates the agreement between the City of Angels and the search giant to turn all city departments over to the Google Apps SaaS productivity suite is increasingly a rocky one.

The letter, dated Aug. 17, 2011, but confidential until now, essentially says Google is responsible for paying for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)’s Novell GroupWise deployment through November 2012. MSPmentor readers may remember that back in July 2010, the LAPD’s objections to the Google Apps suite caused CSC to miss its original deployment deadline, and it looks like that contention has resulted in Google footing the bill.

Now, to be fair, under the revised contract, Los Angeles will pay for the 30,000 some-odd Google Apps licenses it had originally contracted. But Google and CSC’s inability to get the LAPD online, despite its earlier optimism and assurances that the project was proceeding apace, doesn’t speak well of any party involved.

A Google spokesperson told GigaOM (and rest-assured we’ll do our own follow-up with CSC):

“This is just the latest in a long list of press stunts from a group that admits to working closely with our competitors.  We are meeting our commitments to the City of Los Angeles.  Indeed, the City recently renewed their Google Apps contract for 17,000 employees, and the project is expected to save Los Angeles taxpayers millions of dollars.

The City has acknowledged Google Apps is more secure than its current system.  Along the way they’ve also introduced new requirements which require work to implement in a cloud computing environment, and we’ve presented a plan to meet them at no additional cost.”

But what does it say when Google and its partners can’t prove that to the LAPD’s satisfaction? Now, Google partners have had many, many successes in the cloud, and I’m not confident this reflects poorly on the Google App Authorized Reseller program. Regardless, painful and uncomfortable questions are raised by this issue, and TalkinCloud will stay on top of it.

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Matthew Weinberger

Matthew Weinberger

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