The City of Pittsburgh Goes to Google Apps

Pittsburgh is the latest city with a plan to move thousands of municipal employees to the Google Apps for Government cloud suite, thanks to the efforts of Google Apps Authorized Reseller Daston Corporation.

City of Pittsburgh Chief Information Officer Howard Stern and his office apparently led a months-long competitive bid and evaluation process that took a look at several leading cloud productivity products. While those non-Google offerings aren’t named in Google’s official blog entry, it’s probably a safe bet Pittsburgh evaluated at the very least Microsoft Office 365 and IBM LotusLive.

But it was Google Apps that offered what Stern believed was the most competitive price when factoring in the cost of deployment, implementation, training and data archival. And the Google Apps for Government FISMA certification is the cherry on top, helping assure Pittsburgh of the suite’s security.

The Google SaaS approach also keeps the city’s IT staff from having to maintain and patch its existing eight-year-old legacy system. Since many employees are already familiar with at least Google Gmail, Pittsburgh is expecting training to go smoothly, according to that blog entry.

The Pittsburgh City Council voted unanimously to adopt Stern’s proposal, and Daston Corporation will help move the city’s 3,000 workers to Google Apps before 2011 is out. Daston is a solution provider and integrator specializing in serving government customers, so this deal is directly in its wheelhouse.

The Pittsburgh announcement is the latest in a string of public sector victories for Google Apps, with NOAA and the State of Wyoming both memorably choosing the suite. Microsoft, meanwhile, is accelerating its Office 365 channel push. Can Google keep the momentum going? Stay tuned to TalkinCloud for clues.