L.A. Council to consider replacing city's e-mail system with Go...

The City Council is slated to consider on Tuesday a proposed five-year contract to replace the city government's crash-prone e-mail system with a Google-based application.

[Fed Up as Well]

Just make sure that every department is using the new google system instead of having different departments(eg. Proprietary Depts) using different products (ie.Outlook).

[WakeUpLA]

Analyst data shows that stability, security and customer uptime of GroupWise is the highest out of collaborative offerings from Microsoft, IBM and yes, Google.

This is more of a statement of the incompetence of the IT staff and the poor design and maintenance of their system.

[Joseph Marton]

Mr. Szabo's statements are some of the most uneducated statements I have ever read. Studies show GroupWise's reliability far exceed other on-premise and cloud-based solutions, including Google. As a personal Gmail user I can attest to the various outages I have experienced with Gmail. As a long time GroupWise administrator and user I can attest that GroupWise is indeed far more stable. If the City of LA is experiencing stability issues, I can assure you this is as a result of other problems such as faulty hardware, poor design, etc rather than the fault of GroupWise. All poorly designed systems will fail including Google's (a network design flaw took down most of Google's worldwide network earlier this year). Novell has even offered architectural and design services to the City at no cost to the City yet Mr. Szabo refuses to take Novell up on this offer. This shows the intention to migrate away from GroupWise to Google's system is not about any sort of technical problems but instead is because of Matt Szabo has a personal vested interest in ripping GroupWise out of the City of Los Angeles.

[KLanders]

"Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's deputy chief of staff, Matt Szabo, has described GroupWise as "one of the most antiquated crash prone e-mail systems in the history of humankind." "

This guy Szabo is just stupid. Perhaps he should be replaced. Certain there are other programs in LA that could use the money. If anybody has problems with GroupWise they are not qualified to be in IT. I am the only GroupWise Administrator and have not had my system EVER crash! Fire your IT Department. If they have issues now they will have the same or even more post migration.

[Dave Adkins]

I've been using a Groupwise System for over 10 years. It has not been "one of the most antiquated crash prone e-mail systems in the history of humankind." Rather, is has been stable and maintains a greater than 99.9999% uptime. We were running the same version as the City up until this summer, but have not experienced any of the problems referenced here. I won't get into a Groupwise versus Microsoft Exhange battle here, but I'd very concerned about allowing all of the L.A. information to exist out on the Internet, especially when it comes to Public Safety information and other confidential info that is covered by HIPAA and other regulations.

It sounds like a bad implementation - or some other issue that is unrelated to the software. So - instead of fixing the problem, let's try something new. I wonder if the City Council will tuck away some of the savings for the lawsuits when someone's private information is breached.

Today - credit card information and social security numbers are routinely hacked and stolen - soon we can look forward to Family Court records, police records, and other city records being exposed. Yippee!

If I lived in L.A., I think I'd consider moving.....

[kma]

Read the fine print. Google makes most of its money by selling information stored on its computers by other compaines. This is a well publicized issue with using Google Search. And this whole Google Apps thing has already been stated as being an introductory plan. Who knows what the price will be 5 years from now.

[Citygirl 3000]

They can't find a better way to spend money? How many more furloughs are we going to have to take next year to make up for this current example of mismanagement?

[GroupWise Manager]

GroupWise is a remarkably powerful, stable, and secure messaging system. Every time I read another version of this story I can't help thinking that maybe what the City of Los Angeles needs to do is re-evaluate its technical staff.
Our company runs a 34,000+ user GroupWise system spread across eleven states on roughly the same number of servers. We have two FTEs dedicated to maintaining the GroupWise system (in addition to their other duties). Remote site server support may account for an additional FTE worth of time. Unplanned downtime is almost unheard of. Our average post office uptime is over 100 days.
In my opinion this project is a disservice to the people of Los Angeles. But I'm sure they have money to spare.

[The Oracle]

The mayor's office and ITA management want Google mail! They are willing to say anything to get and are willing to fudge the numbers to support what they say!
Oh and Matt! the city's email system was not down all of this last weekend as you claim, a switch in a utility closet in City Hall failed preventing you and the other employees from accessing the email system which was UP ALL WEEKEND! Get your facts straight PAC MAN!

[raitchison]

GroupWise can be a great system if it's set up and configured properly, the city is probably still running their mail services on NetWare.