1. 1 HOUR LIVE CHAT WITH GOOGLE
Google recently held a live chat with the GovLoop community to answer questions about its release of
“Google Apps for Government.” Dan Israel of Google Enterprise led a robust discussion with over 70
individuals, answering nearly 20 questions in the hour-long chat.
In brief, Google announced a new edition of Google Apps
specifically designed for the US Federal, State and Local
Governments. It provides the same applications and pricing as
the Premier Edition of Google Apps and is the industry’s first
multi-tenant cloud computing suite with FISMA certification.
As most people know, “many government agencies are facing a
big IT gap, at the same time, budgets are tight, which is why
many (including the Obama administration) are excited about
the potential for cloud computing” said Mr. Israel in his opening
remarks. “If you have 3 minutes, watch this video about Berkely
Lab.”
Since Google’s announcement on July 26th the GovLoop
community has been buzzing about this news in the Google for
Gov group in the discussion titled “Should Your Agency/State/City make the Switch to Google Apps?”
The chat was designed to enable members to communicate directly with Google about the new
product. Keep reading to review a summary of the chat Q&A.
Q1. Is Google Apps for government specific security & policy measures also thought of for
other countries (I'm thinking Canada)? For example, a "guarantee" that the data will physically
be kept in Canada?
Dan Israel: “For now, we're making this available to US government customers and are using Google's
existing infrastructure of data centers. We don't have the data centers in every country to be able to
restrict data to those countries.”
Q2. What is “multi-tenant”?
Dan Israel: “Multi-tenant is a fundamental defining feature of cloud computing. It means that all
customers are running off the same infrastructure versus having dedicated hardware for each customer
in a provider's data center. This allows us to realize great economies of scale if there's a new feature --
or a security patch -- for example we can roll it out across the entire environment of servers in a short
period of time. If people have dedicated hardware, you'd have to patch/update each one. So, it's a
pretty fundamental concept when it comes to the cloud”

2. Live Chat, August 4, 2010
Q3. How would you define the difference between a website that hosts a useful application (e.g.
Yahoo mail) and "true" cloud computing?
Dan Israel: “Yahoo mail, Hotmail, Gmail - all of these are cloud computing. They're large computing
infrastructures designed to serve 100 thousands of users and you only need a web browser to access
them. So, in my definition, they are cloud computing -- although they're consumer applications of cloud
computing. When we get into Google Apps for
Government and other products like Salesforce,
Micah Donahue: Interesting, thx. So in
we're looking at enterprise cloud computing offerings
your POV the distinctions to make are
which can be valuable to an organization and not just
between consumer2consumer and
a handy app for a person on the web”
biz2biz/gov’t2gov’t. Thx.
Q4. Dan, have seen a couple of reports that GOOG's work with city of LA hasn't gone as
smoothly as planned; can you comment on any issues and how that effects plan to scale apps
more broadly?
Dan Israel: “For those of you who don't know the background on the City of Los Angeles…in
December, they made the decision to switch to Google Apps from an on-premises email system, for all
30K+ city employees and have been on an aggressive schedule. More than 10K employees are
already up and running. This is probably the biggest cloud computing project in the public sector right
now. LA expects to save over $5M over 5 years. But, to the question, the project has run into a few
delays which is not surprising for a project of this magnitude, however Google is working with the city
and we expect to see the rest of the employees up on Apps in the next few months”
Q5. Is ZD accurate when they report that security concerns on part of LAPD is part of the issue
in rolling out to rest of city?
Dan Israel: “We have met many of the requirements of LAPD already; there are some evolving
requirements that we are working with them to address”
Q6. Savings of $5M - where are these savings realized? How does it impact existing IT
personnel?
Dan Israel: “When you look at cost savings, there are a number of components. The biggest ones are
licensing costs & the personnel costs needed to administer &
maintain existing systems. Not suggesting that you get rid of GovLoop: “Keith & others - here is some
those employees, mind you, just that they can work on higher info on cost savings - link to watch an
value projects. But other costs as well - the ability to turn off archived Webcast 'Why the City of Los
or repurpose servers, lets you free up real estate, save Angeles has Gone Google'”
electricity (LA saving >$750K on electric alone). The fact that
Google Apps are easy to use can help save on training costs.”
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3. Live Chat, August 4, 2010
Q7. A lot of people are "scared" of these services. My question Is how do we tackle the fear of
unknown and fear of cloud and security. Lots of change mgmt questions.
Dan Israel: “Yes, some people are scared of the cloud. When you have an on-premise system, if
something goes wrong, you can run down to your server room and yell at the person in charge; with our
services, you can't do that. On the plus side, we're operating at a SLA of 99.9% uptime, not a lot of on-
premise systems can say that. As for security, doing things like
going through FISMA C&A help. We now have 1,500 pages of Stephen Peteritas: “Lots of
cloud talk, if you’re interested
documentation on our security controls that help government
might want to check out our
agencies do a real apples-to-apples comparison with the security Cloud Computing Group”
of their existing system. It’s an education process.”
Q8. Beyond simple pages of documentation, is GOOG looking at training sessions/components
as part of its service offering?
Dan Israel: “We have a lot of great partners who provide training for Google Apps, you can find them in
the Apps Marketplace. We are, at heart, a product company. We don't have a services team and so
use our partners for things like that. We're also always adding to our online training tools with videos,
etc.”
Q9. Question from the Twitter-verse: What about security (e.g. Twitter employee email hacked
easily)?
Dan Israel: “Security is something we take very seriously, hence the FISMA certification. I don't know
the details of Twitter that well; but my understanding is that it had to do with how an individual managed
their password. No matter how secure the system, if you don't have users taking good care of their
passwords, it can put the system at risk”
Q10. Has Google ever worked with public universities? Mississippi State University looked at
transferring to Google last year...not sure the outcome yet.
Dan Israel: “We work with a TON of universities, more than 8 million students are using Gmail through
their schools (not their personal accounts)”
Q11. Are G apps interoperable with MS Office? In our experience, most offices/posts are
currently using MSO.
Dan Israel: “Yes, in a couple of ways. First, if you have users who are very comfortable with Outlook,
and will never give it up, they can use the Outlook client but with Google replacing the server. With this
each user will get a 25GB inbox, great search capabilities and access from a variety of mobile devices,
while they still use the familiar Outlook interface on their PC. Also, Google Calendar works well with
other calendar applications and you can take all types of documents (excel, word, etc.) and upload
them into Google Docs for real-time collaboration and then export them back out if needed.”
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4. Live Chat, August 4, 2010
Q12. Can you compare Google's to Microsoft's
cloud solutions?
Dan Israel: “With the caveat that I'm not a Microsoft
expert. Microsoft has been providing on premises
software for a long time while Google's apps have been
built from the ground up as cloud apps. Microsoft is
promoting a hybrid model that ties into the client
software on your desktop (i.e. Office) and so loses
some of the advantages of being a true cloud
computing app; such as access from anywhere, the
economies of scale, and the ease of maintaining the
system. But you should probably get a Microsoft rep to
chat sometime about their stuff :-)”
Q13. Are there any U.S. government agencies using Google Wave? Any government agencies
using it outside of the US?
Dan Israel: “There are government agencies working with Wave. In fact, there's a working group inside
the DoD looking at Wave and its potential for collaboration. I don't know whether any gov’t agencies
outside the US are using Wave but would expect a few are.
Q14. Can you tell us about the Google Apps Marketplace and how that relates to Google Apps?
Dan Israel: “The Google Apps Marketplace is relatively new. All of the Google Apps are extensible,
meaning people can build gadgets or extensions on top of them. The marketplace is a collection of the
best of these apps (some by Google, some by third-parties, some
are free, some are paid).”
Q: What cities are using
Q15. Can apps like Google Marketplace help cities? For Google Apps for Gov?
instance, can a city develop its own app to let residents see
A: LA; Orlando; Wooster,
live meetings, get updates, etc.? OH; Canton, GA; DC;
States = NM &
Dan Israel: “It would be AWESOME to see cities, counties, feds, KS #googgov
etc on Google Apps developing useful extensions and sharing with
each other”
Q16. What’s the number one reason for resistance to this technology and is the 5 million dollars
savings the type of savings for an entire city that will revolutionize or convert non users into
users?
Dan Israel: “Why resistance? I think inertia is one reason…for the federal government, FISMA was
really important. Now that we've achieved that, we expect to see a lot more agencies making the
move.”
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5. Live Chat, August 4, 2010
Q17. Can you talk more about Google Sites and the internal YouTube part?
Dan Israel: “Sites (used to be a company called JotSpot) lets you build webpages quickly and easily for
intranets or internet. You can put the subject matter experts in charge of the webpages, no need for IT
involvement. Take a look at pcgov.org for a city website running on Sites. Google Video (the private
YouTube) lets you upload & share videos within your organization and can be used for training,
delivering messages from agency leadership, etc. It's a little more personal than sending an agency-
wide email.”
Q18. Any more on Google apps generally for mobile devices? Lots of folks with blackberries in
govt.
Dan Israel: “Google Apps runs on all sorts of mobile devices: Blackberries, iPhone, Android, Windows
Mobile, etc. all are supported. As long as you have a network connection (and your admin allows it) you
can get at your data.”
Q19. Could you ask about the applicability to android, specifically around FISMA and if this will
be a major focus for Google?
Dan Israel: “Android is a really exciting growth area for Google. Recently saw that sales of Android
devices are outpacing the sales of iPhones - no small feat. People like that it's open source. I think
you'll see a lot more on the Android front in the next year and lots of apps being developed by govt
folks, too”
It’s easy to see why the GovLoop community has been buzzing about Google. In this chat alone we
covered the recent “Google Apps for Government” news, touched on progress in LA, discussed
benefits of Google Marketplace, mentioned the new growth area of the Android among many other
things. If there is more you would like to know about Google don’t be afraid to ask in the Google for Gov
group on GovLoop.
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