L.A. Adopts Google Email for Staff of 30,000

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]deadlockedworld[/nom]Sarah Palin didn't get "hacked". She was a moron that had her email security question set as her town of birth. All they did was reset her password and the media called it "hacking."[/citation]
By definition, gaining any unauthorized access to any electronic information is "hacking". It may be the easiest hack ever, but its still hacking none the less.

 

[deathblooms2k1]

Cloud Computing sounds like a pretty phrase for outsourcing. Google isn't going to call their email system "e-mail outsourced" that would be a tough sell to many people. The fact is all of the data is still stored on the same type of hardware just in a different location. A colleague of mine has an interesting perspective in regards to cloud computing. As an IT professional he says to me "If I design and build the system and it fails, I lose my job. If another company designs and builds the system and it fails, I lose my job. At least in the first scenario I have control over whether or not I lose my job."

Nevertheless it's interesting. LA will certainly be a feather in Google's hat if it pans out as a success. Only time will tell.

 

[zoridon]

Cloud computing is the way to go. Saves redundant hardware that you have to upgrade at the local level every few years. Cuts down on maintenance cost since that is taken care of by the cloud service your business uses. Finally it is ultra portable and can be accessed from any place with a internet connection. The only hitch that is both a plus and minus is "Security". The plus being all critical updates and antivirus services are centrally controlled and monitored providing information assurance managers more control over what is intalled or allowed into the network. The bad thing is what makes the good thing so great...all your eggs are in one basket. If the cloud gets compromised it can potentially result in a great deal of personal information and business information getting into the wrong hands. I'd go cloud computing regardless with the right in depth security measures and redundant back ups in place together with who will pay for what in a contract if they screw up.

 

[precariousgray]

[citation][nom]deadlockedworld[/nom]Sarah Palin didn't get "hacked". She was a moron that had her email security question set as her town of birth. All they did was reset her password and the media called it "hacking."[/citation]
Note the quotation marks he placed around the word "hacked".

This clearly implies that it was not actually hacked, but as you mentioned. Not that I could expect anyone to comprehend English language nowadays.

*this clryh imply's th@ wuz nto hxd, but u said: lol cant expect u plebs 2 talk good newayz.....

 

[jerreece]

[citation][nom]deadlockedworld[/nom]Sarah Palin didn't get "hacked". She was a moron that had her email security question set as her town of birth. All they did was reset her password and the media called it "hacking."[/citation]

Oh dear heavens. Are Tom's readers this dense? I'm sorry, not trying to be a jerk... but get with it people.

I put the word hacked in quotation marks for a reason. Apparently you folks don't understand what it means to put something in quotation marks anymore. Our public schools are failing still....

Of course it wasn't really hacked, that's why I wrote "hacked" instead of hacked. See the difference?

So... soo.... sad.

 

[jerreece]

[citation][nom]precariousgray[/nom]Note the quotation marks he placed around the word "hacked".This clearly implies that it was not actually hacked, but as you mentioned. Not that I could expect anyone to comprehend English language nowadays.*this clryh imply's th@ wuz nto hxd, but u said: lol cant expect u plebs 2 talk good newayz.....[/citation]

Thank you. I'm glad someone else was taught the proper use of punctuation marks, and actually understands them as well.

 

[rippleyhakd]

What bothers me more so, is that LA is still using Novell for their network OS'. O-K.. Groupwise was dead 8 years ago, they just didnt realize it themselves. So now they are going to GMAIL. Sweet. YET again, no Directory Service Security. Email password= whatever , versus network login authentication, and WORSE.. NOW it is apparant that with 30,000 LA employee's using a WEB enabeled email application, means 30,000 possible places for email spam/virus's.. AS a city / government entity, i realllly hope that google is like NOT SCANNING that email. In house wether the expense = MAIL IS THERE, under their policy, control.. VIA Cloud= YOU HOPE IT IS THERE, YOU HOPE IT ISNT SCANNED, or violated.
HAPPEND everywhere, but like aposter already posted.. IF it is in meh house, and it fails, that is on me, BUT if it is google-boogle land, and it failes, YAH it is still on me, YET some outsourced programmer in india was responsible for MEH job.. I dont like this idea not 1 bit.

 

[randerson]

my community college switched from gmail to outlook web access last semester. I still use my gmail account though

 

[supadupakoopa]

My mom works for a school district and they use gmail.

 

[cdillon]

I'm the only sysadmin for a medium sized public school district in Missouri and we recently switched from an in-house open-source based mail/collaboration system to Google Apps for Education, which is functionally equivalent to Google Apps Premium. It was hard to ignore since it is Free for non-profit schools to use. The only thing that is costing us any money is the Google Postini services that allow us to do message filtering and message archiving, and we get those services for a small fraction of the normal cost. Our staff members have been very happy after the switch, Google Apps provides far more functionality than we had before.

A lot of other school districts around here have been switching to Google Apps for Education for pretty much the same reasons we did.

 

[Ridik876]

Wow Groupwise is a big deal? My campus, despite HEAVILY funding has a terrible IT department. We use Groupwise, and it is horrible.

 

[Guest]

We run a 35,000+ user GroupWise system with very little downtime (some of our post offices have been up over 16 months). It requires less than three staff members to maintain both the GroupWise system and the hardware it runs on. GroupWise is far from dead, but apparently ignorance and Novell-bashing is not.

Any application (GroupWise included) is only as good as the technicians supporting it. Which, by the way, tells me quite a bit about the skills of the City of Los Angeles' IT staff.