Its official: The LAPD aint going to Google

After a long-running controversy, the 13,000 employees of the Los Angeles Police Department will definitely not move to Google Apps. And thats final.

On Wednesday, the LA City Council voted to officially kill a proposed deployment of Google Apps to the LAPD. The citys other 17,000 employeesthose outside law enforcement will keep using Gmail,the Los Angeles Times reported last night.

The council voted unanimously to change the terms of the $7.2 million contract signed in August 2009, to enable LAPD to stick with its existing Novell Groupwise email system, according to the Times report.

A source close to the matter said LA renewed the contract for another year in September, 2011, with an option to add two more years. And, according to a report to the council, Googles obligation to fund Groupwise licenses is capped at $350,000 per year for the life of the contract.

Two years ago, theLA-Google deal,with CSC acting as contractor, was trumpeted by Google to show that Google Apps actually Gmail specifically was ready for use by large organizations. But the LAPD had misgivings about how secure Gmail is. For law enforcement and court officials who must deal with sensitive information evidence, names of confidential informants etc. security is critical. And, because the LAPD must communicate with the FBI and other f! ederal l aw enforcement agencies, its communications must meet federal Criminal Justice Information Security standards as well something no cloud-based mail is yet able to do.

That means the issue is not be as much about Gmail per se as cloud-based email in general, a fact conceded privately by even some of Googles largest competitors. A spokeswoman for LA City council president Eric Garcetti reiterated that today. This is about the security of cloud. There are federal as well as local security requirements that must be met, she said.

For its part, Google has long maintained that the LAPD inserted new requirements after the contract was inked, stalling deployment.

According to an emailed statement from a Google spokesman:

Were disappointed that the City introduced requirements for the LAPD after the contract was signed that are, in its own words, currently incompatible with cloud computing Even so, Los Angeles taxpayers have already saved more than two million dollars and the City expects to save millions more in the years ahead.

Even though this might not be a Gmail issue, the publicity is definitely not good for Google. In short, Google only does cloud mail so if this mess causes other agencies or cities to rethink a move to Google Apps, that hurts the vendors efforts. And it could boost competitors like Microsoft and IBM that offer email inboth on-premises and cloud-deployment models.

Photo courtesy ofFlickr userLifeSupercharger

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