After hearing positive reviews from North Carolina State University, the Budget and Economic Advisory committee voted 2 to 1 Tuesday to approve making the switch from Microsoft to Google as the city\u2019s e-mail provider.<\/p>\n
It will be up for vote by the City Council July 19.<\/p>\n
Councilor Nancy McFarlane voted against the switch. While she was supportive of a move to Google, she said she believed that this was not the right time, citing issues with the current enterprise<\/a> resource <\/a>planning <\/a>system<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s the way to go, just maybe in six months,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n City Manager Russell Allen said at <\/a>the<\/a> last<\/a> committee <\/a>meeting<\/a> that making the switch to Google Apps for Government would save the city $480,000 during the next three years.<\/p>\n The Microsoft Exchange e-mail system would cost the city $1.4 million during the next three years. It would cost $980,320 to implement Google\u2019s system during the same period.<\/p>\n NC State\u2019s Chief Information Officer, Marc Hoit, was on hand to give his impressions of Google\u2019s system, which the university put in place a year ago. He said that all 35,000 students now use Google-based e-mail and applications.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been thanking me ever since,\u201d Hoit said.<\/p>\n With some committee members voicing concerns about training, Hoit said that how quickly staff learns the system is dependent on what they use. Employees who are simply using the e-mail function will learn quickly, while it might take longer for an employee who uses more applications, such as calendars.<\/p>\n While Google Docs is available to use an an application, the college still provides Microsoft Office products for those that wish to use it. Actual usage is limited, Hoit said.<\/p>\n Hoit added that he has no concerns with privacy as he felt Google had a strong security record. For researchers at the college, \u201cAnything that\u2019s private and needs to be protected, you shouldn\u2019t be sending in an e-mail anyway,\u201d Hoit said.<\/p>\n Read<\/a> more<\/a> about <\/a>the <\/a>Google<\/a> switch<\/a> here<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Raleigh City Council\u2019s Budget and Economic Development Committee approved a switch from Microsoft Exchange to Google as the city\u2019s e-mail provider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24029,"featured_media":7773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,15,23],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7897"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24029"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theraleighcommons.org\/raleighpublicrecord\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}