Microsoft highlighted some of the high profile public sector contracts it won during its Public Sector CIO Summit last Wednesday. The company listed 16 new government and education projects, which include the City of Alexandria, Virginia; Portland Public Schools in Oregon; City of Carlsbad, California; and Colorado’s Department of Labor and Employment.
The Portland Public Schools will utilize Microsoft’s Live@edu service starting this year and 46,000 will access the system. Live@edu is a collaboration and email service designed for schools. This will replace the existing Novell GroupWise system.
Microsoft boasted that the Portland Public Schools had picked Microsoft over Google Apps. Not only that, North Carolina, Winston-Salem will be migrating its 2,150 Novell GroupWise users and 600 Google Apps business users onto Microsoft’s Business Process Online Suite or BPOS. This is Microsoft’s hosted service that features Sharepoint, Office Live Meeting and Exchange.
Google Apps is Federal Information Security Management Act or FISMA certified. Microsoft complained that government agencies sometimes used Google services in a way that could compromise security. For instance, General Services Administration awarded Google Apps last year but changed the contract to allow data to be stored outside of the United States.
Microsoft states that at present at least three million government employees are Microsoft Online services users. In addition, there are at least 15 million users of its Live@edu systems.
