The City of Carlsbad Chooses Microsoft

Several months ago we signed up to receive all the press releases that are sent out by the City of Carlsbad. We have yet to receive anything in the way of news from the City. But hopefully, that will change soon. The City has recently chosen to “use Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite to provide a hosted solution for its collaboration and e-mail applications.”

“As we prepared to migrate e-mail systems it was the perfect time to ask the question of whether someone else could build, manage and support a collaboration environment as well as or better and for a lower cost than internal IT staff” said Gordon Peterson, director of information technology for the city of Carlsbad. The city found Microsoft’s solution to be cost-effective and met its security and best practice requirements with the additional benefit of round-the-clock e-mail support.”

Sounds great. Does this mean we’ll begin getting the news? Or, just a big blue screen of death?
Carlsbad Leads Cities in Move to Cloud, Government 2.0

The city of Carlsbad joined Microsoft today in announcing that it has chosen to use Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite to provide a hosted solution for its collaboration and e-mail applications. Freeing up vital IT resources and staff for more innovative and strategic projects, the solution will provide the city of Carlsbad with a solution that includes management and administration, round-the-clock support, backup, filtering, and compliance features for e-mail.

“As we prepared to migrate e-mail systems it was the perfect time to ask the question of whether someone else could build, manage and support a collaboration environment as well as or better and for a lower cost than internal IT staff” said Gordon Peterson, director of information technology for the city of Carlsbad. The city found Microsoft’s solution to be cost-effective and met its security and best practice requirements with the additional benefit of round-the-clock e-mail support.

Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite is based on Microsoft’s software-plus-services cloud-computing model that combines the reach of the Internet with the power of local software applications. By bringing together software and services, customers can maximize capabilities, choice and flexibility. Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite is designed to provide the performance, scalability, security, management features and service-level capabilities to support leading public and private organizations. All Microsoft’s datacenters are owned and operated by the company. Also, Microsoft has implemented a full mirror image of its primary infrastructure to help ensure customers maintain full capabilities and recovery in the event of a disaster scenario.

“Microsoft’s commitment to hosted software and services is evident from heavy investment in datacenter infrastructure that’s been taking place over the past several years,” said Gail Thomas-Flynn, general manager of State and Local Government at Microsoft. “Microsoft’s strategy is to offer customers the power of choice: run applications on-premises, via a hosted solution or through a hybrid of both.”

By using a hosted solution the city of Carlsbad will be able to leverage its existing investments with Microsoft and expand functionality to include Exchange Server, Exchange ActiveSync, SharePoint Products and Technologies, Microsoft Windows Messenger and Microsoft Office Live Meeting. In the near and long term this will allow the city to maximize resources, redirecting strategic funds that otherwise would have had to go to on-premises IT infrastructure, hiring and training. Peterson noted, “Placing our collaboration services in the cloud will help us change our focus from maintaining systems and keeping them running to using the technology more effectively.”

Another example of government harnessing the power of IT to bring about what many are calling government 2.0 services to its citizens is Seattle’s use of Microsoft Virtual Earth. The CIO Summit will also feature Seattle’s My Neighborhood Map (MNM) service and plans. MNM is a public-facing mapping application displaying information by individual neighborhood related to city services, incidents results for each neighborhood and related statistical data. The site was revamped from a 2006 custom-created ESRI ArcIMS and .NET-based application to now use Microsoft Virtual Earth as its base map.

The MNM application provides access to more than 50 city services, real-time 911 results and Seattle Police Department crime data. In addition to using Microsoft Virtual Earth as the new platform, the city added functionality that will allow citizens to view the office location of their elected officials, public safety offices, education resources, transportation information and utilities services as well as facts about parks, arts and recreation facilities.