Government Agency: City of Canton, Georgia

Solution or Platform Selected: Google Apps

1. The Government agency's challenge that led to the Cloud or SaaS adoption.
   Fast-growing Canton, Georgia – thirty miles north of Atlanta – is home to more than 21,000 people and ranked as America’s fifth fastest-growing city in 2005. With growth like that, Canton’s city government, which provides services from fire protection and water treatment to planning, zoning, and roads maintenance, is always thinking about the future needs of its citizen and business communities. Strategically enhancing its IT infrastructure while maximizing the productivity of human and financial resources is a top priority for the Canton city team. The City of Canton needed it all: industry-leading productivity solutions for 185 employees, better reliability, secure “anytime, anywhere” email access, web tools, spam reduction, and compatibility with mobile devices – all while cutting costs and IT effort. But they were far from those goals. Their Linux-based email system was costly and unreliable. It required complex renewal and upgrade management, and maintenance was a never-ending task. “Even on good days, our previous system was bad,” says IT Director Camille Wehs. “About every 48 hours, I had to get things back up and running. It was literally keeping me awake at night.”



2. The solution that was chosen and why that particular solution was selected.
   Wehs’ quest for a reliable, easily maintained, and less costly solution paid off when she found Google Apps Premier Edition. When city officials saw Google Apps, everyone agreed: they could save money and get a better solution. Canton moved swiftly to upgrade its infrastructure. Implementation was quick and trouble-free. Exporting email archives and giving each user a custom, secure email address took little time. As an admin, Wehs easily mastered account management using Google’s intuitive, web-based controls. Since most users already knew the Google interface, training was minimal. “Typically, I spend weeks training people on a new solution,” says Wehs. “Not with Google Apps. I simply pointed people to some training materials and told them to give me a call if they needed help. But the calls never came.” Improving email access and security was only the beginning. With Google Apps, city employees now access and share spreadsheets and word processing documents with ease. “Some employees use other software in conjunction with Google Apps. They complement each other and make it easier to share and collaborate on documents,” says Wehs. “If employees have something important, they can upload it for access from anywhere, effortlessly backing up that document on Google’s servers.”



3. Results of the implementation. How did the vendor meet the agency's needs?
   Google Apps immediately lowered the cost and strain on Canton’s IT infrastructure. Backed by Google’s Apps’ 99.9% uptime guarantee, Canton felt a new sense of ease. “Google Apps is robust, reliable, and able to handle large volumes of email,” says Wehs. “Best of all, it immediately simplified our IT infrastructure. We had 21 servers. It was a wonderful to turn one off and never worry about it again.” The entire staff notes that security and privacy are better than with the previous solution, and that they can easily access email from home, on the road, or on their mobile devices. Everyone benefits from increased uptime and reliability. Wehs saves countless hours each week on maintenance and upgrades. The productivity and budget benefits speak for themselves. Wehs notes that Google Apps has saved Canton nearly $10,000 annually, enabling her to conserve taxpayer dollars. With no need for additional hardware, software, or IT resources, Wehs says, “Our user base is continuing to grow, but our IT resources are not. Google gives us feature-rich solutions that come with the added benefits of improved reliability and reduced IT maintenance and costs. As for me, with Google Apps, I can now get a good night’s sleep.”