Last week (August 13, 2010) the press published some articles regarding the State of California going with Microsoft for their revamped E-mail system. Google apparently didn’t like hearing this and has been trying to get the state to change 142 of its requirements for an Email system so they can bid on it. According to the LA Times article the state rejected 115 of the change requests.

One of the requirements mentioned in the LA Times article is of sorting Email in a persons Inbox. The article points out that Google’s capabilities doesn’t allow advanced Email sorting features, but requires users to use Google’s search engine to locate specific messages… an approach that Google believes is “more effective.” I don’t know about other Email users, but I use the sort feature all the time in Outlook to locate messages. Especially messages that have been in my Inbox or another folder for sometime that I may have forgotten to take action on. If I had to search for every message I wanted to find, my search terms would likely be too broad or too narrow to find all the messages I needed easily. It’s much faster for me to use sort, and if I need am looking for something in particular that I filed away in a Outlook folder, I still use the built-in search in Outlook or built-in to Windows 7 to find it. Really both capabilities are important and help you use the right feature to get the job done the quickest.

The goal for the State of California is to update over 100 older Email systems and consolidate them into a single platform and service which will save millions of dollars. With the City of LA and the migration to Google, there has been some scheduling and project management issues due to features promised by Google that they have not delivered on when expected. In addition the security concerns by the LAPD have also prevented them from moving all of their mail to Google.

The ZDNet Blog by Editor Sam Diaz sheds some additional light on the bid process and Google’s response… or, um, lack of response.What’s interesting about both of these articles is there is an assumption made (through comments about energy and carbon emissions savings by Google) that it’s Google’s Cloud offering vs. Microsoft’s on-premise offering. I guess well have to wait and see what the final offering is when the State announces it.

Keep in mind too that anyone can access and review the RFP documents that the State released. So if you are curious about the nearly 200 requirements in the RFP are, you can read them for yourself.

Don’t forget to read the comments on these articles, they are always interesting, or at least entertaining.

LA Times Article: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-google-email-20100813,0,6924885.story

ZDNet Article: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/google-bidding-process-for-californias-e-mail-contract-was-designed-for-microsoft-win/38036