You know the cloud computing model has hit it big when the second-largest city in the United States makes the switch. Los Angeles had previously been running Novell’s Groupwise (ouch!) and one can imagine that with the economic downturn drastic cost-cutting measures had to be made. This year they made the move to use Gmail for 30,000 city employees along with Google Docs. So instead of wasting IT resources to maintain an email server, they can now deploy those resources to initiatives that provide more value for the city.

The case for cloud computing was so clear that the LA City Council voted unanimously. Microsoft sent their big guns in to try and derail the Google move, but to no avail. Cloud computing has arrived in major fashion, and it’s become quite clear that vendors must either compete in that arena or they are in trouble.

In February, Google made the news somewhat ignominiously when it’s Gmail service was unavailable for several hours, and then again in September. Our own Reid Carlberg’s response to the issue garnered much interest on sites like Reddit and Stumbleupon: “I don’t care.” 

While his subject line was obviously written for effect, his reasoning is absolutely sound:

• Outages of Gmail are extremely rare
• Their support teams often know about a problem before you do
• You don’t need to buy additional maintenance to fix the problem
• Nobody lost any data

We’re pretty sure you’ve heard these themes before from marketing departments espousing the benefits of cloud computing (guilty!), but this is a prime example of why it works so well.

Anyone who has worked in an enterprise email environment managed by Microsoft Exchange, Novell, Lotus or any of the other major players has seen their work email unavailable but at a much higher frequency than Google. The odds of getting information about those outages from your IT was like pulling teeth, because they don’t want egg on their face.

Switching our corporate email to Gmail not only saved us a large amount of money each year, it has provided rock-solid reliability and a level of support that can’t be found anywhere else. Gmail rocks, plain and simple. 

Follow Reid Carlberg on Twitter or contact him at rcarlberg@modelmetrics.com.

Dear IT Leadership,

Today, your business needs you more than ever.  The economy is weakening.  Competition is intense.. You’ve helped it navigate technologies for years.  But the business has immensely complex new challenges today.  It needs your help to operate more efficiently.  It needs your help to innovate in new ways.

In short – they need you to lead – but they need you to lead differently. 

They need you to lead them through radical change. 

What do I mean?

Have the wisdom to divide the marketing hype and the FUD from the real story behind cloud computing and utility computing.  Despite their catchy names, Larry Ellison’s protestations, and the high-energy sales effort you’ll run into, these are real, they’re here to stay and they make a substantial difference.  Your competitors know how to exploit them.  Your business needs to, too.  This is your responsibility.

Have the courage to rely less on the technologies that have served you well so far.  Oracle. Microsoft. SAP.  As painful as it is to admit, they aren’t keeping up.  And they won’t do anything interesting in this department until enough of you, their soon-to-be-former-customers, leave them.  There’s every likelihood they won’t do it then.  And some of your old-line competitors will ignore my plea and do the same: nothing.  This is your opportunity.

Have the strength to pull your team through the keyhole of this new paradigm.  They’ll feel threatened because their old skills aren’t as useful as they once were.  They’ll be scared for their jobs. But they’re closest to the problem and the ones who can best help you take the next step.  Change is hard.  Not everyone will make it.  But you’ll need those who can make the switch for the very real, high value add work of transforming your company.  This is your challenge.

Have the generosity to share what you know about technological success with the newest drivers of technical innovation in your company – business owners.  Cloud computing and utility computing both reduce or eliminate barriers to technology driven innovation, but they don’t eliminate the need for things like validation and requirements gathering.  They help technology become more egalitarian, but  neither cloud computing nor utility computing know your business.  Think disintermediation.  Think empowerment.  Think coaching.  This is your reinvention.

Have the energy to jump in with both feet.  Have the patience to put up with some bumps in the road.  Clouds are built on solid technology and maturing quickly, but they’re still relatively young.  A blip here or there doesn’t mean the sky is falling.  Moreover, your efforts to transform the technical backbone of your enterprise will span multiple generations of cloud and utility computing, including future significant transformation that no one even thinks is possible yet.  This ongoing radical change – this is your chosen profession.

Take the next step. 

Build your next web application on the Salesforce.com Force.com platform.  Start with a free developer account.  Do it in secret and only show someone when it’s done.

Move a server to Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2).  Start with the very next small project that someone wants to do but you’re worried is going to cost too much.  Publish the price difference to the rest of the business.

Do a cost comparison between what you’ve spent on Exchange and what your email would cost to run on Google Apps.  Now do that same comparison adding together your total email spend with your total Microsoft Office licensing cost.  Google Apps can replace some of it.  Launch a pilot.

Do it on your own or with help.  Do it because your business demands it.  Do it because you’re scared your competition is out innovating you.  Do it because you’re tired of worrying about backups and whether or a not a server is running.  Do it to grow the value your business delivers without growing headcount.

Whatever the reason, do it.  Do it today.
 

Follow ReidCarlberg on Twitter or contact him at rcarlberg@modelmetrics.com.

Hey Stumbleupon — welcome!  You might also enjoy "Import Your App from Excel".

Gmail experienced an outage in Europe overnight.  There’s some handwringing and frustration about it.  But you know what? I don’t care.  Here’s why.

1. The last significant Gmail outage looks to have been in August.  Four months ago.  My old email provider, which cost about $25,000 more per year than our enterprise Google account (which includes a whole lot more), used to “have some issues” (as we put it) about once every four weeks. 

2. Google’s Gmail ops team is working on this.   Correct that – they worked on it and it’s already fixed.  I didn’t have to do anything.  I didn’t have to submit a ticket.  I didn’t have to call.  I didn’t have wonder if anyone else was having the problem.  It’s fixed.

3. No matter what the problem was, I’m not going to have to go out and buy a new server or install a patch.  I’m not going to have to do anything other than wait a few minutes and try again.  Awesome.

4. No matter what the problem was, I’ll bet you $100 I didn’t lose any data and that you didn’t either.  The sum total cost of the problem was inconvenience.  Although that can feel significant, it’s so much better than incurring substantial actual real dollar costs.

So that’s it.  Gmail is back up and all that’s left to do is complain.  But I’m going to ignore the complainers on this one.  This is definitely no big deal.

I just wanted to share my Gmail transition experience over the past 24 hours. 

I was extremely resistant to switching to Gmail.  I’m one of the last in the company to do it.  I love folders, I love offline, I love exchange/outlook/entourage (EOE). But as a company, it just made sense to make the switch.  From a cost perspective, it’s significantly cheaper.  We’re also very much about eating our own dog food, which is cloud computing.  

So I made the switch yesterday.  I was not thrilled.  I asked our IT guy to forward Gmail to EOE, so I could continue to use EOE and my beloved folders as opposed to using online Gmail.  It was slow and wasn’t as great as standard EOE and I was definitely frustrated.  Online Gmail seemed confusing and cluttered and not that great and my standard folders were available there, but not in an ideal fashion, to the bottom on the left of the screen and requiring too many clicks to access. 

I asked the IT guy to sit down with me and try to help me out.  30 minutes later I’m loving this thing.  I’m using only online Gmail, in the way it’s supposed to be used.  EOE is officially turned off forever. 

Here’s what helped me change my thinking: 

• You can choose different markings to flag various types of emails.  Those are emails that are flagged do show up in a separate folder.  This is immensely helpful for me.  I had previously thought that there were no folders, so it would just be a mess of an inbox with a ton of emails and lots of flags that would take forever to sort through.  So I still get one folder instead of my usual four.  Within that folder though, the different flags are easy to manage and to differentiate between. 

• You can clean up the screen and remove clutter by clicking on edit labels on the left and by clicking on the Settings and Lab buttons on the upper right.  The Settings let you move stuff around.  The Lab feature (represented by the little green vial) is sort of like an appexchange where you can choose from a bunch of features. 

• By moving away from EOE and having Gmail forwarded there, you can truly leverage the good parts of Gmail, especially the archiving function and the search capability and the ability to see all emails that are replied to in one string (this is very cool).

• He turned on the Offline version for me, so I can use Gmail on a plane or whatever.  It looks exactly like standard Gmail, it’s not a separate app, you just happen to be offline. 

Anyway, I’m now done with EOE and it feels really good.  I’m done with bloated software sitting on my machine (read Microsoft).  I’m still getting used to everything, but day two I’m very happy.  If you are worried about switching to Gmail, please give it a try first with someone who’s done it, don’t just get frustrated and try to figure it out yourself.  

My two cents…

ac