The city of San Jose, the nation’s tenth largest city and the largest city in Northern California, is making the move to Microsoft’s Office 365. Along with the move to Microsoft’s subscription based productivity suite, San Jose will also begin to utilize Windows Azure and StorSimple to expand productivity for more than 5,000 city employees.
“We turned to Office 365 for secured cloud productivity, which in turn will help us lower our total cost of ownership and support a more mobile and connected workforce of the future. The combination of Windows Azure and StorSimple will enable us to streamline storage infrastructure support, which enables our people to make the shift from basic backend operations to citizen engagement and service delivery,” Vijay Sammeta stated. He is the chief information officer for the city of San Jose .
San Jose is making the move to Microsoft’s latest platforms after the move was approved by the City Council just last month. Employees for the city of San Jose can now have direct access to documents, email, and information via the cloud. This allows employees to do their job in a secured environment and not be restricted by location.
“San Jose employees will have constant and consistent access to documents, email and information through the cloud, enabling them to do their job in a secured environment not restricted by their location. In addition, employees also will be able to collaborate with each other in real time, improving efficiency and productivity, which will ultimately benefit the community at large,” Sammeta stated.
With Windows Azure and StorSimple, San Jose can see a major reduction in total costs for more than 70TB of data, one cloud solution across the city, integration of cloud storage with local storage infrastructure, easier processes for backup, restores and disaster recovery, and minimal staff time required for backup and offsite cloud storage.
Here’s a bit of a kicker too. Microsoft also revealed that Santa Clara County, California, as also jumped on board the company’s cloud offerings. Google, the primary competitor to Microsoft’s Office 365, has its headquarters located in Santa Clara County. Score another victory for Microsoft!
The transition will begin soon and take roughly six months to complete. Had your organization made the move to Office 365 or Windows Azure?
