Google has been on the offensive trying to convince customers to move from Microsoft to it's cloud services. Over the year, we have heard many high profile switches and now the city of Boston is jumping ship (and taking its 20,000 users with it).
The city estimates that switching from Exchange to Google Gmail will save it $280,000 per year
It’s not just the gee whiz factor: It’s also a matter of money. It will cost Boston around $800,000 to move over to Gmail, Google Docs for word processing, and Google’s cloud service for storing documents. But by dropping some Microsoft products, the city government will save at least $280,000 a year.
Obviously Microsoft argues that Google isn't a solid competitor and that companies moving to Google may find the cloud environment limiting.
Report by the Boston Globe here.