NZ Post: why we chose Google over Microsoft

This morning, NZ Post announced a three-year deal that will see the SOE’s 2100 postal services staff (that is, all employees outside its Datamail and Kiwibank division) ditch Microsoft Office, Exchange and Outlook in favour of Google Apps Premiere, usually priced at $US50 per person per year.

NZ Post general manager of business enabling Tracey Voice (pictured) told NBR she expects the move to Google Apps will shave $2 million in hardware costs over its three-year term. Storing data in the cloud (or, more specifically, Google data centres in the US) means less hardware to upgrade, buy, cool or maintain.

Ms Voice says the recent expiration of the State Services Commission’s triennial all-of-government deal with Microsoft (which also covers SOEs) was a trigger for NZ Post to consider all of its options (read State Services Commission tells government agencies to dump Microsoft).

“We were absolutely part of that whole renegotiation steering group,” says Ms Voice. However, the SOE had already had trials underway with several cloud applications, including Google Apps’ rivals HyperOffice, Thinkfree and Zoho.

NZ Post did look at Microsoft’s forthcoming cloud platform Azure (and Amazon’s EC2), and Office 2010, due next year, which will include an iteration that runs inside a web browser.

But Ms Voice says Google had the product NZ Post wants today.

She was also drawn to Google Apps features, figuring they can yield a further $1 million saving by dint of productivity gains. While staff have document collaboration capability with today’s Microsoft products, Google Apps makes it easier to share a file, or for more than one person, in more than one place, to work on a document. Google Apps will also see NZ Post use IM and desktop video (again, also available in Microsoft iterations) for the first time.

Offshore is OK
One issue that’s been raised in the wake of NZ Post’s deal is whether there are any legal implications for a large NZ organisation to store its data overseas.

Chapman Tripp principal Justin Graham says most cases, the geographic location of data should not be an issue under the Privacy Act (particularly germane for NZ Post as it stages a nationwide "survey", using incentive prizes to lure householders into voluntarily revealing details that can be onsold to marketers), or the Public Records Act (which kicks into force next year and requires crown entities to store records for 25 years).

Rather, the issue is whether an organisation can quickly access records if required. All the obligations of each act still cover a New Zealand company with data stores on a Google server farm in the US (or anywhere), such as the Privacy Act’s provision for a person to be able request access to data held about them.

The same goes for the Official Information Act.

Mr Graham says most private companies, while outside the Public Records Act, want to keep data either for seven years (to stay in line with IRD guidelines) or 10 years (the maximum time period for back-dating most forms of legal action). Again, the key issue is how secure and accessible the data, not its geographic location. In a discovery process, you’ll still have to produce any documents in your “possession, power or control” be they on the desktop beside your keyboard, or a data centre in Dallas.

Ironically, Mr Graham says, complications are more likely to ensue if a company is a New Zealand subsidiary of an international concern, storing its data on its parent company's servers overseas in a traditional, non-cloud set-up.

Security fears
Another cloud fear is security, especially in the wake of the recent issue that saw documents from the company that owns social network Twitter “stolen” and leaked to blog site TechCrunch, which immediately published selected snippets.

“We’ve done a level of due diligence around the Google security model,” said NZ Post’s Tracey Voice. The process involved a legal team as well as IT.

Ms Voice was well aware of the Twitter incident, but told NBR that “The response Google presented to us is more than sufficient.” The Twitter “hack” - which revolved around swiped passwords - is, for Ms Voice, a non-issue: “It’s like any environment; any environment is open at some form to exposure. Google talked us through the Twitter incident”.

A Google spokeswoman told NBR today that "Twitter's Biz Stone said it best in his blog: This isn't about any flaw in web apps, it speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords." (The company has posted more on the issue on a house blog here.)

Great expectations
Fronde, the New Zealand agent for Google’s commercial products (as well as Amazon’s cloud platform, and SaaS granddaddy Salesforce.com), says NZ Post’s move from Microsoft products to Google Apps has broken the ice.

“It’s likely to give other large clients the confidence to make a decision in favour of Google’s cloud offerings,” Fronde chief executive Ian Clarke told NBR.

Fronde recently announced a turnaround result, moving back into the black on the back of a surge in cloud-based business.