The City of Boston have moved to Google away from Microsoft following a review of services based on cost and capabilities.

The decision will see all public service employees including, emergency services, education and transport staff move away from using Microsoft Exchange to using Google Apps.

Google was chosen based on the view that past Microsoft services had taken a high level of resources to maintain and took too much time, while Google offered a 99.9 per cent uptime guarantee on email services.

“Our new unified, cloud-based communication system is pretty big change from our old set-up. Our agencies worked together to manage their mail environments, with resources focused on mail administration and working across the group structures”, said Boston’s CIO Bill Oates.

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