Mountain View, California — In an attempt to expand its presence in governmental places, search engine titan Google Inc., on Monday unveiled plans to sell special Internet-hosted Google Apps platform specifically for federal, state, and local governments, with beefed-up security for sensitive information, as the Internet search leader seeks to outmaneuver rivals in the race to provide federal and state agencies with new technology.
The Mountain View, California-based Web giant said the latest version of Google applications, or apps, its cloud-based productivity software that is especially created to meet rigorous U.S. government security requirements, and has received US government certification under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
Google said it was the first company to promote its suite of Google Apps for Government that includes email, calendaring and other “web-based” software products, as an effortless option for the public sector to save money by not paying upfront licensing fees or operational maintenance expenses, since Google can make fixes to the software anytime.
Moreover to the FISMA prerequisite, Google said the special government-version of the software will store all email and calendar information on servers hosted within the continental United States. And the servers hosting government data will be physically separated from servers used for corporate customers.
Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, addressing a press meeting Monday said that the authentication will give government agencies the green light that they need to adopt Google’s online software.
“We have a igneous product, what we are doing is knocking down barriers to adoption,” said Schmidt, noting demand among government agencies for Google’s cloud-based software is “enormous.”
Google program manager Kripa Krishnan described “Google Apps for Government” as the first “cloud,” or Web-based service to receive the FISMA authorization, which defines specific public sector policy and security requirements.
“This suggests that government agencies can adopt the cloud with confidence,” Krishnan said in a blog post.
The announcement came shortly after Google received authentication that its online services met certain security requirements, approximately around a dozen federal agencies are already trying out Google’s new government-grade version of the software, Google said, and the company expects the product to appeal to state and local governments as well.
The latest version of Google Apps has been unfolded as the company continues to work with Los Angeles officials to address security concerns relating to an existing contract to provide city employees with Web-based software. Google said it was working with the city to address its evolving security and functionality requirements.
The move would not inevitably make the data more secure than it is for other users, Google executives said, but it accommodates the preferences of some federal agencies that are migrating to so-called “cloud computing” offerings and away from applications run on government servers. The Obama administration is pushing the shift to cut some of the federal government’s $76 billion annual computing and software budget.
The Google Apps for Government will offer the same catalog of Web-based products that Google has offered to corporate customers for several years and will be charged the same amount as Google charges for businesses: $50 per user, per year. The number and type of Google apps that is offered is also the same as its business suite, including Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Video, Groups, and the Postini suite.
“As we all are aware that the U.S financial pressures are enormous and this is a material cost savings,” said Schmidt, at a press meeting on Monday. “In every case this is a material cost savings.”
Currently, Google claims that every department of the president’s Cabinet uses Google Apps in some form. Google mentioned that a number of state and federal agencies, including the City of Canton, Ohio; the City of Panama City; Berkeley National Laboratories; and InRelief.org, which is operated by the U.S. Navy.
John Conley, the executive administrator of the “Statewide Internet Portal Authority” (SIPA) for the state of Colorado, cited that Larimer County has agreed to employ the latest Google Apps for Government platform, and mentioned that the county would conserve $500,000 per year by adopting the service.
For years, government agencies had been necessitated to purchase licensed software with the need to upgrade their products over time, Schmidt said. Placing those apps on the Web, with built-in support and security, offers cloud companies like Google a “jump ball” to enter that space, he said.
Microsoft, whose packaged software dominates the government information-technology market, says in response to the threat of cloud-based products from Google, that it is close to receiving the same certification for online software that is based on its popular Microsoft Exchange email system.
Google is also exploring the possibility to eventually announce a product for foreign governments as well, executives said.