NOAA to Move Email to the Cloud
By
Joseph Marks
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will move its 25,000-user email system to the cloud-based Google Apps for Government by the end of the year at a cost of $11.5 million, the agency said in a statement Thursday.
NOAA will be the largest federal agency to move its email systems to the cloud so far, according to the statement. The cloud-based system should cost about half as much as developing an in-house system, the agency said.
Google Apps for Government is essentially a more secure version of the Web giant's free, Web-based systems, including gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs.
NOAA contracted with the vendor Earth Resources Technology to manage the move, the company said.
NOAA Chief Information Officer Joseph Klimavicz announced the contract at Google's Innovation in the Nation conference Thursday morning in Washington, Google said.