Close this Advertisement

News

Minnesota Inks Deal With Microsoft on BPOS Services

The state of Minnesota has embraced Microsoft's Internet cloud services by agreeing to an application outsourcing deal.

Minnesota's Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) agreed to use Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) hosted services. BPOS will provide support for some of the state's collaboration and communications needs, including "e-mail, instant messaging, web-based collaboration and conferencing," according to a press release (PDF download) issued today by the OET.

The deal, which was established last week, will apply to "all executive branch agencies" in the state. However, other government agencies, educational institutions, cities and counties can participate if they wish, the OET's announcement explained.

One result of the switch will be an expansion of e-mail storage capacity for individual users of BPOS, from 100 MB to 5 GB. The state expects that the system's architecture, which connects Microsoft's BPOS services to Minnesota's network, will ensure data privacy too.

"In fact, the superior architecture of the applications and the state-of-the-art physical security of Microsoft's facility increases data security several fold, providing an instant upgrade to the State's security profile," said Gopal Khanna, Minnesota's state chief information officer, in a released statement.

Although Microsoft's BPOS server farms represent a shared network with multiple clients, the state contracted with Microsoft for dedicated hosting services "with no access by other Microsoft customers," Khanna explained in an interview. The OET has had a contract with Microsoft since 2009 to use Microsoft Exchange as its e-mail platform, he added.

Under the deal, the state will manage its communications network, but Microsoft will handle the hosted applications management and upgrades, which were a cost factor for the state, explained Tarek Tomes, OET's assistant commissioner. The financials associated with the deal were not announced.

Microsoft's BPOS services have gained a few government adherents. For instance, the city of Buda, Texas selected Microsoft's BPOS for e-mail services over bids by Google and other hosted service providers.

Microsoft and Google are currently contending over a possible hosted e-mail contract with the federal government's General Services Administration, according to a Microsoft blog post.

Microsoft previously lost out to Google in a bid to provide e-mail services to the city of Los Angeles. The city moved to replace an aging e-mail system largely based on Novell's GroupWise solution. However, the city's hosted e-mail deal with Google ran into trouble after Google failed to meet security requirements by the LAPD, it was reported in July.

Google explained in July that its Google Apps suite is now compliant with the Federal Information Security Management Act. Google created a "government cloud" called Google Apps for Government that separates calendar and e-mail data within the continental United States.

In August, Microsoft announced a Government Cloud Applications Center that's designed to connect government organizations with Microsoft's partners building applications for various needs. Those applications can be built based on BPOS hosted services or Windows Azure, which is Microsoft's cloud computing platform.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is online news editor for the 1105 Enterprise Computing Group.

Reader Comments:

Thu, Sep 30, 2010 Dave Mexifornia

Attention Microsoft... Game On! I used to go to bat for you at my company. You are now trying to eliminate my job after all I've done for you. You can count on me to recommend anyone else but you.

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 ibsteve2u Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Answered my own question, based upon LA's experience: (http://www.informationweek.com/cloud-computing/blog/archives/2009/10/four_possible_r.html): Microsoft probably is charging $15/month a user which you could compete with in-house, particularly if you dumped Microsoft and went OpenOffice running on Linux. Google, however, appears to charge around $4 a month...difficult to compete with. Let me see...since Minnesota has 32,861 (roughly) full and part time employees... Yeah, there is some money to be made. Besides the fact that Minnesota went for the most expensive email, I wonder if they're allowing Microsoft to bill for even part-time employees that aren't likely to even use email - let alone the collaboration features? Sometimes what people portray as significant savings are...something else. And before I quit messing up the layout of RedmondMag's website: Remember back before "somebody" decided everybody had to have access to the internet? Back before there were concerns about spam, and viruses, and trojans, and worms, and concerns about people viewing various versions of porn? Back when email could be dealt with via a couple of clustered Vaxes and some dumb terminals? Back when America's economy was in a lot better shape? Now, it is all changed...now, we get rid of jobs to include IT and not only permit those who are left to goof off, but provide them with the toys they need.

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 ibsteve2u Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Now I know "the cloud" is a scam.Further details of the announcement (from http://www.streetinsider.com/Dividends/State+of+Minnesota+Signs+Historic+Cloud+Computing+Agreement+With+Microsoft/5999056.html) includes this: '"The agreement keeps the service management of our critical communications tools in State hands but leaves the costly application management to Microsoft's experts. This strategic sourcing opportunity allows for a paradigm shift in how critical business collaboration services are rendered to our customers," said Tarek Tomes, OET Assistant Commissioner for customer and service management.' lollll...expensive application management? Once you purchase the application, it just SITS there; the "service" side - protecting the integrity and privacy of the data, adding and deleting users, and so on - is the expensive side. You've already got the network side in place - else the user base couldn't access Microsoft India (or Bangladesh, whichever), either. To replicate the functionality (sans the inflexible and stasis-bound nature of "the cloud" beast, of course) they've purchased as a permanent and doomed to escalate fee, you'd need a few clustered virtual servers for redundancy and failover, a few RAID arrays...wow. Wish these articles had included how much Minnesota is going to be paying; that might prove...amusing. Or a business opportunity, should Minnesota decide to elect Democrats who see value in employing local Minnesotans with their tax dollars.

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 ibsteve2u Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

The announcement on GovTech.com (http://www.govtech.com/enterprise-technology/Minnesota-Microsoft-Cloud-Collaboration.html) has a curious statement: "But, of course, the public sector has different privacy and security demands than private industry. In Minnesota, Khanna said, officials have spent the past two years developing cyber-security policies and procedures. The new agreement helps with the state’s security posture as BPOS applications will be delivered online through a direct connection to Minnesota’s secure network. No Microsoft employees can access it, Khanna said." I began my career in encrypted systems long ago...and to this day I find it unlikely that a remotely-located system can be maintained - let alone troubleshot - if nobody at the remote location "can access it". If you cannot access the data, you cannot answer the question: "How come when we put good, clean data in all we're getting out garbage?".

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 ibsteve2u Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Another question: Ya reckon that Ghopal Khanna, Minnesota's CIO hired by Pawlenty, will be going to work for Microsoft - perhaps offshore, at the other end of the BPOS wire - when he leaves in December? http://www.governor.state.mn.us/mediacenter/pressreleases/PROD010129.html Or maybe just setting up a competing company to underbid Microsoft once he gets a handle on the functionality of BPOS? The interesting thing, of course, is that this will undoubtedly result in IT jobs being cut in Minnesota. But hey - why does Minnesota need anybody with technical skills, anyway? Or anyplace else in America? Besides, this should do a fine job of finally eliminating the possibility of a state government worker leaking any politically...sensitive...emails to the press.

Wed, Sep 29, 2010 Russ California

Wow, maybe we should be all looking for work now that Microsoft is no longer a "partner", but a competitor. This is not good news as they will, most assuredly, manage all of this from out of country. This will potentially put their data at risk as well as their Minnesota workers out of work.

Add Your Comment Now:

Your Name:(optional)
Your Email:(optional)
Your Location:(optional)
Comment:
Please type the letters/numbers you see above