if you folks can hang on the phone -- >> people listening on conference calls, mute. [inaudible] >> this contract, we're going to be paying microsoft right around $1.2 million a year for all 23,000 users in the city. that pencils out to approximately $6.50 per month per user. that is significant -- a significant savings to the city. as a matter of fact, was one of the key ways that the department of technology was able to achieve its 20% budget reduction target for this fiscal year which was directed from the mayor's office. so the importance, i think, one things i like to stress about cost, there's two things. one, the city's currently operating seven email systems across the city. so there's -- as the gentleman from i.d.c. mentioned, there's

hardware, software, infrastructure, to run multiple email systems and staffs associated with managing all the systems. additionally, not only are we saving money by going to the new system, we're actually really gaining significant capabilities. we are, again, leapfrogging to a newer version of the technology that much more easily integrated into where we're going from a technology vision for the future and frankly the thing i see as the c.i.o. for the city that we're really cognizant of it creates disaster resilient solution to a challenge we face in the city that's not easy to address. typically in cities we are able to budget for maintaining the system we have from the premise-based system but the disaster solution for systems tends to be not as up to date or as disaster ready as we like. by going to a cloud-based solution like the online

exchange solution, even if we have a large disaster in san francisco, we like to know that our emails are protected, our data is protected, that our users will be able to access and continue to use email at anywhere in the world at anytime which we think is a significant improvement to the public how we can respond before, during and after a disaster. we see email as one of the key systems that's really critical to providing really good public service. on the phone, questions? >> hi. this is sharon from "the seattle times." can you hear me? >> we can. >> thank you for taking my question. i was wondering if san francisco considered google in its r.s.p. process and if it did why did it choose microsoft over google? >> sure. we actually considered lote us. -- lotus. we looked at google and the

exchange solutions. we had our architecture group which is made up of c.i.o.'s around the city, look at all three solutions and went through a several-year process considering the technologies that underline each of the solutions, the benefits to the city and at the end of the conversation it was unanimous between all of the c.i.o.'s during the city that the exchange platform that the city wanted to adopt for a lot of reasons. one of the things i wanted to stress the most for us making the decision is we have a strategic vision for the city of where we want to be over the next five years. and the exchange solution for us sit very well and where we are going in terms of our office products, what we like to use for microsoft word and excel and powerpoint. we have a robust share environment in the city where a lot of departments have adopted and starting to use share point. we are starting to rapidly

deploy applications now on platform, starting to use that. so as we come down to an email solution it wasn't a point decision whether we -- i think the city is taking into consideration the fact is it was an email solution that had to be complementary to all of the other objectives we were trying to achieve in the city. i think at the end of the day, all things being considered, that was the thing that really made the decision for exchange the right decision for our city is that we really see it as the best fit technologically of where we're going over the next five years. >> ok. thank you. >> sure. [inaudible] >> other questions from folks on the phone or the audience? >> this is nancy. i was just wondering, you know, microsoft had a couple of

outages last week with the hosted exchange server. i was wondering if you have concerns in that regard in terms of reliability? >> sure. in case you didn't hear that really well, the question was -- do we have concerns about the recent outage that microsoft on its website about the online service? of course we do. our job is to provide email service to our customers in the city and have a high reliability. the reality for us is email outages, unfortunately, are not something that hasn't happened to us before. this isn't the first email outage the city has experienced in the past. i've been here for three years now. we actually see what happened last week, the microsoft outage, is demonstrating why we made the right decision.

we were able to have a single point of contact. microsoft kept us up to speed on what was causing the email delays. we were in close contact with them. we lost no messages. grant it, there were some delivery problems for a while. when the issues were resolved and when we started receiving email again, it only impacted us for about four hours. again, since nothing was lost, it was perceived as a delay by our users. there was a single message we could provide out to our users at the system at the time. in the past when we had outages it was a complex problem to solve. you had seven systems. if the outage happened in the evening you were calling workers back in. with a microsoft solution they're available to us 24/7 to us to answer all our questions. obviously they are proactive in addressing the issue. because i come from the private sector in a previous life and now work in the public sector, the central i.t. department that our customers expressed

concern, we come fought central i.t. department for service and yet we want a service level agreement. we want to know what we're getting for our money. this is something working with microsoft, we have a service level agreement. we did realize an interruption in service and now we're working with microsoft to see service credits at that time. for us that closed the loops on what customers exact. they expect good service. they expect some type of resolution at the end of it how to prevent it from happening in the future and some type of benefit from the service impact. i'm not sure -- >> this is gail from microsoft. i just want to thank you for our comments and echo this is something we take very seriously as a provision of service to both enterprise and government customers. we responded very quickly and, again, i think the issue with microsoft is you are working with a trusted partner in the enterprise space and ensuring

that we respond quickly and we have, you know, as you mentioned, 24/7 support to proactively communicate about these issues and then take corrective measures, you know, to respond. so we're working in partnership and will be there to support san francisco and, again, in this partnership going forward. >> hi. can you guys hear me? >> we can. >> ok. hi. thanks for taking my question. i have a quick question. actually, i have a couple of questions. what -- you're paying microsoft. this will be hosted in microsoft's data centers? >> correct. it will be hosted in microsoft's data questions. you mentioned the i. -- the press released a host exchange online. i wonder what kind of aspects we'll be using and how that

will work? >> sure. i can talk about a little bit and then microsoft can talk about their strategic -- when we signed the contract for the city, it was initially envisioned that we would have a replacement for our existing email system so this initial contract is really for email services and arkifing the services. -- archiving the services which we're paying microsoft. the benefit we see working with microsoft is that we have the option in the future to start looking at additional consolidation opportunities like share point, like instant messaging. like video conferencing and other things that we're very interested in the city that we haven't yet deployed but this creates for us the foundation, the core of the system that we could expand in the future when we get done with the email migration to provide enhanced services to our users. >> exactly. we're starting with the effort that john described in terms of the modernization and consolidation with email and

progressing that to the cloud and over time we have the opportunity to consider additional areas of cloud provisioning as well. certainly that's been one of the key areas with many of our kansas mers in state and local -- customers in state and local government of what is the breath and depth of the technology vendors and technology partners that they're looking to partner with? and certainly not having only software provision as a service but also infrastructure as a service and platform as a service with offerings like cloud that represents breath and depth in terms of the technology offerings to look and explore many other ways of innovation with the city here in terms of what other things they could look to take to the cloud as well in the future. >> great. >> this is david from "the los angeles times." i was wondering if the san francisco police department and other law enforcement-related agencies will be moving to this

system. >> we've been in discussions with them. we went through two rounds of requirement analysis. right now the system as we see it meets the requirements. however, we still have some conversations we're having about specific security requirements. we're working with them and microsoft on that. again, i'd like to stress, though, that's one of the reasons why we went with the solution because it provides us ogs options and we had conversations with other municipalities to take in their public safety groups to the exchange platform. and we think at the end of the project we'll either be able to, a, host them in the cloud, which is the goal of the project, or for some unforeseen reason -- can you continue to provide them email services

that is integrated with our cloud clients. again, it's more than just a single point solution. it's a strategy for us. a lot of those public sector clients have either not had email or have been on an old notes system that hasn't met their requirements very well. by going to the new system they'll be able to move to this new system orwell' be able to provide them with an alternative that meets all their needs if they have concerns about it. we're pleased with the technology system. >> do you have a sense of the timeline if those agencies will move over? >> sure. it's a 12-month project plan. to be frank, we started with the easy departments first. we want early successes in the project so we're started with departments that are smaller departments, that have not had email support in the past or have had very limited email support. we put the public safety agencies toward the end of the project as we want to

demonstrate a track record of success. we want to take the right amount of time to meet with them and address their concerns for working in partnership with federal agencies and the state agencies to do that. so right now the project plan is a 12-month project plan. >> hi. this is jeff schwartz with "residence magazine." i want to ask two questions. one if the goal is to move off of 365 and if the workers will be using the web client for email? >> so your two questions then. the office 365 is a good question. we are standardized on microsoft office as a project -- as a product on our desk top. we're a large user citywide of microsoft word and excel and power point and access. i think, again, in terms of where we're going strategically with this project, i think we are certainly interested in 365 because we have budget

challenges here in the city. i think it will come down to a conversation about cost. is it more cost-effective to take advantage of 365 online versus desk top approach? we're in conversations with microsoft about a desk top enterprise agreement for the desk top products. we'll be able to determine from a functionality and a cost point if 365 is a good fit for all of our users or a portion of our users. that's our strategy on 365 is seeing as we roll out email if it makes sense to us operationally. and then you had another part to your question. >> are you going to be -- will most of your workers be using native outlook? i assume if they will be on desk top. or will they be using a web client for email sm >> we encourage them to see what's best for them. we have lightweight users that use email infrequently and

sharing computers and they will be using the web online. and then there are power user. we think the client is better solution for them. the thing that most people are excited about is felting emails on their phones. -- is getting emails on their phones. everyone has ipads and iphones and every other device known to man. so the integration between the new email system and all the multiple mobile devices our users use has really been a benefit. any more questions or are we -- >> john moore with g.c.n. i was wondering, were all of the onpremise email servers, was a mixed? i missed the third vendor that

you evaluated. it was microsoft, google and -- >> lotus notes. >> notes. ok. >> so the mix is we have about 15,000 users using lotus notes on two different lotus notes system and the other approximate users are spread across five different exchange across the city. >> how many people are using the new hosted service right now justice >> we have over 300 and it's been well received. one more from the audience.

[inaudible] >> well, i wouldn't credit it to the situation exactly. i know there are stories even last night about restitution settlements and things like that with regard to terry child. i say securities are very important when you look at any type of solution. and the challenge we face as a government i.t. work force is frankly because of budget reductions and the strain of the economy we're facing a reduced work force year after year. we see our work force shrink in the city and understandably the expectations we provide, robust, security systems is one our customers expect were us. i think when we look at implementing large-scale enterprise-type systems, one thing we always take into consideration is security. so when we looked at the microsoft solution, that

actually became a very important topic that we went over in a lot of detail. there were a lot of meetings between my chief security officer and the microsoft security team. we were extremely impressed with the microsoft security solution as it related with the certifications they have and the fact they have clients if not as high or higher security requirements than the city does. it gives us a level of comfort that it gives us with solutions that we can rely on a security standpoint. again, back to the partnership, i know the outage is seen as a negative thing. we know we have a partner when we need to deal with security incidents, when we have questions about security, we have a trusted partner that has a record of being proactive and we can rely on them to work with us. >>t's designed from the ground up with security and privacy needs of our customers. as john mentioned, we're provisioning for, you know,

health organizations, financial organizations. you know, i think of glaxosmithkline and jpmorgan chase and those that have stringent security issues. again, microsoft has programs in terms of the government security program where we proactively share security information with our governments around the united states here. so it is paramount to us. it's a piller of our organization in terms of a poor competency, of all of design of our products. and we have decades of experience of helping customers around the globe with the highest needs of security and privacy. >> ok. back to the phones, then. more questions. >> hi. is this going to allow to you

reduce head count with i.t.? >> it will allow us to have better service given the fact that our head count is recusing in the city. san francisco, i'm sure like seattle and other cities, experiences a head count reduction every fiscal year that i've been here for the three years i've been here. i haven't associated any head count to this project. really what we're trying to do is continuing to provide good, if not better services than we provided before. given the fact we had fewer staff every year to do it. so, again, the department of technology, i'm happy to say this year we've met our 20% reduction target from the mayor's office without proposing a single position reduction. so from our standpoint the budget challenge can be met in several different ways. met in reduction of employee head count to personnel costs and also met through reducing operating costs, licensing

agreements, hardware costs. and what in talking about i.d.c., from my perspective, my employees are my most valuable asset i have in my department and i'm reluctant to reduce them when i have other opportunities to reduce money and improve service. we improved the service, we saved the city money and preserved what i think is the core of a good i.t. work force here in the city at the same time. >> and if i may add more broadly from the microsoft perspective. typically what we see is the opportunity to redeploy those resources to work on what i call the higher order mission of government which is about better servicing citizens in terms of working on line of business solutions where those core competencies really come from government, right? to be able to offload some of the delivery and storage elements associated with email in this case, now government employees can focus on some of the higher order mission line of business solutions that are really going to benefit

citizens in the city. >> thank you. >> more questions or are we at the end of the question period? we've worn everyone out with the questions. all right. well, we want to thank everybody today. i know you've taken your valuable time. if you have any more questions, feel free to get in touch with us. i know gail and i and the other folks are available to talk about any other questions you have in more detail. so, again, thank you for your time and thank you all for coming today. >> thank you, everyone.

>> i want to thank all of you for coming this afternoon. this is one of our favorite events. this is the mayor's principal of the year award. we're here to recognize and honor three outstanding princi pals from the san francisco unified school district. [applause] before we honor them, we are all going to be honored because of the amazing kids from our school district. first i want to introduce the choral director of the group who will introduce the kids. [applause] >> good morning. good morning to our wonderful mayor, the superintendent of schools, our wonderful honorees,

wonderful parents. i am from mckinley elementary school. we have brought the second grade to perform two songs for you in honor of the wonderful honorees. because you are somebody, we are somebody. then we're going to do a song for the mayor, "side-by-side." we also thank the wonderful hydra menendez for inviting us today. let's have a big hand for the mckinley elementary school choir. [applause] they are being led by second grade teacher miss yang, miss vantia, miss bryant, and miss

petrokie. i think our principal is in here somewhere. ok. there is our principal, rosa

song. there she is. [applause] all right. we are ready. ♪ [piano playing] ♪ [piano playing]

[piano music playing]