Local servers that were outdated infrastructure
Organizations such as the Government of Jalisco, which base their email servers on on-premise infrastructure, commonly begin to suffer from storage space limit problems. The Government of Jalisco has not been the exception. Thus, the determining factor for the adoption of G Suite, Google's communication and communication platform hosted 100% in the cloud, was email. Before migrating to G Suite, the Government had Zimbra as an email provider, which was managed locally. Of all users, less than half used the organization's own email domain. This is basically for two reasons. On the one hand, the email addresses of members of the Government constantly ended up on blacklists: that is, an email was sent and it ended up on the recipients' spam lists. This problem led members of the Government to begin using personal emails (for example, with the domain @gmail.com) to communicate with other users outside the organization. On the other hand, the availability of the service was not the best: the administration of the mail and the server was supported entirely by the Government's IT team, which reduced efforts in core functions of the organization.
When considering abandoning Zimbra, G Suite was the best alternative due to its reliability and support from Google. Although the “trigger” of the change was access to a better email platform, the Government of Jalisco found in Xertica the technological partner that enabled the organization to use communication and collaboration tools (through office automation). of documents, spreadsheets and presentations) that included G Suite.
An adoption in the making
As for adoption, it was not complicated since, since there were many Gmail users in the organization, it was not necessary to go through a long learning curve. From the initial phase, staff began using Calendar to schedule meetings and Google Drive for file storage. Octavio González, Director of Infrastructure and Communications, points out that, although the youngest personnel (called advanced users) were the ones who adopted the platform most quickly and easily, many collaborators who had not had any exposure to the technology successfully adopted the G Suite tools: “There was a man who, at 70 years old, did print advertising, but he had never even used Paint. They gave him the file on a USB and he went to the printing presses to print the billboards. After the training sessions led by Xertica, he learned how to make web pages with Google Sites.”
“We have saved storage space on the servers because more and more users upload their files to the cloud. We have realized that today people are more organized when calling meetings because they are using email and Calendar in good synchronization. People are using cell phone notifications for G Suite,” highlights González. He also adds: “We have saved on maintenance procedures because we always have the support of Xertica and Google. Accounting and Logistics: we teach them Sheets. The legal areas benefited from the use of Docs because all the lawyers wrote the same document and did not have to pass the versions one by one, but rather had live control of changes.”
Future perspectives
Finally, Eliseo Zúñiga, General Director of Information Technologies, concludes with his perspective on how work dynamics will change in the post-coronavirus era: “We have had to reach this point for some areas and some companies to realize that The technological part is crucial in the face of crises (not only pandemics, but also other outages). We are discovering that there are people who can do their work equally or better remotely. This will lead to the teleworking law – which already exists and is regulated – beginning to be complied with.” To this he adds how the adoption of teleworking will bring a better quality of life and work environment: “These cloud issues are going to save us space. For example, there will be fewer paper warehouses as a result of digitizing many more documents. Thus, we will have more spaces for people: maternity rooms, recreation and leisure, larger rooms and auditoriums. I am sure that the private sector is going to do it, we want this to also become widespread in the public sector.”
