Malaysia moving 10 Million to Google Apps for Education

Now this is a big deployment, Malaysia is rolling out Google App for Education to 10,000,000.

I talk to individuals at large and small organizations about Cloud Computing on a daily basis. I know it's important to be diplomatic about all their options but that doesn't mean it's always easy. Personally I'm heavily biased towards Google Apps. I spent nearly 10 years helping businesses and schools get the most out of their investments in Microsoft. As I learned more about Cloud Computing in general and Google Apps specifically I knew the world was changing and changing fast, and this was before the iPad even came out!

You couldn't roll out any version of Microsoft's messaging and collaboration suite to 10 million if you wanted to. Microsoft had a cute story about Texas selecting Office 365 for 100,000; I can almost guarantee that project will never be finished and I'd wager Malaysia easily completes their deployment first. Regarding Texas, I would also venture the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA) increased with the decision and they'll be sending more tax dollars to Redmond as a result. I digress. Back to Malaysia.

How in the hell can you roll out Google Apps to 10,000,000 people?

It's actually relatively easy compared to traditional IT projects. Google Apps run on the same global, multi-tenant architecture as the famous Google search engine. Yes, you have some set up relative to the search engine but Google Apps is already global.  It's already scaled, it's already mobile, it's already secure, it's already redundant, it's already backed up, it's already device agnostic, it's already available; it's ready to go. Malaysia just had to make the decision.