Friday, October 29, 2010

Virgin American Heads Into The Cloud With Gmail

Computerworld - Ravi Simhambhatla, CIO of Virgin America One airline is drifting in to the clouded cover to use its new e-mail system.

Virgin America, a low-cost airline with about 1,700 employees, is in the routine of switching from the renouned Microsoft ( MSFT ) Exchange messaging network to Google's cloud-based Gmail service. Airline officials say the emigration project, that was proposed this week and should be finished in about two weeks, is approaching save Virgin America hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Gmail's New Priority Inbox Gets You Organized

In short, Virgin America is seeking to Google ( GOOG ) Apps to save the firm money, time and profitable human IT resources.

"Very simply put, you are a low-cost conduit and you must be really sensible about where you put our hard-earned money," mentioned Ravi Simhambhatla, CIO of Burlingame, Calif.-based Virgin America, "The immeasurable most of our investment should return in to our product to keep customers constant and to bring in new guests. Looking at normal IT, you didn't wish to take on things similar to e-mail."

Simhambhatla remarkable that the firm runs Exchange 2003 and was seeking at having to ascent to Exchange 2007. He mentioned he was dreading the responsibility and con of such an upgrade.

Since Virgin America proposed running Microsoft Exchange in 2005, the firm has had two network administrators spending 60% to 65% of their time "managing and massaging" the e-mail system. On tip of that, the company's e-mail takes up 9.8 terabytes of its storage ability in addition to other 9.8 terabytes to safely counterpart that data.

The cost of running Exchange, inclusive chartering and storage, cost Virgin America about $160,000 a year before soothing expenses similar to the most of two network administrators' time, the firm said. And the ascent to Exchange 2007 was seeking increase significantly to the costs.

Simhambhatla remarkable that upgrading to the new chronicle of exchenge would require adding a dedicated network administrator, along with new servers and storage capacity. The firm estimated the bill is to ascent would be about $660,000.

The high ascent cost stirred Simhambhatla to start seeking at Google's clouded cover solution.

According to the CIO, migrating to Google Gmail will cost the firm $330,000 or half the cost of upgrading to Exchange 2007. And the annual cost of Gmail is distributed to be about $100,000 to $110,000., up to $60,000 reduction than Exchange, he added.

"Ours is a really young firm and the immeasurable most of teammates are already closely aware with Google's Gmail, so practice them is roughly a indecisive point," mentioned Simhambhatla, who did note that the firm has scheduled practice sessions for Google Calendar and other new hosted apps. Google moreover has sent a few of its employees to assorted airports and offices to help any Virgin America employees who need it.

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