Colorado is all set to shift its email and calendars for 26,000 state Executive Branch employees to Google’s cloud service, which is expected to immediately cut costs by more than 38 percent. Following Wyoming and Utah, Colorado will be the third state to make the move to Google cloud, which will bring fifteen siloed and disparate email systems into one unified communications platform. The state currently pays $5.2 million annually to maintain email and calendars for state employees. It forecasts spending about $3.2 million annually at first after switching to Google Apps for Government, with the costs of the technology projected to decline over time. Besides cutting the cost of maintaining current email system, the switch will give state employees chat and videoconferencing functions for the first time thus allowing employees across departments to find co-workers and communicate more effectively with one another. The state believed that by giving employees modern collaboration tools and better mobile access will help them deliver better services to citizen. However, email addresses for the majority of state employees will stay the same. Some departments with unusual or clunky addresses will be changed to make communication easier. Before getting into the agreement with Google, the security controls in use were reviewed by the State’s OIT to comply with or exceed state standards. The agreement also says that the departments can use Google’s suite of business software — including Google Docs and spreadsheets — which could reduce the money the state spends buying licenses for office software. It is obvious that state couldn’t accomplish such efficiency and versatility using its own systems because it regularly had to take down networks to install software patches. Parts of the state’s system go down each month simply because of their age.