SADA Systems is now a federally certified Google Apps reseller and service provider!

To commemorate the upcoming anniversary of the birth of our country, we would like to officially announce that SADA Systems has been awarded a Multiple Award Schedule 70 contract with the General Services Administration (GS-35F-0460X)! This GSA contract certifies SADA Systems as a trusted provider of information technology services and allows government agencies with access to the GSA Schedule Contract program to contract directly with SADA for a variety of Google Apps related products such as Google Apps, Postini, and related services.

To celebrate the upcoming 4th of July holiday, let us showcase some of our past Google Apps government projects:

• Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks - SADA Systems helped this large government research and administrative agency with several remote offices and Field employees implement and manage the change to Google Apps.
• The City of Los Angeles - SADA handled the Google Apps SSO implementation and Google Apps product training for the nation’s 2nd largest city.
• Multnomah County, Oregon - The site of this years National Association of Counties (NACo) 2011 Annual Conference (don’t forget to visit the Google + SADA co-sponsored booth for goodies and 1-on-1 face time with Google Apps experts!). Multnomah is Oregon’s most populous county and SADA provided comprehensive Google Apps support services to help them go Google!
• Kent State University - Public schools and universities like Kent State can benefit from SADA’s Google Apps services. SADA assisted Kent State with a custom opt-in service and mailbox migration for over 120,000 students and faculty.

SADA’s GSA certification provides government agencies with the necessary confidence and reassurance to engage SADA for various IT solutions and services. SADA Systems’ GSA Certification is a direct result of the GSA’s evaluation and approval of SADA’s professional capabilities, performance history, and customer satisfaction.

"With over 12 million products and more than 18,000 vendors doing business through the GSA, SADA is delighted to add to the unique collection of pre-qualified vendors," says SADA Systems CEO Tony Safoian. "It will now be easier than ever for the Federal Government, and all State and Local Government agencies who can utilize our GSA Contract to procure products and services from SADA."

Read more about SADA’s GSA Award.

SADA & Google Apps Success Story: Kansas State Department of Wildlife and Parks

SADA Systems assists state department of wildlife and parks with a Google Apps workaround to comply with strict federal IT guidelines that limited storage to U.S. only data centers.

Customer
The Kansas State Department of Wildlife and Parks oversees more than 30 state parks, nature preserves, and fishing lakes and employs roughly 420 employees in five divisions: Executive Services, Administrative Services, Fisheries and Wildlife, Law Enforcement, and Parks.

Challenge
Before SADA, Kansas State Wildlife had already been a Google Apps customer for a few months and loved the collaboration and communication capabilities. This forward thinking organization was preparing to migrate all of its email users to Google Apps, but ran into a slight hiccup--due to government regulations, Kansas State Wildlife is required to maintain its email storage strictly on U.S. premises. Gmail is stored in hyper secure databases all over the world so the goal was to find a way to limit the organization’s email storage to only route to U.S. data centers. With the help of SADA Systems, the department was able to fine tune a solution.

Solution
After identifying the organization’s specific needs and comprehensively evaluating government regulations for email storage, SADA developed a viable workaround that ensured complete compliance with aforementioned security policies.

1. SADA migrated data from existing Google Apps and legacy email accounts to a secure SADA test domain.
2. Google deleted all data & mailboxes.
3. Google set up the Kansas State Wildlife accounts so emails would be stored in the U.S. only.
4. Afterwards, SADA enables user provisioning and completes the Google Apps email migration.

But what happened to emails sent to users during the migration when Gmail was essentially turned off? SADA modified Google Message Security, powered by Postini, to quarantine and hold all messages sent to Kansas State Wildlife during the migration period. Once the email migration was complete, SADA released all quarantined emails. Because the timestamp was retained, users were able to see each message in the order they were received.

Result
With the help of SADA’s thoroughness and knowledge of the Google Apps suite capabilities, Kansas State Wildlife was able to retain the Google Apps communication and collaboration tools it had come to love.

About Google Apps Partner SADA Systems
SADA Systems, Inc. (http://www.sadasystems.com) is a privately held information technology consulting, outsourcing, and development firm founded in 2000. SADA started as a Google partner for its search technology, and is proud to be one of the world's first 10 Google Apps partner, having participated in the Google Apps official launch campaign in February of 2007. SADA is highly experienced in Google Apps migration, implementation and deployment for the enterprise, education, non profit and government sector.

SADA & Google Apps Success Story: Lyon County, Nevada

SADA Systems helps one of Nevada's largest counties transition their systems to the cloud (while adhering to strict government IT policies).

Customer
Named after Civil War General Nathaniel Lyon, Lyon County is one of the nine original counties in Nevada founded in 1861. Complete with a rich history and beautiful landscape, Lyon County has always been at the forefront for new technologies.

Challenge
The good people at Lyon County, Nevada had been curious about the collaborative powers of Google Apps for a while. Their current system at the time could not keep up with the county’s growing calendaring needs. While Lyon County had considered upgrading its outdated email system, the staff was bound to its legacy email system due to heavy calendar usage and fear of potential IT and end-user downtime.

Although staff was acutely aware of the limited nature of the current email system, many members of the staff were quite accustomed to the UI and experience. The IT department needed to ensure that the Google Apps learning curve was as low as possible to ensure efficiency throughout the bustling county office. SADA’s goal was to implement a seamless transition from legacy email system with trained Google Apps Champions leading the way.

Solution
Lyon County engaged experienced Google Apps Partner SADA Systems to migrate, deploy and train over 300 users. SADA completed the calendar sync, global address book and email migration over a weekend which resulted in a seamless user experience for staff the following work week.

With Google Apps successfully deployed, SADA set off to train Google Champions. Driven by the old proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” SADA provided in-depth webinar training for over 50 staff members from various departments within Lyon County to curtail dependency on the already overwhelmed IT department. End-users and was also given training material, webinar templates and a Google Site customized to Lyon County’s training needs and requirements. Within hours, Lyon County had fully trained Google Champions ready to go on Google Docs, Gmail, Calendar usage and more.

Hazen Adams, IT Director at Lyon County, comments that the “training was awesome.” He also adds that “We moved to Google Apps this summer and were anticipating big problems with the migration. But everything went really well, SADA really came through... I think the thing i am most impressed with was the support always available and willing to help.”

Result
SADA’s migration expertise and savvy Google Apps trainers enabled Lyon County to achieve a sense of IT autonomy and provided staff with the means to hit the ground running after deployment. As a Google Referred Partner for Google Apps Training, SADA

While Lyon County was SADA’s first small government customer, they were certainly not the only. SADA’s experience in migrating various government agencies and deep understanding of the needs of the public sector helped to streamline Lyon County’s transition to Google Apps.

“We moved to Google Apps this summer and were anticipating big problems with the migration. But everything went really well, SADA really came through.”
- Hazen Adams, IT Director, Lyon County, NV

About Google Apps Partner SADA Systems
SADA Systems, Inc. (http://www.sadasystems.com) is a privately held information technology consulting, outsourcing, and development firm founded in 2000. SADA started as a Google partner for its search technology, and is proud to be one of the world's first 10 Google Apps partner, having participated in the Google Apps official launch campaign in February of 2007. SADA is highly experienced in Google Apps migration, implementation and deployment for the enterprise, education, non profit and government sector.

The Impact of Google Apps for Government

Google released a new edition of Google Apps designed specifically with security measures to handle the policy and data needs of the public sector. Google Apps for Government offers the first cloud computing applications suite accredited by the U.S. Government and certified by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) delivering confidence to all government departments, agencies and organizations looking to migrate to the cloud.

This marks a monumental day not only for Google Apps as a platform, but for all of cloud computing. We believe this accomplishment is going to pave the way for other cloud providers to bring to market similar offerings. From our experience working with various government customers, we know how demanding their security and data requirements can be once they decide on Google Apps implementation. Therefore, we feel if platforms like Google Apps become well adopted by government, all other organizations will feel even more confident about the security and validity of the cloud at large.

SADA Systems has been assisting various levels of government and public education customers in Google Apps migration and the Google Apps for Government announcement will certainly foster confidence and interest in cloud technology migration.