Longview was founded in the early 1870’s when Southern Pacific Railroad extended its track from Marshall, TX. westward into Gregg County. Today, Longview is the county seat of Gregg County and is located on the U.S. Interstate 20 and U.S. Highway 80 corridor that stretches from Dallas-Fort Worth through Shreveport-Bossier City, La., Dallas lies 125 miles west of Longview, and Shreveport is 60 miles east. Longview is proud to be the hub of East Texas outdoor recreation and leisure travel, and is famous for its fabulous festivals, fine dining and historic downtown.
We met Justin Cure about a year ago at the First Annual Tyler Technology Expo during our breakout on cloud based email. Justin is the Information Services Manager for City of Longview. He approached us with concerns over his aging Groupwise environment. After some discussion on fit, he invited Cima out to discuss Google Apps for Government with both his IT staff and leaders from various city departments. We reviewed the the features resident in Google Apps for Government, compared them to many of the challenges the city was dealing with. Quickly there was realization that not only would the features including email and beyond would simplify life for many departments, but they would also reduce costs even with initial investment consideration.
We piloted the project with the in the Spring of 2012 and by June had a clear understanding of the business case and value of moving them to the cloud. Core to the business case was; licensing and infrastructure reduction, improved employee productivity and reduction of systems management cycles. At the June council meeting, the council not only approved this move, but applauded Justin and his team for having a strong vision of the future for their great city.