Following up on the announcement that Wyoming has adopted Google Apps for Government, I called the IT people in Helena to find out what Montana’s plans are regarding cloud computing.
Montana, as it turns out, won’t be relying on Google to the same extent as our southern neighbors any time soon. Stuart Fuller, the state’s chief technology officer, said Friday that on April 30 Montana re-signed a three-year enterprise contract with Microsoft.
The total cost of that contract over the three-year period is $7,644,327, according to figures send over by the Department of Administration. The cost for software — the Microsoft Office Pro Plus suite — is $3,305,760. There are also a few outside costs, such as operating systems, server access licenses and a few applications that aren’t installed on all computers, such as Visio and Project.
“We are looking at cloud computing in other aspects of the cloud,” Fuller said, pointing to a four-state initiative with Utah, Colorado and Oregon to put GIS information in the cloud.
