After doing a deep dive of approximately 800 servers and finding security vulnerabilities, the State of Arizona, the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states in the country, partnered with SADA to migrate 36,000 employees and contractors to Google Workspace. Prior to the migration, the state’s employees and contractors were using 10 separate email systems, hindering collaboration between agencies and employees.
The decision to migrate to Google Workspace was driven by needs surrounding security, scalability, and ease of use. In addition, Arizona found that other solutions were lacking when it came to meeting its real-time collaboration and face-to-face video conferencing needs.
“We were really impressed with the Google Workspace toolset, and we felt it would enable us to collaborate better,” said Doug Lange, State Chief Strategy Officer at State of Arizona. “We recognized that Google Workspace would help change the way people interact and work, rather than merely shifting their old methods and workflows to the cloud.”
Migrating 36,000 users to Google Workspace
To migrate faster and mitigate risk, State of Arizona selected SADA, a Google Cloud Premier Partner, to lead the migration and oversee change management. Arizona’s state IT department of 135 users migrated first and never looked back, eager to complete the migration of the entire user base. Approximately 2,000 administrative users migrated next, followed by major state agencies, for a total of 22,000 employees migrated in less than one year. State of Arizona completed the rollout, bringing the count up to 36,000 state employees and contractors, driving user adoption through SADA’s change management services.
“Without SADA and Google Cloud Professional Services, our migration to Google Workspace would not have been as fast or as successful,” said Heather Sheston, Google Statewide Program Manager, State of Arizona. “They have done a phenomenal job of coordinating resources where they were needed.”
Results
The State of Arizona has realized numerous benefits from the migration to Google Workspace. Benefits they have seen with Google Workspace migration include:
- Improved productivity with real-time collaboration
- Enhanced security by identifying malicious email that eluded the previous system
- Cost savings of millions of dollars in storage, administration, and license costs over the next 3 years
- Alignment with Arizona’s statewide cloud-first IT policy
“Now that we’re on a common set of tools, a common platform to store data, understand the problems in the field in the central office, and make decisions faster,” said Morgan Reed, CIO, State of Arizona. “That’s helping every agency that’s been migrated so far serve their citizens better.”
