• Improves productivity with real-time collaboration

• Enhances security by identifying malicious email that eluded the previous system

• Saves millions of dollars in storage, administration, and license costs over the next 3 years

• Supports Arizona's statewide cloud-first policy for IT

"We did a deep scan of approximately 800 servers and found some vulnerabilities," says Morgan Reed, State CIO at State of Arizona. "That's when we realized that if we partnered with the right cloud vendors, they could provide more robust security controls and do a better job of protecting our environment."

Arizona had already moved some employees from on-premises Exchange systems to Microsoft Office 365, but it did not meet the state's requirements for real-time collaboration and face-to-face video. The Governor's Office decided to standardize on Google Workspace instead.

"We were really impressed with the Google Workspace toolset, and we felt it would enable us to collaborate better," says 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."

Google Cloud Professional Services and Insight served as Arizona's trusted advisors, managing the entire project from start to finish to help ensure the Google Workspace deployment ran smoothly for everyone in the organization. Google met twice a week with Arizona's Google Champions and IT teams to provide best practice recommendations, attended and advised on steering committee calls, coordinated go-live events, and assisted with internal marketing and change management activities for end users.

"Without Insight and Google Cloud Professional Services, our migration to Google Workspace would not have been as fast or as successful," says Heather Sheston, Google Statewide Program Manager at State of Arizona. "They have done a phenomenal job of coordinating resources where they were needed."

Arizona concentrated on getting employees up and running with Gmail and Calendar first, in order to consolidate departments and agencies on a single email platform and a unified directory as quickly as possible. Although the state provided links to online training resources and hired interns to act as roaming "Googlers" and answer questions, most employees naturally adopted Google Workspace tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides. During and after the migration, there was very little disruption to the way people did their jobs; employees simply found ways to do them better.

"We found that most people already use Gmail and other Google Workspace apps in their personal lives, but our workforce wanted more advanced training," says Heather. "Especially with younger people coming in, they say, 'oh, cool, you're a Google Workspace shop.' They can get started working right away."

Arizona has retired most of its departmental file servers, instead consolidating documents onto Drive, where all employees can easily access them if they have the proper credentials. Eliminating the need to purchase and manage file servers also significantly reduces IT CapEx and OpEx, allowing the state to shift that budget to other areas.

Employees are quickly adopting new ways of working, such as conducting face-to-face video meetings with Google Meet and collaborating on documents in real time. When the state's data center briefly went down during a serious storm, employees simply worked from home using Google Workspace, and no productivity was lost. As Mike prepared to speak at Google Cloud NEXT in San Francisco, he was struck by how easy it was to finalize the presentation with other stakeholders the night before he left.

"With Google Workspace, I can be on a video call with four other people, and we can all make changes to a document or presentation at once," Says Doug. "With our previous system, that would have been impossible."