The City of Alexandria, the first jurisdiction in the state to transition from on-premise enterprise messaging to cloud services, has been awarded the Technology Solutions Award for 2011-2012 by the Public Technology Institute.

Migrating first to Miscrosoft's Business Productivity Online Services and then to Office 365, the city was honored in PTI's IT and Telecommunications category for jurisdictions with a population between 100,000 and 349,000.

“In approximately six months, the city migrated over 2,700 email accounts from their legacy Domino/Lotus Notes on-premise architecture to the cloud with no data loss and minimal downtime,” said Alexandria's Chief Information Officer Tom Trobridge. “The project also included the conversion of over 30 legacy Domino applications, an enterprise desktop productivity suite upgrade and the transition of over 400 mobile devices from BlackBerry to iPhone and Android smartphones. By leveraging the cloud and streamlining the telecommunications and information technology infrastructure, the city realized immediate operating efficiencies and cost savings.”

According to Trobridge, the new system better supports the city's mobile workforce and telecommuting with smart phones and Outlook Web Access.

“This has been a very important program for the city because it's about more than just creating a better way to send and receive email,” Trobridge said. “We have also been able to standardize and simplify our desktop computing environment, which means we are running a more efficient operation and can provide better support to our customers.”

The PTI award will be formally presented at the CIO Leadership and Summit East Conference in Boston next month.

“In approximately six months, the city migrated over 2,700 email accounts from their legacy Domino/Lotus Notes on-premise architecture to the cloud with no data loss and minimal downtime.”

Alexandria CIO Tom Trobridge

“I really enjoyed this project because it was an amazing team effort on the part of the Information Technology Services staff,” Trobridge added. “There was an unprecedented level of collaboration within the department by everyone to make this happen. There's not a lot you can't do when you have a team of committed individuals who believe in creating positive change through the application of new technology.”