State of Colorado will migrate more than of 26,000 Executive Branch state employees to Google Apps for Government, said Kristin D. Russell, Secretary of Technology and State Chief Information Officer, Colorado’s Office of Information Technology (OIT).

Colorado will be one of the first states to make the move to Google cloud, following Wyoming and Utah.

The state will save approximately US$2 million a year by bringing fifteen siloed and disparate email systems into one unified communications platform. The move will cut the cost of maintaining current email systems by nearly half and will also allow employees across departments to find co-workers and communicate more effectively with one another.

The state believed that by giving employees modern collaboration tools and better mobile access will help them deliver better services to citizen. The OIT already completed thorough testing and analysis of multiple product solutions including an independent third-party comparison prior to selecting Google technology.

According to the OIT, the decision to migrate to Google apps is closely aligned with its six priorities of customer success, innovation, information security, people, service excellence, and trusted partnership.

As part of this evaluation, the security controls used by Google Apps was reviewed by the State’s OIT to comply with or exceed state standards. The OIT will work closely with Google Apps Premier Reseller Tempus Nova to bring Google Apps to Colorado employees.

Apart from the State Government of Colorado, other agencies like Larimer County and Eagle County have already used the same technology. Also in summer 2010, Colorado announced a statewide agreement to allow schools and districts to use Google Apps for Education in which some of Colorado’s largest education institutions including Colorado State University, Metropolitan State College of Denver, Jeffco Public Schools and Douglas County School District, have switched to Google Cloud.