LA city moves to Gmail

The Los Angeles (LA) city council is planning to move the city's employees to Google's Gmail and productivity tools, reports Government Technology.

City councilman Tony Cardenas says the city's current e-mail system has been prone to crashes, which has hurt employees' productivity and notes that the city lacks disaster recovery for its e-mail system, a shortcoming she says Gmail will address.

"If there is a major earthquake in this city, and there might be, it would take us a while to get the city's e-mail up and running today," says Randi Levin, LA's CIO.

Onyx Group, a value-added reseller, has bolstered its business continuity offering with the acquisition of London-based Disaster Recovery Solutions (DRS), according to V3.

DRS director, James Carver, will remain in charge of the firm, which will be renamed Onyx Business Continuity.

Onyx claims the deal will allow it to increase sales into the professional services and financial sectors.

In line with increasing business demand, IBM has opened a new business continuity and resiliency services (BCRS) centre in Izmir, Turkey, replacing the former facility, states Reuters.

The new facility features advanced data centre capabilities and workplace-recovery technologies designed to help companies safeguard and recover critical information and ensure uninterrupted operations.

The BCRS centre offers tailor-made business continuity services to allow companies to continue business operations under the most challenging circumstances, including natural disasters.