I've been watching with some interest the debate going on, and the various manueverings of the interested parties, over the City of Los Angeles selection of a replacement for their antiquated Notes e-mail system. As the second largest city in the nation, it was seen as a great boon for Google that LA was seriously considering adopting its Google Apps platform for the purpose. With that foot wedged in the door, the thinking went, perhaps it wouldn't be long before the city started to migrate away from desktop based applications entirely, providing one of the first real large-scale examples of Apps providing a workable alternative to more traditional desktop-based models.

Well, the time has come; the city council last night approved the Google deal, despite much last-minute manuevering by Microsoft to convince the city to move to the Exchange platform instead.

Now it is between Google and the city to make the project succeed or fail. Enterprise CIOs will no doubt be watching.