By David Chartier
October 12, 2008 - 09:10PM CT

Washington D.C. has joined 500,000+ businesses and organizations in moving its communication and productivity tools into the cloud. Vivek Kundra, CTO for the District, signed an agreement with Google to migrate the organization's 38,000 employees to Google Apps, the search giant's web-based offering of communication and productivity tools.

Washington D.C. is a not-insignificant win for Google, and yet another blow to Microsoft's incumbent Office suite, as a surge of web apps steadily replaces their desktop counterparts. Kundra signed the contract with Google back in June, and it's estimated to be worth nearly $500,000 a year, according to Bloomberg.

The deal will provide District employees with applications like Gmail for communication, Google Docs for word processing and spreadsheets, the recently launched Google Video for business, and Google Sites to wrap it all together with intranets and wikis. Google Apps has seen an impressive level of adoption since launching over two years ago in February 2008 as Gmail for your domain.

Six months later, Google Apps for Your Domain debuted and has since attracted customers from many industries, including GE, L'Oreal, Arizona State University, and Taylor Woodrow, a construction firm based in the UK. Over 500,000 organizations use one version or another of Google Apps, and Google claims that 3,000 more sign up every day.