We’ll admit from the start: this development doesn’t rival Los Angeles’s embrace of Google Apps in terms of importance.  Or Orlando’s, for that matter.  But the City of Westerville, Ohio (which is home to about 37,000 people) has adopted Google Apps and is officially pleased with the result.

Westerville could be a trendsetter of sorts.  Money magazine’s twice labeled it one of “America’s Best Places to Live,” and the city’s not far from Columbus, which might not want to get shown up.

Anyway, to return to Westerville’s endorsement, Todd Jackson, Director of Information Services and CIO, and Bryan Mundy, Network Operations Manager, wrote in a guest post on the Official Google Enterprise Blog, “When we decided that GroupWise was no longer feasible for our city, we conducted a comprehensive evaluation that included the top hosted solutions, including Microsoft’s hosted BPOS.”

The pair then continued, “We came away impressed with Google Apps’ value and features.  Google’s solution was platform-agnostic, so we could easily support users on a variety of platforms.  It was also less costly and came with capabilities like document sharing and Google Sites for building intranets.  We felt that we could accomplish more with Google Apps for less money.”

Westerville now stands by that judgment and is a fan of cloud computing.  It’s even been inspired to build what it believes will be the first community data center in the country.

Plus, Jackson and Mundy intend to say more about the whole experience during a webcast on Tuesday.  Anyone who’s interested can register here.