outsourcing student email services a transition to google apps for education

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Outsourcing Student Email Services A transition to Google Apps for Education

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Outsourcing Student Email ServicesA transition to Google Apps for Education

Why we made the move…Our StudentsOur Old Email System (OpenVMS System)

Our Options

Our StudentsWere extremely unhappy with slow IMAPDisliked the webmail interface and featuresKnew there were better optionsWere already jumping ship

Our Old Email SystemWas scheduled for replacement

Had a dated interface and limited features

Was slow, slow and did I mention…It was

Was a texted based system with a 3rd party web interface

SLOW!

Our Options - Self vs Hosted

Self: Exchange, Zimba, Sendmail or NovellHosted: Google, Yahoo or Windows LiveFinalists: Exchange vs Google

Our RequirementsCustomer friendly, intuitive interfaceSecurity of email, attachments and shared documentsWeb interface and IMAP interfaceUse of USU’s Central Authentication99.9% uptime

And the Winner is…

Familiar InterfaceIntegrated document sharingOutstanding uptimeScalable (35K accounts and still growing)

Google!

Email accounts for life!

And the Winner is…

Great service and support

MUCH less expensive…

$free.99

Google!

Mailbox size: 7.3GB and growing…

How we did it…

Commitment by many, many employeesInvolvement by Student Government

Dedicated support from GoogleMarketing, Documentation and Tutorials

in less than three months

Buy-in from Students and Administration

Lessons learned:Gmail interface is intuitive and the majority of users were familiar with it Email related support requests were reduce 50%Google Apps for Education is incredibly stable, full featured and fast

Google Tech Support is awesome, well informed and always available

In 2.5 yrs, we have only experienced 2 brief outages

No, but the majority of students create an “Aggiemail” account upon being admitted, although…

Is it required for students?

Some Faculty members do require an Aggiemail account to communicate with their class members.

Can Faculty/Staff create an account?Yes, and many do, but…

We have an enterprise Exchange system that Faculty/Staff are encouraged to use.

Would we do it again?Absolutely!

Students love it and most of all they use it!

Aggiemail Informationhttp://it.usu.edu/aggiemail

Questions? …Fire Away!Steve Funk - [email protected]