outsourcing student email services
DESCRIPTION
Outsourcing Student Email Services. A transition to Google Apps for Education. Why we made the move…. Our Students. Our Old Email System (OpenVMS System). Our Options. Our Students. Were extremely unhappy with slow IMAP. Disliked the webmail interface and features. - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
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 replacementHad 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 fastGoogle Tech Support is awesome, well informed and always availableIn 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]