Google Apps for Education – new e-mail system

The old e-mail system for students that was established in 2004, will be replaced with a new one. The university teams up with Google and expects increased functionality for students and cost reductions.

- We hope to be able to offer a new system to the enrolling students this fall, says Alexander Söderberg, coordination manager for the new system.

The university started working on a new system last spring. During summer and fall, a working team has examined if it was possible to introduce a new system. The group also evaluated the two options, Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Live @ Edu.

- We asked students about advantages and disadvantages of the systems and examined how implementation work has been going at other universities, says Alexander.

The group finally chose Google Apps for Education, an externally managed system that will provide the students with several interaction opportunities.

- The fact that the system is external saves us costs on management, resources and memory. With Google Apps, we hope to offer more functionality, says Alexander Söderberg.

Google’s technology is considered to be easier and faster for an implementation in the current IT- environment. Google is also considered to be a long term investment due to future development opportunities which include communication concept Wave. Students will have access to more interaction options, memory, a calendar, instant messaging and similar functions.

- Right now, we are developing a task list of all the practical issues of technical and legal kind. There are still some issues to resolve. Among other things, how the name line will look like and some graphic issues. The service needs to be orufied with logos, says Alexander.

The old system will be around for some time alongside the new one and old students will be offered the opportunity to change systems. The students Lösnummer has spoken to have responded positively to the initiative and are willing to switch to the new one.