Hamilton is currently preparing to move its e-mail/calendaring environment to Google Apps for Education. Why make this change? The reasons are:
Beneficial e-mail and calendaring features
Efficient use of Hamilton resources, focusing on solutions in addition to e-mail and calendaring
Tools that have been previously unavailable to our community
Transition will be smooth
Enhanced collaborative possibilities that will facilitate work between members of the Hamilton community and colleagues elsewhere
Reliable access to your e-mail and calendar worldwide.
I guess we could simply say that we feel that Google Apps is BETTER.
How and when will this take place?
This is a major initiative requiring substantial time for planning and implementation, with completion by June 30, 2010. All members of ITS will be involved in various ways in supporting the implementation process. We expect a detailed implementation plan by November 30, 2009.
In order to help guide our planning and decisions, we'll use the following guiding principles for the project:
Minimize interruptions
Minimize loss of service or features
Abundant Support
Maintain same levels of integration
Favor efficiency, streamline existing processes where feasible
Preserve as much data from the old system as possible.
An E-mail task force evaluated the alternative of having Hamilton e-mail services provided through Google's Gmail. The current cost of providing e-mail to the campus is approximately $60,000 annually for hardware, software, and personnel. Google provides e-mail (and a variety of other services) free to colleges and universities.The institution keeps its same e-mail naming structure (e.g. dsmallen@hamilton.edu) but the server and e-mail reside off-campus.
The members of the email task force included: Jon Vaughan (Psychology), Glynis Asu (Library), Jeff Escalante '11, and several members of ITS.
Members of the Hamilton Community also participated in the evaluation process.
Google Demo Presentation
Several presentations were made during March and April. Here is a copy of the Google Demo Presentation.
