This summer, all students within the UMaine System will have their Horde e-mail accounts transferred to Google Apps, in an effort to make the university’s e-mail system more user friendly. Those who already use this service know that the step from Horde to Gmail is like trading in Zach Morris’ cell phone from Saved By The Bell for a new Blackberry.
Universities all across the U.S. are making the switch to Google Apps for their e-mail service. The integration of web-mail, instant messaging and calendaring have made this a top choice as students’ need for communication technology continues to increase.
“We had a lot of complaints from students and faculty about interface and usability,” says John Grover, Operations Manager for the UMaine Information Technology Services.
The new partnership between the University of Maine System and Google will streamline the transfer process so that all student and faculty e-mail addresses will remain the same and will keep the same user name and password to log in. All stored e-mail will be moved and forwarding will also remain enabled.
“We looked for a really long time,” says Grover. “Google is just a better experience.”
ITS also considered Hotmail as an option but chose Google because of its many communication and collaboration applications.
Benefits of Google Apps include the ability to open your mail, calendar and editable documents in a web browser, unlike Horde where each new message has its own window and no editing ability. Google Apps also has a chat feature, letting you talk to whoever is available within your address book.
The major concern over switching to Google Apps was information protection, making sure that the information saved in student and faculty e-mail accounts would remain safe. The UMaine system approved a contractual agreement with Google that was reviewed by the system council and spells out that they cannot use or reveal any data to anyone. Part of the agreement included removing any advertisements from the e-mail accounts.
“Students will be able to retain their e-mail addresses for life,” Grover says. “Only when we alert Google of a student’s alumnae status will they be able to replace advertising.”
Storage space was a major factor in the decision to make the switch. Horde’s storage space maxes out a mere 100MB, while Google Apps currently boasts a whopping 7 GB of storage, which may expand. Now you can actually open emails with pictures in them, a huge improvement.
The transition process costs nothing to the university system aside from paying employees to make the switch.