Google just took away one of the world’s largest Outlook/Exchange installations for 1.5 million students at Australian schools, and replaced it with Gmail. More information is here.
The cost savings are substantial. The Outlook/Exchange platform involved a AU$33 million contract and took four years to go live, although it’s unclear why it took so long. The Gmail/Google Apps rollout, which is being completed by subcontractors, will cost just $9.5 million and should be live by the end of 2008. User storage will increase from 35 MB to 1 GB.
This is being called the largest single deployment of Gmail in the world, we’ve emailed Google for a comment.
Great to see such a large adoption. For me, switching from outlook to gmail has made life so much easier. Access to every email from any computer (or my Blackberry) is incredible.
Kudos to the GMail team.
um, jared – outlook web access and mobile phone support — don’t confuse your outlook inbox to a real exchange set up
Rumors are that a couple of universities in Philly (e.g. Penn, Drexel, Temple) are switching to Gmail too.
Arkansas State went to Gmail about 2-3 years ago
A third of the cost and a fraction of the admin headache–sounds good to me.
But, this is highly discounted (about 96%). Based on their usual $50/usr/year, it would cost $225 million (!) over the three years of the contract. Google’s pricing is great for SMBs. But for larger customers, it doesn’t scale out of the box. I guess someone decided to think outside the box.
the most exciting thing here is the fact that this could lead to some local gmail servers for us australian gmail users…
Yes! This is a great win for Gmail. I’ve personally preferred gmail, hopefully the widespread usage will encourage stuff like a local Australian server and push email. Google???
Yes. And along with that goes the dumping of 1.5 million more virus protection subscriptions from Semantic.
Bye bye Semantic. Hosted email is going to blow your business away.
I’ve never had one virus on my PC since I stopped using that piece of crap called Outlook. Yahoo Mail and Google Mail stop the nasty viruses before they enter my house. By 2010 now one will need McAfee or Semantic any more. Good riddance.
Gmail Apps is used at Macquarie University in Sydney – they have more then 50 000 students alone!
I went to Macquarie Uni (graduated last year). The use of Gmail was pretty cool, but I ended up setting my main Gmail account to retrieve the email (and label it). I also set up sending from that email address (through my main account).
I never had any trouble with it. Far better system than the ugly one it replaced..
A few public universities in the midwest just outsourced their email to Microsoft. Microsoft’s exchange labs and Live@edu services are pretty impressive. I am currently working on a team at a public university that is choosing between google’s gmail and microsoft’s exchange labs. We are currently leaning towards exchange labs.
I love Gmail, but I love Exchange too at work. I guess this makes sense for students because Gmail (web) is better than OWA any day. But in a corporate environment with full sync of email, cals, tasks, contacts to Outlook and WM6 phone devices… that sure beats Gmail’s IMAP (email only).
But great on the Aussies for this industry first move.
Hurray for the management to make a logical choice.
@Victor Actually Google is most likely not charging a dime for it. Education Edition of gmail is FREE as is Google Apps.
http://www.goog...itions_spe.html
The day I left Outlook 2007 was fantastic. I have uploaded 47,000 emails from my multiple PSTs to my gmail account (it took almost a week) along with all my folders that became LABELS and i have never looked backed. It works even smoother that i dumped IE7 and now use firefox 3 (smooth scrolling was an issue). Between Gmail, Google Docs, Sites (you can turn it into online data storage) Picasa and my favorite, Google Notebook, you cant go wrong. The google suite of products need a little better integration with each other, but i am sure that will come in time.
@Ihate Semantic One day we will all look back and laugh about having programs like symatic and office and storing data on local drives….how 20th century!
Why does it cost $9.5m to say to all your students: go to this page and get a gmail account, and then tell us what your account name is?!
if I could import all my mail from outlook to gmail, I’d switch now. I’d prefer to have an auto backup process through google over the unsafe possibility of a dead hard drive and years of lost mail.
Anyone know, can I import my pst from outlook to google?
@thecolor
http://www.goog...126272580344305
Anyone know why gmail is still in beta after, what, 5 years?
… big win for Google. BUT IMO gmail is still lacking for anything beyond just sending and receiving email – terrible interface and kinda unreliable at times. It’s fine for school kids but I definitely won’t be swapping Outlook 2007 for gmail any time soon.
@Andrew uh, Gmail and Google Apps for your domain are two different things competely. Gmail alone doesn’t allow for studentid@university.edu while Google Apps does. and the $9.5 mil is more likely the cost to remove Outlook etc and setup administration features so that student email addys are auto generated during registration and such…as pointed out previously Google Apps is free for educational institutions.
University of San Francisco also went Gmail 6 months back..
Microsoft has a similar service for universities: http://campuste...articles/63277/
Investing on schools is always a good strategy. Graduates will get used to when going for work in a few years.
To quote the classic movie ‘Heathers’, “Well, f#@k me gently with a chainsaw…”
I am absolutely astonished that someone in the Australian Government had the balls to make what would appear to be such a logical decision.
Out of interest does anyone know who and/or which department was responsible?
I think as a high school student its important to realize that though schools will force this upon their students, many kids will continue to use their current emails, in which case many might own MSFT domains. MSFT has done a solid job in unifying the Passport Account on multiple services. For example, I use my Live Account to access email, Zune, and Xbox.
More importantly, Gmail is better than Windows Live Hotmail right now, but I’m thinking that Microsoft will strike back with WLH later this year, when they announce the third wave of Windows Live services. Nonetheless, MSFT also has a free program called Windows Live Mail (free, simplified version of Outlook), so going on the net to check email is old.
@josh909 according to the AustralianIT article, it’s the NSW department of Education. The $9.5m is over three years with SMS Management and Technology the contractors along with Google and Telstra.
So that’s about $2 a student a year.
Wait. Wait. Isn’t email a core technology in Universities? Just like it is in the Enterprise? How can a University or an Enterprise hand a Mission Critical application like email over to just any old consumer business. I mean, what would the lawyers say? Where’s the governance? We need a policy on this? What about confidentiality? And then about our data? And don’t forget that e-discovery stuff. Why, outsourcing your email, is, is, is, OUTRAGEOUS !
Pros: Everything.
Cons: Can’t see any.
Kudos to the education system of Australia for making a good choice for once.
I think every university should run their own email. I think they should also have their own PBX. And while we’re on the subject, they should have their own power plant, water supply, sewage treatment system, garbage dump, emergency room, fire station, prison ward, mass transportation and a Starbucks premium coffee grinder just for fun. It’s the Enterprise IT way.
This is great news for Google. Microsoft rakes huuuuge benefits from its Office Distributions and this should be awakening for Microsoft, which has largely presumed that the desktop market is still unchallenged.
Once again a reminder of the lack of innovation at Microsoft. How much money are they ripping off people I ask? Too much, too much. It’s time they die
They actually get 6GB per mailbox, not 1GB as the article suggests.
Having recently switched from a corporation using Exchange/Outlook to a startup using Google Apps/Gmail, I can say it is an incredible breath of fresh air. Search is clearly one of the huge differences and it really changes the way you think about email. Instead of trying to get off of every DL, you end up getting on more DLs and filtering. I don’t even use the Gmail interface that much unless I’m away from my Mac. The threaded messaging takes a little while to get used to. Outlook still leads on calendaring but when you have fewer meetings, that’s less of a problem.
Has anyone considered why a service that google offers for free costs $9.5 million over 3 years? Someone’s making a pretty penny for not a lot of effort.
Just received an email today from the University of Auckland in New Zealand (another 40,000+ students) who are changing over early next month.
“The University of Auckland is currently in the process of changing the EC Mail provider to Google. This means that EC Mail will now be running through Google’s mail interface, with all the associated features. The actual change will be taking place on 9th July 2008.”
Its an “education evolution” to quote Ruddy
It sounds like everyone believes this is a “tipping point” but I don’t understand enough to agree. This post is lacking any analysis of the impacts moving to SaaS beyond the one dimensional TCO. Yes this is very important but who owns the infrastructure? Who is responsible for the data? Could you up-level this discussion with a review of why this is good or bad and what are the tradeoff that must be considered? I think this would be super useful. Perhaps a post for the new TechCrunchIT ….
If a company/university moves to gmail and the data is hosted in one country and the institution is in another, what set of laws apply? How will this work? What if the university/company doesn’t want to share the information but gmail decides it’s in their interest to share the information. This could apply to IP, freedom of speech or the Patriot Act.
Gmail is certainly something a corporation or big size entity should go for. What Gmail has to offer is better than Live and Yahoo7 of today.
Gmail rocks! it’s quick, well-designed, displays a small quantity of ads, it’s super mail software!
Not sure if I like the idea of my child’s data being hosted in a country where Australian Privacy Laws are overridden by the Patriot act.
I forward all my email accounts to my Gmail account, I don’t have to delete or backup any emails.
I forward all my email accounts to my Gmail account, I don’t have to delete or backup any emails.
I love Gmail cause it’s integrated with my favorite IM tool (Yakkle) and I can get notifications of new Gmails without leaving my app. I can even read a snippet.
@Chris:
“A few public universities in the midwest just outsourced their email to Microsoft. Microsoft’s exchange labs and Live@edu services are pretty impressive. I am currently working on a team at a public university that is choosing between google’s gmail and microsoft’s exchange labs. We are currently leaning towards exchange labs.”
Suuure they are. Stupid Microsoft shills are EVERYWHERE. Word to the shills: stop working for Microsoft, work for someone like Google or a Linux company not in a b.s. patent agreement with Microsoft, and gain a soul.
Stay up-to-date with the convicted monopoly (Microsoft)’s latest crimes against humanity at:
Groklaw.net
and
Boycottnovell.com
(IRC chat for boycottnovell is irc.freenode.net #boycottnovell use mirc or xchat free clients to access the network and channel – for more info on Freenode IRC network visit Freenode.net, at Freenode IRC you can learn about Linux and a free OS and programs and stop using Microsoft trash, thousands of people on the network will help you for free, 24/7, unlike calling up Microsoft and paying a criminal organization for help.)
Boycottnovell is much more than a site about Microsoft’s evil pact with Novell, bookmark it and stay informed.
Microsoft is like a mammoth in a tar pit surrounded by hungry pit bulls, piece by piece it is being nibbled as it lumbers around in a circle screaming as it falls..
Google gives us so much for free, sure they make money from a lot of what they do, but at least they give us so much for free without locking us into proprietary file formats and an operating system like Microsoft and their garbage Silverlight attempt at defeating Adobe flash (they just don’t get it, they want to ruin everything so they’re #1, Microsoft is a garbage company) to lock you into another proprietary format requiring Microsoft approved software.
Every dollar you send to Microsoft is sealing your tomb of freedom and saying, “Yes, I will give up my freedom to a criminal organization.”
Unlike Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux is sent to your home for free:
shipit.ubuntu.com
Or you can download it at http://www.ubuntu.com
Choose from other Linux distributions:
http://www.distrowatch.com
The mammoth turns and howls as the penguins laugh and celebrate.
Stay up-to-date with the convicted monopoly (Microsoft)’s latest crimes against humanity at:
http://www.Groklaw.net
and
http://www.Boycottnovell.com
(IRC chat for boycottnovell is irc.freenode.net #boycottnovell use mirc or xchat free clients to access the network and channel – for more info on Freenode IRC network visit Freenode.net, at Freenode IRC you can learn about Linux and a free OS and programs and stop using Microsoft trash, thousands of people on the network will help you for free, 24/7, unlike calling up Microsoft and paying a criminal organization for help.)
Boycottnovell is much more than a site about Microsoft’s evil pact with Novell, bookmark it and stay informed.
Microsoft is like a mammoth in a tar pit surrounded by hungry pit bulls, piece by piece it is being nibbled as it lumbers around in a circle screaming as it falls..
Google gives us so much for free, sure they make money from a lot of what they do, but at least they give us so much for free without locking us into proprietary file formats and an operating system like Microsoft and their garbage Silverlight attempt at defeating Adobe flash (they just don’t get it, they want to ruin everything so they’re #1, Microsoft is a garbage company) to lock you into another proprietary format requiring Microsoft approved software.
Every dollar you send to Microsoft is sealing your tomb of freedom and saying, “Yes, I will give up my freedom to a criminal organization.”
Unlike Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux is sent to your home for free:
shipit.ubuntu.com
Or you can download it at http://www.ubuntu.com
Choose from other Linux distributions:
http://www.distrowatch.com
The mammoth turns and howls as the penguins laugh and celebrate.
“if I could import all my mail from outlook to gmail, I’d switch now. I’d prefer to have an auto backup process through google over the unsafe possibility of a dead hard drive and years of lost mail.”
Ask on http://www.linuxquestions.org or http://www.ubuntuforums.org
“Anyone know, can I import my pst from outlook to google?”
Again, ask on one of the above forums should your question not be answered here. Then, once you’re running Linux, choose a free/open source mail client and use it with Gmail and you can store your mail using something you can see inside of, unlike Outlook which is a blackbox and you don’t know what the software is capable of doing, for all we know Microsoft could have copies of every email we’ve ever sent through their software! We don’t know, we can’t see the inside of their OS and programs! They are ALL Microsoft black boxes!
Thunderbird and Seamonkey are good mail clients, try them.
It look like Google hopefully will bring few educational software for the academic sector.
Anyone that has been in (or around) IT for any length of time has heard more than a few Exchange horror stories. It is a CIO’s worst nightmare. When there are problems with Exhange he/she is going to have a bad day. It apparently does not scale well and is otherwise difficult to support.
All of the above is not a news flash for those folks that spend their lives in the IT trenches. Gmail (more or less) makes all that pain go away. BUT, Google won’t be getting big wins like this in the Enterprise anytime soon. Email is still the “killer app” and moreover, for many executives, the only one they have any degree of mastery using. The “lock in” was completed many years ago.
Google has very few “get of jail cards” for large companies addicted to Outlook. However, they will likely continue to pick off non profits and perhaps some public sector agencies where saving $$ is a higher priority than executive/organizational addictions.
There is a lot of confusion here. A lot of people don’t seem to understand the different between Outlook (desktop client alone), Exchange with Outlook (desktop client) & Outlook Web Access (web client), Gmail (web client), and Google Apps.
Everyone has their opinions, but the arguments fall short when it is clear that there is a serious lack of comprehension of what the products really are.
Drexel offers students the option of using an internally hosting IMAP/webmail account, Gmail, or Microsoft’s Live@Edu ExchangeLab service.
If Google Apps or Gmail could handle sending meeting invites that update an exchange user’s calendar, we’d adopt in a second.
Unfortunately, that and a lack of true push email is what prevents us from pursuing it.