Why Did we Change
The executive answer
George Fox University is moving its e-mail to Google because it’s a good business decision. E-mail has grown to be more then just a message communication service. In this era of mobility, it is now a data transfer service. The option of upgrading our own internal e-mail capability is not fiscally responsible, nor would it be capable of providing all of the features of Google’s Gmail service. The Google service will increase our personal in-box capacity at least seven times and maintain our current capabilities while offering us new flexibility for unified communications and data collaboration.
The need for upgrading
The decision to migrate to Google was based on numerous evaluation points. One major issue is the fact our current e-mail system, based on Microsoft Exchange 2003, is running on four-year-old servers and needs to be upgraded for desired features and improved reliability. We are currently at risk for a fairly major e-mail outage due to the state of our current system. Moving to Google improves our service, capacity and reliability. This offers us direct-cost savings versus investing in new hardware and software, along with the labor required to implement it.
How long has the university considered this move?
We have been investigating options of upgrading our e-mail system for three years. We chose not to be an early adopter of the Google Gmail solution until concerns about security and legal policy issues were resolved, but we did opt to move our accounts to Google so all of our users could take advantage of the collaboration power of Google Apps.
Many universities took the path of moving all of their students’ accounts first and are now moving their faculty and staff. We believe that moving all accounts at once is the more effective solution. We also feel that our experience with using our accounts for Google Apps has been advantageous for preparation.
We are replacing our Microsoft Exchange Servers
What is Exchange? Microsoft Exchange is e-mail server software. This is sometimes referred to as the “back end” software because it sends, receives and stores e-mail. Microsoft Exchange is and has been an excellent e-mail engine for George Fox, and we have received great value from the many years we’ve relied upon it. Typically, Exchange is equated with the most common e-mail client used to access it, which is Microsoft Office Outlook software on Windows desktops and laptops. Our decision to move away from maintaining our own Exchange Server is based on cost savings, greater reliability and improved services and flexibility.
The conversion decision has evolved over three years
Arizona State University made headlines in 2007 when it announced it was migrating all student e-mail to Google Gmail. Soon thereafter, Arizona State decided to move all university e-mail, which thrust them into the flag bearer role for leading higher education toward cloud-based e-mail solutions such as that offered by Google. Since then, many universities have joined in the migration, mostly to Google but also to Microsoft’s Live option. Many debates have played out concerning the legal and privacy policies offered by these vendors.
Higher education was able to negotiate very attractive policies that have guaranteed that our data is safe and will not be exploited. These vendors offer higher education these attractive options because they know that every student who graduates is more likely to be a lifelong personal user of their services. The George Fox IT department decided to wait on conversion until it could verify that the legal and privacy policies were acceptable.
A year and a half ago, IT decided to perform a proof of concept by moving accounts to Google to take advantage of all services except e-mail, knowing that e-mail was the primary university-wide service. For the last six months we have been actively using and testing this service. For the last three months continuing up until we migrate, the entire IT department, along with many other George Fox employees, have been heavily involved with the migration project. We are convinced this move is in the best interest of George Fox and that we are prepared for every step that we take through the migration process.