Griffith staff follow students on Google Apps

Staff at Griffith university are about to follow the lead of its 120,000 students that have migrated to Google Apps earlier this year.

(I've gone Google image by Håkan Dahlström, CC BY 2.0)

Pilot groups of staff will signal the beginning of the move to Google Apps when the transition begins this month. The university expects all staff to be migrated by March next year, with the bulk of transfers occurring during the university's examination period in November. Google Enterprise Partner Dialog Information Technology will be assisting the university in the migration.

Pro vice-chancellor information services Linda O'Brien said that it made sense to create an environment that places staff and students in the same space to facilitate collaboration and learning.

"Our academics need the ability to collaborate globally, to communicate, share and build strong research relationships if we are to advance knowledge and solve the world's biggest problems. Google makes this borderless collaboration easy," she said.

The university leaves behind its Lotus Notes environment to take advantage of benefits such as an increase in mailbox capacity to 25GB and access to other Google applications, such as Docs, Spreadsheets, Calendar and Talk.

Yesterday, Google announced a preview of a new version of Google Presentations on its Enterprise Blog, adding over 50 new features and focusing on a collaborative approach, such as including markers and built-in chat, to bring it up to speed with features already available in Docs and Spreadsheets.