NYU goes Google
NYU is the latest major university to announce its migration to Google Apps for Education. Google posted this news today on its Enterprise blog:
This move to Google Apps will provide more than 60,000 students, staff and faculty at NYU with Google tools like Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Sites and will bring all 18 schools of NYU—including medical, dental and law schools—together on one uniform system. This project is estimated to save the University around $400,000 annually by eliminating the need to purchase, upgrade, and maintain in-house mail servers and software licenses.
The NYU School of Medicine posted a few caveats, though:
This is a pilot- we are testing these offerings from Google to understand how to best use them and how they fit with our existing MCIT services. We may decide to turn off or on features as the pilot progresses based on feedback and use.
The most interesting feedback, though, may be from an NYU alum, Seth Weintraub, who asked in Fortune why it took so long for the school to leave its dated systems behind:
NYU is still using SquirrelMail, the same system that my undergraduate institution was using a decade and a half ago to deliver email.
My wife and everyone we know at NYU simply forwards their mail to a private Google (GOOG) account to save themselves the hassle of having to use such an archaic webmail system and its 200Mb limit.
Today's news will save 60,000 students, faculty and staff at the largest private, not for profit school in the U.S. that extra step, and at the same time bring a robust collaborative environment to the university.
The fact that NYU was using a system like SquirrelMail makes them a perfect candidate for Google Apps (as opposed to Microsoft's competing Live@Edu. With no existing investment in a Microsoft platform, there are no major incentives to move to one, especially when they are looking to save licensing fees. Although Live@Edu is free, many of its most compelling management features benefit from either hosted or on-premise Microsoft backend technologies.