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Charlie Osborne
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Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education

By | June 4, 2010, 7:57am PDT

Summary: The state of Kentucky has rolled out Microsoft’s Live@edu service across 700,000 staff and students in a single weekend, the quickest and largest cloud deployment in US history.

In what is expected to be the largest cloud deployment in the United States, Microsoft’s Live@edu service has been rolled out to over 700,000 students and staff in Kentucky, the state education department for education has confirmed via Microsoft.

This is the pinnacle point in a series of high profile anti-Google Apps moves which could be a turning point in the company’s offering of their Live@edu competing service.

The migration from their old Exchange 2003 on-site service to cloud-accessed Exchange 2010 has also been one of the quickest deployments ever seen, with over half a million accounts being migrated over in a single weekend. There is no doubt that the deployment was assisted by existing Microsoft technologies which would have made the transition smoother.

Live@edu now reaches over 11 million people worldwide in 10,000 schools, across 130 countries.

Google anounced recently that their instant-communication Twitter-like tool Wave was rolled out to Google Apps for Education users, as well as a highly anticipated migration tool to assist switching from Outlook to Gmail. However this does not seem to have had any immediate impact on Google’s declining userbase numbers, with many students being moved away from their university-trialed Google pilot service.

One school is Yale, which halted its Google Apps service trial, which Microsoft now sees as an endorsement to its own competing service. Last month, the University of California Davis hit Google hard with their plans to cease their Google Apps trial citing “unacceptable privacy levels”.

Google’s Apps for Education website states that 8 million students worldwide are using their product, over a third less of what Microsoft currently serves. Though many private industries and organisations are favouring Google Apps for their collaboration features, the student market is still struggling to consider Google over Microsoft in the outsourcing arena.

Does this move spark the end of Google’s email-to-student offering, or should the company be more aggressive?

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Topics

Education, Google Inc., Google Apps, Microsoft Corp., Cloud Computing, Zack Whittaker

Zack Whittaker, a criminologist who studied at the University of Kent, Canterbury, is a journalist, writer and broadcaster.

Disclosure

Zack Whittaker

I worked briefly with Microsoft UK in 2006 but no longer have any connection with the company. Regardless, I remain impartial and unbiased in my views.

I don't hold any stock or shares, investments or industrial secrets in any company, but have signed confidentiality agreements with a number of UK and U.S. organisations, whose names I am not at liberty to disclose.

I was involved with Kent Union, the University of Kent's student union, undertaking voluntary, non-salaried, elected positions between early 2009 and mid-2010.

No other company, body, government department, non-governmental organisation or third sector organisation employs me or pays me a salary in any capacity whatsoever.

As a freelance journalist, whenever expenses are given and taken by a company that is not CBS Interactive, these will be disclosed in each relevant post to ensure transparency.

I currently work with a UK law enforcement unit, but this is an entirely separate position which bears no connection to other work.

(Updated: 23rd October 2011)

Biography

Zack Whittaker

Zack Whittaker, criminologist who studied at the University of Kent, UK, is a journalist, writer and broadcaster.

After studying criminology at university, though still in his early-20's, he has already had a series unconventional work and voluntary positions. He has worked with researchers studying neurological illnesses like Tourette's syndrome (which he suffers from), has given lectures on the nature of disabilities in the public community, and occasionally ends up speaking on television and radio discussing the events of the day.

He first had academic work published at the age of 22, then still an undergraduate, and has been cited by a wide range of publications: from the Huffington Post, Business Insider, AllThingsDigital, The Atlantic Wire and CBS News.

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It's a no brainer really..
stevieg.org 21st Jun 2010
Let's face it - GMail is a competitor to Hotmail, NOT Microsoft Exchange. When MSFT offer hosted Exchange 2010 for *free* to Education, only an idiot says no.

If MSFT were only offering Hotmail then, yes.. I think Google would be making a lot more headway!
View in thread
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Scary thought of MS having anything to do with this
itguy08 4th Jun 2010
But then again I'm sure they paid off quite a few to make this happen.

Microsoft = FAIL in everything.
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Of course that grape is sour
LBiege 4th Jun 2010
Maybe people in Kentucky just don't want their WiFi to be spied or their privacy sent to CIA.
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Sour indeed!
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
@LBiege

Seeing the MS Office franchise go down in smoke.
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I wonder how much this is hurting Microsoft's bottom line
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
Apple surpasses Microsoft, who follows?
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Looks like it's hurting Google and you, OS Reload
John Zern 4th Jun 2010
quite a bit., otherwise you'd be saying something usefull.

What's wrong, run out of excuses to make up?

LMAO! happy
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
kelbysj 4th Jun 2010
I would submit that Google uptake in private industries and organizations is even less than with the student set...save for kicking the tires. At least that's what our own and 3rd party research suggests.
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Maybe, but whichever way it goes Microsoft is the loser
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
@kelbysj

Google's offering uses surplus computing capacity (like Amazon offerings do) while Microsoft is being forced to add new capacity that will cannibalize their major cash cow (MS Office.)

Slowly but surely Google is driving Microsoft's bottom line into the red with minimal impact on Google itself.
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
OhTheHumanity 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload Dude, do you even read financial data at all? Please tell us how they are getting close to red with over $4 billion profit last quarter. They would need to buy a very heck of alot of servers to run through their profits and start eating the bottom line. But I know truth hurts you so I will let you keep your assumptions so your little heart doesn't break.
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Quickly and surely, OS Reload is making a fool of himself
John Zern 4th Jun 2010
OS Reload, you're not even in IT, or the industry for that matter, so how would you know how or what MS/Google/Amazon use or run for their data centers?

You sound more like a desparate man trying to fool people into thinking your own ship isn't sinking.

Sorry if people are smart enough not to want to jump on your boat. happy
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
bobiroc 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload

"Dinosaurs once ruled the world
@OhTheHumanit

But they died. ALL OF THEM"

Some evolved which is more than I can say for some of the commenters on here.
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@bobiroc
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
A very astute observation, even if self-depreciative.
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See, OS Reload, you telling another lie again
John Zern Updated - 4th Jun 2010
But they died. ALL OF THEM

And there is another one of your lies: If they ALL died, you couldn't be here making stupid statements, as you'd be extinct at the moment.

Come on, it's simple logic...Oh sorry, forgot who I was talking about...
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That's the problem OS Reload. For you
John Zern 4th Jun 2010
you just want to do nothing more then dance around and be noticed, by posting nothing of interest or relavance to these boards and blogs, just idiotic trolls, and you know it.

For you these boards are some sort of experience in which you probally get all excited by insulting and trolling hiding behind some silly screen name.

All I'm doing is showing you just how annoying you really are.

Now do us all a favor: Either grow up, or go home.
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@zern: Hope you're feeling better now
OS Reload Updated - 4th Jun 2010
I have a feeling that your bad temper bursts are having a therapeutic effect on you. That's good!

I guess you can stay after all, I'm all for helping people and I'm most glad to be able to help you by being the target of your therapeutic bad temper explosions.
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Then Google is fairly stupid.
Bruizer 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload
If they have that much surplus. Did they mis-budget their needs and are now over-paying capital investment costs?
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
tontoto 4th Jun 2010
The 'app killer' kind of contest on these stupid services between these competitors is horrible, and seeing this kind reporting on higher education makes me want to puke
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Wow
bobiroc 4th Jun 2010
Someone chooses a Microsoft solution and the conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork and claim that Microsoft paid off someone.

Either that or the make up crap on how Microsoft is doomed and will fail soon. Sorry I have been hearing that for 20 years.

I know some smaller school districts that are also leaving GoogleApps for Live@Edu and it has nothing to do with being paid off. I, like these other school districts, found that Live@Edu was easier to manage, offered more features, better integration with in house solutions already in place, and followed through with it's promises to deliver new features and better management.

Why can't just be that in this case the Live@Edu solution was the better fit. I am sure for some GoogleApps works better for and that is OK. People/Organizations are allowed to choose without the need to make up bogus claims about bribery or outrageous predictions about the doom of one company over another just because you hate company X and since you have no real input to provide you act like a troll and child and make such comments.
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Double wow
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
@bobiroc

Someone raises serious concerns about the financial viability (and motivation) behind this move by Microsoft (they are investing heavily in a product that cannibalizes the cash cow MS Office, don't forget) and you can't resist spouting your drivel completely ignoring the concerns that were raised.

Wow... and double Wow!
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
bobiroc 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload

Sorry your BIAS and hatred towards Microsoft makes your posts irrelevant. Sure MS Office makes money for Microsoft but their product also works very well for the many people and organizations that choose to use it along with other Microsoft products.

It is the fact that Live@Edu can work with our in house technology such as Office, Active Directory, Exchange, SharePoint, & Moodle that we chose it over GoogleApps. We tested both and found that Live@Edu was easier to set up and manage and offered more at the low low price of Free.

So until you can remove your Anti-MS glasses and see things with an Open Mind you will never be able to look at technology and find the best solution that fits yours or an organizations needs. If a Microsoft solution does not fit because of features or price then we look for alternatives and if you can find me a Solution that integrates as seemless as the Microsoft solutions we have in place when it comes to Email, Document Creation and collaboration, communications such as IM and Voicemail on the Desktop, Web, and Mobile side then I suggest you seek out some counseling for your hatred against Microsoft. It is just unhealthy to harbor in all those feelings. I do not go around criticizing people that choose the technology that they prefer or works for them unless they chose it just because it is NOT Microsoft.
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@bobi: More double wow
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
I can see that no only you refuse to address serious financial issues but you also keep on spouting your drivel.

I'm sorry for you and Microsoft, leaving the financial issues unaddressed will not make them go away you know. Those issues will keep on haunting you for years to come.
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
bobiroc 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload

What Financial Issues? Your claim that they are hurting for money or the fact that it costs money to use some of Microsoft's solutions?

In regards to part one of that statement I think Microsoft will be just fine. Are they the ultimate dominate force they were 10 years ago, no but that is a good thing as I like healthy competition. If it has done anything it woke Microsoft up and their solutions as of late are getting that much better from the consumer side to the enterprise side.

The second part I will address by saying while it cost some money to get most of our solutions from Microsoft they have been a good investment. Most of our users have had positive feedback since our Transition from Novell and GroupWise to ActiveDirectory/Exchange/SharePoint. They can work faster and easier and do not waste as much time. Can instantly share information in real time and collaborate and have meetings using live meeting instead of wasting paper and travel time. Since all these solutions work seamlessly together our users do not have to remember which app does what and usually in a few clicks can get the job done. So what we paid for in the Microsoft software has easily been made up in time and productivity. I know of 3 other schools in my area that spent the better part of 2 years "embracing" Linux and OpenSource and despite paying out tons of cash and wasting loads of time trying to get their "FREE" solutions from various 3rd parties to work could not. 2 of the three gave up and went the Microsoft route and were up and running in a month or so and the third is still struggling determine to make it work.
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@bobiroc: You misunderstood the nature of my concerns
OS Reload 4th Jun 2010
My concerns are about the financial sustainability of Microsoft's cloud offering.

You see, office on the cloud will cannibalize MS Office, but it's MS Office that is paying their money losing cloud initiative.

This cannot go on for too long, they hope they will be able to kill Google's office suite on the cloud and regain their monopolistic position.

Now imagine what will happen if Google survives (the most likely scenario.) Microsoft will change their strategy and their cloud customers will hurt, a LOT!
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
Rama.NET 4th Jun 2010
@OS Reload
"You see, office on the cloud will cannibalize MS Office, but it's MS Office that is paying their money losing cloud initiative."
Wha a crap, sorry to be harsh sounding, but your thought process is out of line. Cloud offering of Office will complement the desktop Office. Office is not limited to word, excel or powerpoint. It is more than that and no other office kind of program has that much of collaboration involved in any of their products. Now if Microsoft, it is moving towards that with Live and Unified communcations, SharePoint etc., can collaborate Office Live, Live@Edu, with desktop Office, that would be a killer and no other competitor could touch them in future unless Microsoft itself makes any bad move.
--Ram--
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Its up to google to fix their product and fix it fast.
Been_Done_Before 4th Jun 2010
Keep in mind though, many schools have MS already. They get MS discounts, so its not a price difference for them.

I would be interested to know how they got that many accounts accross the internet to a hosting site in just one weekend. When i converted our mail accounts to exchange 2007 from 2003, it took three full days to transfer 300 people. The only thing i can think of is that student dont have massive email boxes or they set cut off dates and archived the rest.
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
bobiroc 4th Jun 2010
@Been_Done_Before

3 days? Wow. We converted from GroupWise to Exchange faster than that for over 1200. I guess it depends on your mailbox size. Most of our staff are limited to 150MB and the rest is archived off but still can be retrieved from the Outlook Client.
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The thing with Google is
Cylon Centurion 4th Jun 2010
@Been_Done_Before

Their software for the price they offer, just doesn't compare with Microsoft. It's still relatively young and is stuck in a state of perpetual beta. Why would I deploy something like that?
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
fsmgroup@... 4th Jun 2010
It will be interesting how much of that savings, goes back into email archiving for certain faculity and administative users. Moving 500k accounts over a weekend, took aconsiderable amount of planning and a substantial amount of bandwidth. This was not easy by any stretch of imagination. As a mail host provider going on 15 years, with todays technology and increased network pipes, most certainly made the migration easier, not easy. Good for Microsoft, however I disagree with the author on this killing anything.
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I agree!
Linux Geek 4th Jun 2010
if it was not for the kickbacks, M$ does not stand a chance on merits.
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Google Apps vs Microsoft
ftricot 4th Jun 2010
The question is not if Microsoft or Google will win. I hope both will continue to invest billions in R&D and bring us better products cheaper.
I'm pretty sure that if Google adn't moved first, Microsoft would never have moved too.
The user/client is the clear winner.

When I let both compete in 2009 for my 2000 mail boxes (small but worldwide company), Microsoft was just 4 times more expensive than Google for less and without considering that I would have to update all my PCs with latest Outlook and Office version and with more RAM and time to do that, then it leaded to more that 10 times the price. So I moved from Lotus to Google. I still like & Microsoft but thanks to Google they are not in a monopolistic approach now.
Long life to Microsoft, long life to Google, and even long life to Lotus live. I hope they will all bring us innovation at reduced cost.
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Too bad for the students
@JoeTierney 4th Jun 2010
Wow. An anti-Google article from Zack - shocking! Microsoft's EDU can't touch Google Apps in terms of functionality. This is a big shame for the students although most of them will continue to use Google services anyway - they're simply better.

Microsoft's online services run on the 2007 server products not 2010.

Also - there was no killing, war, death, or destruction involved. We're talking about a school implementing a free email service.
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Contributr
RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
zwhittaker 6th Jun 2010
@PatKelly This is hilarious. Anti-Google, pro-Microsoft, yeah yeah. Have you seen some of my previous coverage? I think it's fair to say I have a deep loathing of all things Microsoft - but credit where credit's due.
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It's simple; Google Apps still sucks
hubivedder 4th Jun 2010
a... nd any University student wanting to enter the workplace with enterprise productivity skills needs to be well versed on MS Office.
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Contributr
RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
zwhittaker 6th Jun 2010
@hubivedder Totally agree. It's just with my job, I can't just write that as so and need to pan it out a bit more happy
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Microsoft Hatred is a Disease
sawengchuan 4th Jun 2010
Linus Torvalds: Microsoft Hatred is a Disease.

So, for all the Microsoft Haters, please quarantine yourself, don't spread the diesease out. The world is better without you.
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
storm14k 5th Jun 2010
Poor kids. They won't get to use Wave and the other substantially better apps and services provided by Google. They'll really feel cheated when they see the new wave of HTML 5 apps and have to chug along with Silverlight to have anything even slightly close to comparable.
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A GWBush-era-class conflationary puff piece
TriangleDoor 5th Jun 2010
"This is the pinnacle point in a series of high profile anti-Google Apps moves which could be a turning point in the company?s offering of their Live@edu competing service."

None of the sources linked out of this article say that Live@edu *replaced* Google Apps; they don't mention Google, or *any* also-considered alternatives, in any way. "The state education department for education has confirmed via Microsoft"? What, Kentucky can't issue its own press release? What, choosing one product among others is a choice *anti* the also rans?

To a credulous reader or propagandist writer, yes. If conflict-mongering fluff like this is what passes for persuasiveness to the "iGeneration," it's a generation falling over itself to line up for exploitation by hucksters.
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Excellent point
dfolk2 6th Jun 2010
@TriangleDoor
Good point. MS statements have no credibility and cannot be taken at face value to be accurate. See the "Get the facts" propaganda campaign MS had to terminate because they destroyed its credibility.
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Unbiased article?
shawshank1 6th Jun 2010
Just follow the money! How many Microsoft Adds are displayed along with this article? Do you think ZDNET has a conflict of interest here?
Shawshank1
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Unbiased article?
shawshank1 6th Jun 2010
Do you think there is a conflict of interest in this "Advertorial"? Follow the money...how many Microsoft adds do you see with this story?
Shawshank1
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RE: Biggest US cloud deployment kills Google Apps for Education
paulbee 6th Jun 2010
I am Constantly amused by all the people rooting for Google and displaying anti-MS bias.

Google is the company that has been illegaly gathering WiFi data from homes, they know who you are, they know where you surf, and they want to control EVERY arena of computing, squeezing out APPLE, MS, MOZILLA, and everything else.

Google offers you everything "FREE" at the price of using your privacy to get rich with advertisers.

Way to go Google....not!
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It's a no brainer really..
stevieg.org 21st Jun 2010
Let's face it - GMail is a competitor to Hotmail, NOT Microsoft Exchange. When MSFT offer hosted Exchange 2010 for *free* to Education, only an idiot says no.

If MSFT were only offering Hotmail then, yes.. I think Google would be making a lot more headway!

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