1 more reason to use Google Edu Apps: Storage of any file type

Regular readers will know that I've had really outstanding experiences with Google Apps in my organization. We're quickly migrating away from desktop productivity suites for many of our users and the built-in communications tools are serving us well. Google has promised much greater fidelity and richer editing facilities in 2010. However, if you needed another reason to roll out Apps for your school or organization, how does a gigabyte of cloud-based storage for any file type sound?

As ZDNet's Sam Diaz reports,

Over the next few weeks, Google Docs will expand to allow users to upload any type of file - music, photos, graphics, zip files, and more - into their accounts. The file size maxes out at 250 MB and there’s a minimum 1 GB of storage space included with the account.

Although there are plenty of files bigger than 1GB floating around out there, this will cover the majority of our file sharing needs. It also means that students can't claim that the dog ate their homework or their flash drive. While students are already storing essays, presentations, and the like in Docs, now they can store images, websites, zip files, CAD drawings, whatever, and share them with peers and instructors.

Add to this the growing ubiquity of smartphones and mobile devices capable of dealing with a variety of file types an interacting with Apps and you have quite a platform for students and teachers to access any data, anytime, anywhere.

The new functionality hasn't hit my domain yet - we should see it within a week. And while free online storage isn't exactly a game-changer, the integration of such storage within a complete cloud-based groupware suite is new. Your users may not be able to figure out FTP or keep track of their flash drives, but most of them know how to upload a file to the web. Thanks again, Google!