Google may launch more than one “fiber city” in America. This cyberinfrastructure project could will be a tipping point for a few lucky cities.
Tags: experimental network, Google, Network, internet access, Research, Internet2, Broadbandt, gigabit, high speed, trends,
Today small K12 school districts and colleges with less than 1,000 students are accustomed to accessing email around the clock. Email is habit forming at best and compulsive at worst. The digital economy proves funding in-house email services can be staggering. Hidden IT costs remain as budgets are slashed.
Annual IT costs to run legacy back-end email servers, software licensing including (anti-spam, anti-virus, filtering and backup) must run 24/7 from multiple vendors. Annual people costs include training and technical support especially in a high turnover environment.
Some legacy email solutions actually require a dedicated server that cannibalizes the CPU. They are not virtualization friendly. Think OpenText’s WorstClass FirstClass email server.
So what is the largest overlooked annual cost forgotten by IT and financial managers? Electricity. The cost to power all enterprise servers 24/7 can be rather shocking. The first time I collaborated on a private college’s annual budget I was surprised to learn total energy costs for just three buildings on a small campus ran above $260,000/year. Same rates apply for K12 districts with multiple buildings.
If your organization is running real industrial servers (1U or even 3U units) there are significant costs, regardless of rack, blade or tower servers. Many schools on tight budgets re-purpose legacy Pentium desktops into “servers” along with old, energy sucking CRT monitors. Not a good idea. Don’t be swayed by marketing and PR efforts for “green” servers because they run all day and still cost a surprising amount over a five year lease….you do lease your servers right?
Last year Google announced it would provide industrial strength email anti-spam & anti virus (Postini) to K12 schools for FREE. Act Now – Deploy later. Google’s offer ends July 2010
As budgets have been cut across the country for education, this is a smart move for many financially strapped school districts. Does it pay for a District to force taxpayers to pay for expensive, legacy email programs like FirstClass and Novell when cloud based solutions with robust feature sets are being embraced by K12 and Colleges around the country.
Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, education, Postini, anti-virus, K12, trends
Google has released their internal learning platform, CloudCourse under an open source license. Built entirely on Google’s own App Engine, CloudCourse is a new entry into a crowded LMS arena. CloudCourse provides calendaring, waitlist management and approval features.
To no surprise CloudCourse is fully integrated with Google Calendar. Google has also made CloudCourse customizable for schools by supporting service provider interfaces:
Sync services – Sync CloudCourse data with school’s internal systems
Room services – Schedule classes in school locations
User info services – Support for school profiles (employee title, picture, etc)
CloudCourse was built in Python and uses Django (web application framework) and the Closure Javascript library.
CloudCourse code site and wiki link
Tags: CloudCourse, open source, Learning Management System, LMS, education, python, django, trends
On top of introducing a new YouTube channel for Google’s Wave solution, Google is taking the “keep it simple stupid” approach to talking about Wave. Their first go-round was a two hour video….and in today’s short attention span economy – who had the time?
Tags: Google Wave, beta software, Collaboration, real-time, communication, test audience, limited preview, trends