Google’s AWESOME offer to K12 Schools

Act Now – Deploy later. Google’s offer ends July 2010

Google has been helping K12 Schools and Colleges save money by giving free access to their powerful tools in an enterprise setting.  Google began offering Gmail and have continued to add more tools to their suite specifically tuned for schools.  Known as Google Apps for Education (GAE) this collection provides an excellent solution for schools just as most technology budgets are shrinking…or should I say…being slashed to the bone.

To no surprise Gmail has been a hit with schools.  In 2006 Arizona State University was one of the first colleges to migrate to Gmail.  They moved 65,000 student email accounts saving over $400,000 in ANNUAL related email costs.  Since then more higher education institutions including Northwestern University (case study) and Notre Dame (moved 15,000 students and 150,000 alumni and saved $1.5 Million) have migrated to Gmail.

For Students, Faculty and Administrative staff, GAE has grown to include 7GB of individual email storage, integration with GoogleCalendar, GoogleDocs (word processing, spreadsheets and presentations) and GoogleSites (websites and wikis) for web publishing.  Google has even added 10GB of storage to their Google Video offering.  These tools provide a tremendous savings for schools who can retire in-house or expensive outsourced systems.

From Good To Great:
A necessary email-related tool schools need is anti-spam and anti-virus protection.  And Google has recently responded with an AWESOME offer for K12 Schools that’s too good to pass up:

Until July 2010 K12 Districts can migrate to Google Apps for Education AND receive FREE anti-spam/anti virus-protection via Postini

Postini is a popular (Google owned) industrial strength anti-spam & anti-virus solution.  And Google is even offering deep discounts on email archiving, malware protection and web filtering for K12 Districts as part of Postini.

In today’s economy hundreds of under-funded K12 school districts are moving to Gmail as a permanent replacement for those expensive, legacy solutions from companies like Novell and WorstClass FirstClass.  Google provides free GAE infrastructure tools for School IT Administrators and Google’s Sync is available to K12 IT Administrators to links contacts and calendars for popular mobile devices including Blackberry, iPhone and Android smartphones.

Still not convinced?  Take a moment and learn about ASU’s Gmail conversion:

How much does email cost your school?  Its expensive and ultimately costs are passed to taxpayers or student tuition.  By the way, what sliding scale fee does your school annually pay for a campus-wide Microsoft Office license?  GAE kills two birds with one stone as Google Docs is a free replacement for Office.

Act Now – Deploy later. Google’s offer ends July 2010

Related: Top Ten Reasons Schools should move to Google Apps.

Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, education, Postini, anti-virus, K12, trends