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.
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.