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Recommendation to Migrate St. Olaf College Email and Calendaring to Google Apps for Education

Executive Summary

St. Olaf College has maintained a reliable, cost-effective email system for over a decade utilizing free, open-source email server software and email clients. However, we have not been able keep pace with growing demands for email storage, nor have we been able to offer reliable webmail service. Further, we have struggled to offer a economical, full-featured, and widely-accessible calendaring solution.

Our new email and calendaring system solution must be cost-effective and must provide reliable access, expanded storage, comprehensive language support, a feature-rich web-based interface, robust email attachment support, and integrated email, calendaring, and collaboration features. IIT has investigated several alternatives (including Google Apps for Education, Groupwise, Exchange, Zimbra, and new, open-source systems). Google Apps for Education (GAE) is the only solution that meets, and in some cases exceeds, each of these goals. Many of our peer institutions have undergone similar reviews, and have found GAE to be the best choice for their enterprise-class email systems.

We recommend migrating St. Olaf College's email and calendaring systems to Google Apps for Education. Users will appreciate expanded quotas and attachment sizes, reliable access from all over the world, integrated and easy-to-use calendaring and chat, and an improved webmail experience.

Analysis of Goals with respect to Google Apps for Education

• Cost-effective: GAE is free, allowing us to reallocate operating costs currently spent on anti-spam appliance and calendar software licenses; future capital costs associated with additional servers, storage, and backup; and staff time spend managing and supporting the current email system. See Appendix B for details.
  
• Non-proprietary: Google allows importing and exporting all stored data from their site, so we can always get at our data.
  

• Reliable access: GAE offers anytime, anywhere, reliable access to email and calendaring, including via the web and on smart-phones (e.g., Blackberries).
  

• Expanded storage: GAE offers 6 gigabytes of email storage (and growing); we currently provide 1% of that.
  

• Comprehensive language support: Gmail and other Google applications are designed from the ground up to support numerous languages
  

• A feature-rich web-based interface: Gmail and other Google applications are leading edge in their features and usability; search capabilities are especially superior
  

• Robust email attachment support: GAE supports attachment sizes of 20MB; we currently allow 5MB attachments
  

• Integrated email, calendaring, and collaboration features: GAE supports email, campus-wide comprehensive calendar sharing, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, GoogleTalk (Chat), Google Sites (Web Publishing), and Picasa Web Albums (image manipulation and sharing).
  

• Other:
• GAE allows us potentially to provide life-long alumni email addresses in the future.
  
• GAE allows St. Olaf to offer a personalized "portal" page for every user.
  
• GAE utilizes St. Olaf's existing username and password; no separate username and password are required.
• GAE is ad-free for St. Olaf students, faculty, staff, and emeriti; ads are displayed for alumni.
  

Analysis of Community Survey

In March, 2008, IIT surveyed students, faculty, staff, and emeriti about our current email system and desires in a future email/calendaring system. Detailed results of the community survey are included in Appendix A, but in summary:

• Survey respondents find room for improvement in our email and calendaring systems, in particular, increased storage for email, increased attachment sizes, an improved webmail service.
  
• Integration of email and calendaring with smart-phones (e.g., Blackberries) is not widely desired but is a critical function for a small number of community members.
  
• Gmail is the most used non-St. Olaf email system; over half of respondents use Gmail and 93% of them are very satisfied with it. Respondents who use other email systems are much less satisfied.
• 14% of students already forward their email off-campus, of whom 86% use Gmail.
• Google Calendar is the most-used non-St. Olaf calendar, with very high satisfaction.
• 94% of respondents were comfortable with the privacy of email and calendaring hosted off-campus, as long as the provider can meet St. Olaf's privacy standards.

Feedback from Institutions Already Converted to GAE

All institutions we spoke with are pleased with their migration to GAE. User response has been very positive, though users do experience an adjustment period of about two weeks before becoming comfortable with the new environment.

Feedback from Campus Information Sessions

In May and June, 2008 we offered eight all-campus information sessions, several small-group sessions, and had many individual conversations with faculty, staff, and students to discuss Google Apps for Education. Eighty-two (82) people participated. Overall response was very positive; privacy, security, and ownership of our data were the main concerns raised. Responders were pleased by the increased email storage, with the ability to access their email from all over the world, and with the integration between the different Google features (especially email and calendar).

Implementation Timeframe

We will discuss the Google Terms of Service and Privacy Policy with our legal counsel. If contract language can be developed to meet our data privacy and security needs, we will roll-out GAE on a beginning in the fall. Students may migrate at any time. Faculty and staff may migrate during a convenient period of the department's or office's choosing. It may make sense, especially for administrative offices that use shared calendars, to migrate as a group rather than individually. All migrations would be complete by May 31, 2009.

Issues

In our discussions with the community, the following issues arose that are not immediately solved with GAE in its current stage of development. These are things have submitted to Google as future product enhancements.

• To Do Lists
  
• Visual differentiation of event types within one calendar
• Ability go group calendars (display/hide a set of calendars as a group)
• More convenient availability to check availability on the quarter-hour
  
• Delegated Contact maintenance
  
• Ability to turn off grouping messages as conversations
  
• Better support for scheduling groups of people
  
• Default "do not put invitations on my calendar" to prevent Calendar spam
• Handling of Control-P or File > Print to print an email message
• Google Docs support for footnotes and endnotes
• Setting start and end times for vacation messages
  

Google is constantly enhancing its applications and has several of these already on its development roadmap, so many of these likely will be addressed in the near future.

Changes for the Community

• Users will go through an adjustment period while they become comfortable with the new system. (This will be true for migrating to any new and different system.)
  
• The web interface to St. Olaf Gmail will become our recommended email client, though anyone who wishes to continue using Thunderbird may do so with only minor configuration changes.
• Google Calendar becomes the campus standard calendaring system.
• GoogleTalk becomes the campus standard and recommended Instant Messaging system, though anyone who wants to use other applications (e.g., Meebo) may certainly continue to do so.

(July 17, 2008)

Appendix A: Detailed Survey Results

On March 11, 2008, we solicited feedback from the St. Olaf community (faculty, staff, students, and emeriti) on our current email system and desires in a future email/calendaring system. Response rates were 35% for students (1050 out of 3040) and 35% for faculty and staff (335 out of an estimated 935). Thirteen (13) emeriti also responded.

• 49% of respondents are satisfied with our current email inbox storage.
  
• 53% of respondents are satisfied with our current email folder storage.
  
• 29% of respondents are satisfied our 5MB email attachment size limit.
• Among respondents using one of St. Olaf's email systems (total exceeds 100% because respondents may use more than one email system):
• 79% use Roundcube (40% satisfied)
  
• 84% use SquirrelMail (57% satisfied)
  
• 55% use Thunderbird (76% satisfied)
  
• Among respondents who use a non-St. Olaf email system (total exceeds 100% because respondents may use more than one email system):
• 56% use Gmail (97% satisfied)
• 37% use Microsoft Mail (57% satisfied)
• 31% use Yahoo Mail (67% satisfied)
• 19% use AOL Mail (37% satisfied)
• 17% use another email system (many of them .Mac) (75% satisfied)
  
• 54% of respondents were satisfied with Meeting Maker, though 28% of respondents (381 people) claim to be using it (and we know fewer than 100? actually do).
  
• Among respondents who use a non-St. Olaf calendaring system:
• 31% use Google Calendar (93% satisfied)
• 8% use Yahoo Calendar (53% satisfied)
• 8% use Microsoft Live Calendar (51% satisfied)
• 6% use AOL Calendar (27% satisfied)
• 13% use another calendaring system (mix of paper, Mac iCal, standalone Outlook, and Palm Desktop) (88% satisfied)
  
• 46% of respondents desire to share their calendars with others.
  
• 38% of respondents desire their email or calendar accessible on their phones.
  
• 64% of respondents desire a system that integrated document sharing, instant messaging, social networking, photo sharing, and video sharing.
• 79% of students felt positive about maintaining a St. Olaf email address after graduating.
  
• 94% of respondents were comfortable with the privacy of email and calendaring hosted off-campus, as long as the provider can meet St. Olaf's privacy standards.
• 14% of students forward and manage their email entirely off-campus. Of these, 86% use Gmail.
  
• 380 Comments were received:
• 31% of comments explicitly recommended Gmail as St. Olaf's future email system.
• 30% of comments complained about problems with St. Olaf's current webmail systems (SquirrelMail and Roundcube)
• 21% of comments complained about problems with small attachment sizes and/or limited email storage space
• 3% of comments expressed a desire for a St. Olaf email address after graduation (alumni email), though many of these comments were related to short-term needs (for some period after graduation, not permanent).

Appendix B: Detailed Cost Savings

Google Apps for Education is free. By implementing GAE, we save:

• Staff Time
• Reduced .25 FTE in E-mail Sysadmin Administration
  
• Reduced demand on HelpDesk staff
• Reduced time troubleshooting spam appliance problems
• Reduced time supporting the Meeting Maker calendar
  
• Reduced time backing up and recovering email boxes
  
• Licensing Costs (savings starting in fiscal year 2010)
  
• Anti-spam Appliances Savings: $4,000/year
• Meeting Maker Savings: $8,500/year at current number of users
  
• Servers and Storage Costs
• Server and Storage Costs for GAE and other solutions (to cover all campus users for email and calendaring)