College Migrates to Google Apps for Education
By Chris Karlesky
Reminders of the boom in computing and mobile devices are seemingly everywhere across the Franklin & Marshall campus. Professors and administrators conduct meetings with iPads at their fingertips, while students often take their laptops to Steinman College Center and Hartman Green. Cell phones have given way to smartphones, and personal computers are faster, sleeker and more powerful than ever.
Many people have multiple devices, presenting a challenge: how do you synchronize important information—including email, calendar appointments and documents—across them all? The College is answering the question with a campus-wide migration to Google Apps for Education (GAE), a suite of communication and collaboration applications designed for academic communities. GAE provides email, calendar and online document sharing, and by the end of July will replace the College’s current Zimbra email platform and Meeting Maker calendar system.
“The beauty of it is that Google Apps allows me to have the same information on all of my devices, including my smartphone, iPad and computer in my office,” said Jon Enos, associate vice president for information technology and chief information officer at F&M. “Google keeps track of what you’re looking at, regardless of which device you’re using.”
Google will host services at no cost to the College while providing better service, Enos said.
The College’s migration to GAE was a recommendation of the 12-member Collaboration Services Working Group that convened in September. The group includes members from Information Technology Services (ITS), the Office of the Dean of the College, the College House administration, Athletics & Recreation, Career Services, the Business Office and Advancement Services.
Chris Swisher, F&M’s director of desktop integration and support and a member of the working group, is visiting departments across campus to help individuals make the transition to GAE. He says several hundred members of the F&M community are now using Google Apps for their email and calendar functions.
The College has launched an online guide, including a sign-up link, to help people make the transition to Google Apps. Following the migration, F&M webmail accounts will be accessed through Gmail rather than Zimbra. The move to Google will more easily allow the College to institute “Email for Life,” an initiative announced by President Daniel R. Porterfield last fall to allow alumni to maintain their F&M email accounts for life.
Apple Mail, an email application, will continue to serve as a mail option for the F&M community, although ITS recommends that people use the web version so their email, calendar and documents are all in one place.
“Our current suite of email, calendaring and document collaboration has become increasingly difficult to support and does not fully meet the needs of members of the F&M community,” Swisher said. “Meeting Maker doesn’t sync to different mobile devices, and a limited number of people use it. We think Google Apps is much more user-friendly. All of the primary services are available from one interface.”
Swisher said many of F&M’s peer institutions have made successful transitions to Google Apps, including Bucknell University and Haverford College.
Meeting Maker has been the College’s calendar service since 1990. Approximately 300 members of the F&M community have Meeting Maker accounts, while only 150 are active users. The College’s email service has been based on the Zimbra platform since 2008. Although Zimbra includes document sharing, F&M only uses the email feature.
“Google Apps gives us collaborative tools we’ve never had before,” Enos said. “Multiple people will be able to edit a document as long as they can access the Internet.”
