Contributed by Organizations or Campuses; Articles, Papers, and Reports; Collaborative Technologies; and E-mail and Messaging

As more colleges move to Google or Microsoft, institutions start to consider the educational implications of the shift.

Recently a diverse committee of Berkeley campus leaders met with representatives from Google and Microsoft to explore the Google Apps for Education and Microsoft Live@EDU service offerings and to determine if these vendors' offerings in the areas of mail, calendaring, and web based file sharing are a reasonable alternative to UCB running these services locally (via the current CalMail, WebFiles, and CalAgenda services).

In addition to examining the benefits and drawbacks of outsourcing campus messaging services, such as email and calendaring, to one of these vendors, the committee also explored their associated collaborative tools offerings, such as collaborative writing; social bookmarking; photo, audio, and video sharing; and mapping, which may also be of considerable campus interest.

This is the report from that committee.