Collaborative Technologies and Outsourcing E-mail

Live@edu is a suite of applications - mobile, desktop and web-based - to help students collaborate on campus. The resource links below include the Microsoft Live@edu Main Page; Microsoft Live@edu FAQ; and Microsoft Live@edu Blog.

Google Apps Education Edition is email, calendar, and collaboration tools right from the browser. The resource links below include the Google Apps Education Edition main page with introductory information; Case Studies from higher education custormers; Google Apps Discussion Group for Education Edition (EDU Administrator's Circle); FAQ; Google Apps Education Edition Terms of Service Agreement; and Google Apps Education Edition Administrator Program Policies.

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

This session will discuss Northwestern University's recent investigation to determine which external vendor might be suitable to provide e-mail and other student collaboration services for our student community. The process included vendor review and hours of working through the institutional process to arrive at an acceptable conclusion.

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.