Beginning this spring and continuing through this summer, DePauw University will transition from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for Education.
Last December, Information Services recommended moving DePauw's email and calendaring system from GroupWise/Tigermail to Google Apps for Education. This recommendation came as a result of a yearlong study to identify the best next steps in improving our email and calendaring system. After careful consideration and approval by the President’s Cabinet, as well as expressed support by the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC), we have decided to move forward with this transition.
Google Apps for Education is a free suite of hosted communication and collaboration applications designed for colleges and universities, which includes email, calendaring and several integrated collaboration tools (Google Docs, Sites, voice and video chat). Adopting Google Apps as our campus email will enable us to provide rich, robust and flexible email and personal calendaring, while reducing overall costs for providing these services.
Google Apps Transition Timeline
We will be following a two phase approach to the transition:
Phase I (spring and summer 2010)
Students, faculty and staff members transition from GroupWise/Tigermail to Google, focusing on Email, Calendar and Contacts
Phase II (October 2010 and following)
Further exploration and increased support for the additional tools offered by Google Apps (e.g., Docs, Talk, Sites, Chat, etc.)
Throughout, Information Services will offer demonstrations and workshops to help everyone smoothly make the shift.
Detailed Timeline
- January – March -- Early adopters / Beta testers
- March 1 – All faculty, staff and students can begin using Google Apps at DePauw at their own pace
Anyone at DePauw can begin using their DePauw Google Apps account and start copying their GroupWise contents to the new system.
- May 1 - Google Apps becomes DePauw’s primary email system
All incoming/outgoing email to/from DePauw will go through Google Apps instead of GroupWise. From this date forward, everyone must use Google Apps as their primary email account, but GroupWise will still be available to copy email and calendars to Google Apps.
- May – September – Copying GroupWise contents to Google Apps continues
Everyone continues copying email and calendars from their GroupWise account to Google Apps
- October 1, 2010 -- GroupWise server is shut down
Everyone must have copied everything from GroupWise into Google Apps by this time.
- Details about the recommendation
A printable document spelling out the project in detail is available HERE.
If you are interested in exploring more about Google, you can find lots of information at Google Apps for Education.
If you have questions
About the Project - contact Carol Smith, clsmith@depauw.edu
About using Google Apps at DePauw - contact gapps@depauw.edu
Tiny link to this article: http://tinyurl.com/depauwgoogleapps
