Trinity College Dublin is one of Ireland’s oldest universities, possibly the oldest, but it hasn’t stopped the organisation moving with the times.
It may have been founded in 1595, and is ranked 13th among the top world’s higher education establishments, but it has, nevertheless, decided to embrace Google Apps in Education. The latter’s main features are Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Talk.
One of the reasons for switching over to Google was because the university authorities felt it offered ex students the chance to maintain contact with the university. Often when students leave, they also leave behind all what they found beneficial while studying there, including fellow students and lecturers.
By maintaining this contact, it was felt that all parties would benefit. Not just that, since many of the students would already be using Google and, therefore, they would be familiar with all that the infrastructure offered.
What’s more, as Google’s system is a cloud computing system it enables the university to streamline its own IT services. The previous IT structures were found limiting not only for the current students but also for the alumni they wanted to service.
Furthermore, it seems the IT department was under constant pressure to invest in more hardware but the cost was huge, if not prohibitive. It was also proving difficult to maintain a proper spam filter system as well as keep virus software up to date.
Speaking with static.googleusercontent.com, John Murphy, IT Director at Trinity College said: “The new system has been embraced by our students and we’ve achieved cost savings associated with labour and operational efficiencies…”
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