A Texas university that started off in 1903 as a Christian college recently decided to switch to Google Apps for Education.
The university itself was started by two Christian preachers who saw the need for a higher education establishment in West Texas. Since those heady days Abilene Christian University is now home to no fewer than 4,700 students studying a range of subjects from Psychology to Pre-Medicine.
Why did the university switch to Google?
“We were disenchanted with our current email system,” said Kevin Roberts, the university’s Chief Information Officer.
Kevin added: “Then the department’s email administrator position became vacant, and that added even more urgency to our search for a new solution.”
The IT department carried out a comparison with other providers but in the end discovered that the Google Apps for Education system offered the best collaborative options. However, even then Kevin Roberts was unsure.
He said: “It sounded too good to be true. There had to be a catch.”
Of course there was no catch, which meant that the decision to migrate to Google was a very easy one to make.
Kevin Roberts added: “When we saw the tremendous functionality Google Apps included, the sceptic in me was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Could we really save all those dollars and get a better system?”
The decision to move was also made in part by the experiences of users. It seems many of the staff and students were already familiar with Google Mail and other applications, so moving to a cloud computing solution on their recommendation offered greater confidence.
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