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Tech Tip | Miami Mail coming this winter

Randy Hollowell, IT Services

Miami is partnering with Google to provide faculty, staff, emeriti and retirees the Google Apps for Education, including Gmail to manage email accounts, Google Calendar and a range of other Google tools. The new system brings many benefits, including an extraordinary 25-gigabyte quota per individual for storage.

Faculty, staff, emeriti and retiree email will be moved from the current Exchange system to Google Apps for Education this December, during Miami's winter break.

"As part of the recent Support Services Implementation Project (SSIP) efforts, IT has been reviewing all software applications to determine where changes can yield significant savings," said Debi Allison, vice president for information technology. "By using Google Apps for Education, we can free up internal resources for more pressing technology projects that benefit the university as a whole."

Faculty and staff Gmail accounts will not include advertising and will not be "mined" for data like standard Gmail accounts, according to contractual obligations. Individuals may use almost any email client, like Outlook or Mac Mail, to access their Google account or they can use the native Google web mail. Gmail is also accessible via most mobile devices like smartphones or tablets.

The actual moving of the email and calendar data will be performed by IT services, with the assistance of the vendor partner Promevo. There will be some small tasks that faculty and staff will want to do before the move and those will be clearly communicated in the coming weeks.

Open forums to discuss this change took place several weeks ago, and additional sessions are planned for all three campuses soon. A website (www.MiamiOH.edu/GoGoogle) is continually being updated, and will offer specifics on the open forums, and detailed information regarding the migration.  Please check this site often for updated information.