Yale Switching To Gmail, Not Without Opposition 439
PwnSnake writes "While it makes sense for small (and large) corporations to move to Gmail, something seems amiss when a top private university decides to hand everything over to Google. Although most in that community seem to welcome the change, several organizations on campus have joined forces to call for a transparent process and get students and faculty thinking about the downsides of the switch. The problem is choice (users can already forward mail to Gmail; it doesn't make sense to force that option and not have a backup or opt-out mail server)."
University IT thinks it's 1994 (Score:5, Informative)
News flash: you'll never make everyone happy. (Score:3, Informative)
Open University also switching (Score:2, Informative)
Re:News flash: you'll never make everyone happy. (Score:5, Informative)
It includes requests for more information on such things as where the data is going to be stored, why Google is 'generously' providing this service free of charge and without advertisements (i.e., how much privacy/rights do you have with your e-mails)
Privacy concerns for Google apps in general are addressed here:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762 [google.com]
It always amazes me when people talk as if people are Google are casually browsing through your email, gossiping about your personal secrets.
Re:chillaxinate, broheims (Score:4, Informative)
You're just making up what Google does with that data.
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=60762 [google.com]
Re:Having gone there... (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
We did this (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a higher-ed institution that's in the Big Ten. We recently provided GMail on campus, to all faculty, students, and staff. It was a remarkably easy transition for us to make. Here's how we did it:
Opt-in.
Really, that was it. We said, "Here's the GMail system that we arranged through Google and the University. If you want to move to GMail, please do - here's a link to make that happen. If you prefer to remain on the existing University email system, that's fine, we aren't taking that away and we're still committed in supporting the University system."
It's worked out well. As of last week, our overall adoption rate is 26% across faculty and staff (I don't have the student numbers) with several colleges and departments already at 100%. Overall, students opted in very quickly. Our outliers have been staff and faculty - this is likely because moving to GMail is a change, and change can be scary. (Note you can use the web interface, or access GMail using POP/IMAP.)
It's not entirely opt-in, though. Incoming students are not given an option - they'll be issued a University GMail account by default. The goal is that over the next 4 years, we'll gradually have all student accounts move to GMail automatically. (But as I said, students tended to opt-in very quickly.)
Re:Buzz? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe someone better informed than I could say whether or not if using Gmail corporate services would also expose you to randomly-applied 'great ideas' such as the screwup that is Buzz?
In a word, No.
When my university moved to GMail, the central IT folks get to administer the university GMail system. [Disclaimer: I work in our central IT, but am not part of the GMail team, although I am in the same overall unit.] That means the university central IT gets to choose what new add-ons our users get access to. So, central IT gets to be the gatekeeper for new stuff that appears in Labs, or new bolt-ons like Buzz. In our university, I believe we use a pretty vanilla GMail. This is (mainly) to help with support issues, but privacy concerns like Buzz probably play into this too.
Incidentally, it's the same with corporations that use GMail, IIRC. Except in that case, the corporation is paying $$$ to Google to be hosted on GMail. But the corporate IT staff still manage the featureset for things like Labs and Buzz.
Re:Same but... (Score:3, Informative)
Google's IMAP implementation is horrible, to the point of only barely being usable.
Um, no? I have 3 Gmail accounts all accessed through IMAP and they all work perfectly and always have. Making a blanket statement about an entire implementation is completely groundless. YOU may have problems, and I know it would suck, but GMail works perfectly fine for 99% of people.
Re:University IT thinks it's 1994 (Score:3, Informative)
When you sign up for your own @gmail.com account, you give up ownership of your email. It's in the use agreement.
Can you quote the exact part of the TOS / privacy policy that says this?
The closest I can find is:
http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS?hl=en [google.com]
11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.
... and the GMail privacy policy further limits what they say they'll do with your messages.
Re:This is the real world of research (Score:3, Informative)
I feel duty bound to mention RFC4217 FTP/TLS. FTP's biggest problem is that firewall vendors hate it.
But for transferring large files point-to-point, you can't do better than rsync over SSH -- with its ability to resume partial transfers.
Re:reasons why gmail isn't the best idea (Score:1, Informative)
If you think you can install a (reliable) 12TB storage array for $10k, you probably aren't an IT manager with a background in managed storage.
An entry level IBM DS4700 or EMC Clariion with 12TB of storage will cost you closer to ten times that much.
Sure, you could shove a bunch of 2TB SATA drives in a cheap whitebox case and share it out via iSCSI using OpenFiler. That's great for your home lab or small workgroup that is tolerant of downtime.
However, the reason that external storage arrays are so expensive is that they contain enterprise features like redundant power supplies, multiple fibre channel connections, dual storage processors, etc. You can literally perform rolling firmware updates by updating the storage controllers one at a time, so the entire array stays up during updates. Ditto for replacing fibre adapters, power supplies, etc. You won't be doing that for $10k.
Yeah, SAN hardware is expensive, but the RAS (Reliability, Availability, Servicability) just doesn't exist on the whitebox $10k solutions.
Performance is going to suck flaming hog balls on your cheap whitebox solution that is limited to the speed of your single SATA backplane or single gigabit ethernet adapter.
Sorry pal, but if you think at $10k 12TB storage array is the right solution for your student body, then I'm glad I don't go to your university.
Re:reasons why gmail isn't the best idea (Score:3, Informative)
Google is not open on what keywords they search on,
True.
nor do they place any limits on what they will use the results for.
False. The privacy policy is quite explicit about what they will use the results for.
I am absolutely shocked that a university would risk the students this way.
Except that it's been noted (since I wrote the GP comment) that for Google Apps, including Google Apps for Education, email data is not mined, so that's all moot.
Re:Same but... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Amazing really (Score:3, Informative)
Having also attended graduate school there, I was shocked and dismayed by the childish and incompetent atmosphere in Yale's IT services. Prestigious the university may be, but the IT facilities they provide for students are dismal. That Yale ITS are still unable to effectively manage an email system, to the point where it has become easier to cut them out of the loop entirely, comes as no surprise to me. Back in my time, email was accessed via Pine on an overburdened and often-inaccessible Sun machine (minerva.cis.yale.edu anyone?) that was run by some of the most unprofessional people I ever had the displeasure of encountering. Basically, they ran things like they were sysops at some penny-ante BBS.
Compared to my undergraduate experience, at a state school which was (and remains) on the cutting edge of technology, and where the IT infrastructure was effectively and professionally managed, it was a real eye-opener.
You're probably thinking of Berkeley. Yale does have a CS department (not a big one), and there are some smart cookies there, but the smarts seem pretty well contained within the academic sphere.
Re:Amazing really (Score:3, Informative)
At many schools there is not much relationship between the CS department and IT, or more accurately, the relationship is often hostile. Years ago when I was at Stanford in spite of the presence of an excellent CS department IT was antedeluvian.
Re:reasons why gmail isn't the best idea (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a system analyst for a major community college network. Most of what you say is not true. Many of the privacy concerns have been ironed out with other schools, and if they aren't already reflected in Google's policies, schools can choose to negotiate additional things with Google (access to the bulk data, audits of account access, etc..). And being a leader like this, if it ever did get out that Google was reading sensitive research data (or anything for that matter), it would destroy their reputation. You'd have schools jumping ship left and right.
I'm not sure how large your school is, but we now have 600,000 accounts and rising. Keeping up with spam, people trying to hack accounts to send spam from us, backup and storage space and duration, etc etc, while still manageable, isn't simple. And lets face it, it is hard to give students cutting edge functionality when it isn't your primary business like it is for Google.
If we add up support contracts on storage arrays, the software and servers (mostly sun, sun java messaging), few staff for it, backup storage and media, etc.. it isn't a small amount.
And moving to an external email system like Google does not in any way prevent the more paranoid from either setting up their own email server, or encrypting their email, or any number of other options. If a school decides to send class information, instructor correspondences, billing information, or other official business, it in no way forces someone to only use that one account for all aspects of their life, it would just be official school emails.
About the only concern that schools have that have researched this, is down time. But looking at things objectively, Google's down time is pretty small, certainly not much more than our own internal down time. We also have other messaging systems (chat, forums, etc..) so its not like the world would grind to a halt:)