Google Apps and Microsoft

[Bruce551]

When Arizona State University, one of the nation?s largest with 65,000 students, decided last year to choose a new e-mail system, it had concerns about the security and privacy of student information and messages stored on Google servers. ?It?s like the virtue of banks over mattresses,? explains Adrian Sannier, the university?s chief technology officer. ?You feel like keeping the money in your mattress and defending it with your own gun is the right thing to do.? But Arizona State decided that Google, with all its expertise, could do a better job than the university?s own technology department.

Microsoft, Mr. Sannier notes, also offered free Web e-mail to Arizona State, but for an online service the university decided Google was the smarter choice because the company is totally committed to Web software. ?We saw Microsoft as a company that is divided on the issue of cloud computing,? Mr. Sannier says.

The university?s switch to Google-hosted e-mail has gone smoothly, and Mr. Sannier estimates that the school is saving $500,000 a year by not handling e-mail itself. Students, he added, also get more than e-mail. They have access to Google Apps, and thousands of them, he says, now use Google?s Web software for calendars, word processing and spreadsheets.

See url for full article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html

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