The
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has negotiated an agreement with Google that makes
Google Apps for Education available to the 189 K-12 and higher educational institutions in Maryland that are members of The Maryland Education Enterprise Consortium (MEEC). Google Apps, which is free for educational institutions, currently provides email, documents, group pages, chat and other products to over eight million students.
UMBC served as the lead institution working with MEEC to broker the deal with Google, and will be the first campus in the University System of Maryland to implement the Google suite of products under the new contract. The University worked with MEEC, the Maryland Attorney General's Office and Google to develop a contract that can be used by any MEEC member.
UMBC's decision to migrate to Google came after engaging in conversations with students, faculty and staff.
"We began this early last fall. We brought technical expertise to the table, so that as the legal team had questions about the language of the contract we would provide our input. We provided context for the Attorney General's Office," says Mike Carlin, UMBC assistant vice president of IT.
"As we discussed options for outsourcing email with students, they overwhelmingly recommended Google because it works exceptionally well with their mobile lifestyle," he continues. "UMBC will immediately set up the 3,000 new students enrolling for classes this fall on Google email and will provide the 10,000 existing students with the option to convert their accounts over to Google in late August 2010. By the start of the spring 2011 semester, we anticipate having all students moved over to Google."
UMBC also licensed Google Message Security, a secure, hosted service that provides enterprise-grade spam and virus protection and email content filtering, under the contract for use with the University's existing email infrastructure for faculty and staff this fall.
MEEC members are under no obligation to switch to the Google Suite, Carlin explains. "They are free to continue using their current applications or migrate to Google.
Source: Mike Carlin, Univeristy of Maryland Baltimore County
Writer: Walaika Haskins