Perhaps someone who has all the details can reply. What is the end goal
of a possible MSU Google contract agreement?
If the goal is to be fiscally conservative by adjusting the services
provided by the mail.msu.edu team then your criteria is going to be
different if you are interested in strengthening stewardship which is
one of the strategic imperatives of Boldness by Design.
Does the end goal provide better service to
students/faculty/staff/retirees/MSU extensions? How would that service
be different from what we are getting now?
Would it be possible to keep all the threads of this discussion together
so that someone who joins this conversation late can follow along?
Below are all the replies thus far.
Thanks.
Firm.
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Ray Hernandez
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2007 8:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] google wants msu.edu?
On May 24, 2007, at 4:35 PM, Lounds, Victor wrote:
> Is this horse dead yet?
If this horse isn't dead yet, can someone put it out of its misery?
I don't see how having google manage our email is going to solve some
kind of magic problem. If all anyone really cares about is having an
MSU front-end to google's *existing* service then use one of the
438743982743 hacks to give google that MSU look.
You can have google now, why do we need some kind of special back
door dealing with them? Anyone can sign up for a free account. Right
now I tell people to email me at my MSU address and it goes to gmail.
When I send mail from gmail, it appears to people to be coming from
my MSU address.
So what does having google in our machine room buy us? Nothing that
we don't already have. I don't see why MSU needs to compete with
service providers. Scrooge McDuck always said, "Work smarter not
harder." Hell if these places want to provide free services, I say we
exploit what is already there.
I don't see the need to enter into an unnecessary agreement with a
company who's interests have nothing to do with our own. In fact I
would say their interests are questionable if they are so excited for
universities to jump on board so badly that they will give away the
milk for free.
I say they can have msu.edu when they pry it from our cold dead hands.
--Ray
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Brian Martinez
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 8:07 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] google wants msu.edu?
Victor,
This is a dangerous topic for me to be touching... Is that an eggshell I
see
over there? *steps carefully by it* Needless to say, eggshells abound
or
not, this horse is not dead.
A few members of ACNS met with Google just the other day, I don't think
that
is too big of a secret. Google called upon many universities and
colleges
around Michigan to join them at their compound in Ann Arbor. Google
does
have some great features, even as a systems administrator for
mail.msu.edu I
regularly use GMail and I have been using their services for over two
years
now. Of course the price tag is very attractive like you said.
There are many, many factors to take into consideration that everyone
seems
to not think about when they hear how great the service is and how much
everything is going to cost in the end ($0.00 in the short run).
I don't have all the details of what Google is putting on the plate as I
was
not at the meeting, but I did get a general run down from my boss who
may
choose to follow-up on all this later (if he is already busy typing a
response as I'm typing this one). Its an exciting prospect, I have to
admit. When he came back from the meeting and told me what he told me,
I
thought "That's it, we're going to Google."
There is a principled approach to take when thinking about all this.
Its
not just dollars and cents. Its dollars and _sense_ as they say! There
is/has been major concern over who owns the data. Do we potentially
outsource only students? Or do we potentially outsource faculty & staff
too? Google assures us that the user owns their own data. We still
maintain a very small semblance of control. So you potentially could
outsource everyone/everything.
Lets go back to those principles I was starting to dig into (lots of
sentence fragments coming up here)... Suppose we do it. Outsource
email.
For everyone. It costs us nothing. Users own their data. The
university
saves whatever amount of $$$ by no longer funding the mail.msu.edu
project
and everything is going along smoothly. (remember I don't have all the
details, nor is there even a initial contract to look at) Google makes
a
change to their policy that we don't agree with. What do we do? 1)
We're
under contract for another X amount of years, therefore 1a) We take it
to
court to get out of the contract. 1b) We wait it out and cross our arms
and
pout the whole time until the contract expires.
Say that either one of those two options happen. Then what?? We just
axed
the funding for the primary email group. Lets say a significant amount
of
time has passed and the people we had maintaining our email servers in
the
past no longer are up on the new technologies. We somehow have to find
money and training to get back on our feet! We somehow have to find a
way
to migrate all of our data back! Would Google even let us do that
(presuming for a second that the policy change was that now Google owns
the
data and not the user)??
We actually had a lengthy discussion about this at lunch today with some
other coworkers. One fella pointed out that Dell is having to deal with
this exact issue right now with bringing their Support Desk back from
India.
You have to somehow maintain a concurrent level of existing service
while
somehow migrating things back to your control. It would be an
incredible
mess, and something that most people don't think about when they hear
$FREE.
Back to more principles. What we are getting with our free service is
not
the right for Google to provide ads. They aren't making money on ads
(well
they are, but...) what they are making money on is compiling demographic
information. And selling that information outright. At least this is
the
potential. Again, remember I'm lacking exact specifics.
What about new students? What about people who don't like GMail or
Google?
They'd have no choice but to accept it. Will Google allow them to
forward
their email to Yahoo!? Who knows. What if someone is choosing between
our
school and another school, and they find out that we only provide GMail
as
an option for email, and that eats them up so much inside they choose to
go
to another school?
To sum up this long email, the possibility exists that email will be
outsourced. It might not be to Google. It could be to anyone! Even
UMich!
(HA! Think about that one, especially if UMich outsourced email ;)
This
horse is very much alive, and I think we are going to spend a good chunk
of
this summer trying to figure it out.
As someone who works for the mail team, I encourage more discussion on
this
topic! Because as it stands what I do for a living is on the line (I'd
still have a job elsewhere around the dept. (I'm told) so no worries
there).
We definitely need more insight into what our customers think, and since
the
majority of you on this list are our technical customers who have an
insider
view of policy and principles around here, I'm sure we will find this to
be
quite an engaging topic.
Cheers.
./brm
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Lounds, Victor
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 4:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] google wants msu.edu?
Is this horse dead yet?
If not let me pull out my waffle bat... Ok let be realistic the thought
of them hosting our email scares everyone but we all like the services
that they provide including the Docs/Spread/Calendar. Its kinda like
Exchange (which we support) without the extra zero(s) before the decimal
point ;-) But would it be a far-fetched idea to have several g-boxes
hosted here with a MSU front-end with g-mail behind the scenes?
(my arms are tired now...)
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