Brian you raised a great point.

There was an article on the November 2011 issue of “The Atlantic” magazine named “Hacked” (pg 100) which describes the perils of housing data on the cloud.  It’s not all bad but there are serious issues of responsibility, access and support <there isn’t a Google phone number that I know someone can call for support> that need to be well thought out before making the leap.  It’s good to note that there are about 1 million Google accounts that are hacked yearly.  Not necessarily Google’s fault but how do one recover from that if you happen to be one of the “lucky” ones?

Until recently, there was no way to retrieve data that was deleted from any Google Applications.   If that could change, then perhaps other fears could be alleviated as well in due time after some headaches. 

At the end of the day, it’s good to recognize that there are no free lunches and that in a digital world “free” should not be measured in dollars & sense alone.

Firm.

The point is that the contracts have that pesky “Google may change the terms of this agreement at any time” clause which makes any discussion of their policies or procedures moot.  They can do whatever they want at any time.  The contract means nothing so long as that clause stands.

Best,

Brian,

Your example is incorrect. We use Google Apps for their groups and since other schools have “Gone Google”, we’ve had a few issues with conflicting accounts and other things. We opened up a ticket with Google for the problems and they said they had no control over the other school’s accounts and could not make changes.

This was the response:

“Unfortunately I cannot proceed to touch any domain if is not the admin itself to tell me explicitly to do it. I hope you can understand this policy as this is for protecting our customers, I guess you would not be comfortable if someone open a case to us asking for deleting a user in your domain.”

Jamie

I was just at an ADUC meeting in which Tom Davis spoke on this very issue a few days ago.  It was fascinating how strongly the non-IT staff insisted that nothing be changed regarding MSU’s email offerings.  “Absolutely no change” was the mandate.  I feel for ATS.  They’ve got half the population demanding better services, and the other half insisting on zero change.

The breadth of Google’s offerings is very compelling, and growing all the time.  MSU will not be able to keep pace with those offerings. Yet, we have no control over the service. Google may change anything at any time without consulting us.

Example:  A faculty’s account password is compromised.  The account is required for that faculty to access email, shared project documents, and to attend meetings.  Spammers use the account to distribute thousands of spam.  Google rightly disables the account.  What process does this faculty have to recover the account?

As time goes on the chasm between service offerings will increase. I see no solution at this point, but the pressure will continue to increase with time.