The Facts: The Office of Information Technology recently announced that students’ e-mail accounts will be hosted by Google beginning in fall 2010.
Our Opinion: The change to Gmail truly has no negative repercussions and will surely simplify students’ campus experiences.
The Office of Information Technology, OIT, recently announced that Gmail would begin hosting all student e-mail accounts as of fall 2010. OIT is now letting students sign up for beta testing of the e-mail hosting service, which should go online for all students about July 1. When OIT originally announced the choice of Google for e-mail hosting, many students raised concerns about the negative changes it could bring, despite the myriad new opportunities Gmail opens. The concerns have been adequately addressed by OIT and students should take comfort in the thorough approach the University has taken to the transition. For a few examples, students were concerned about e-mail ownership and anti-virus protection. The e-mail is merely being hosted by Google and will still be completely owned by students during their enrollment. As many students who already have Gmail know, Google offers award winning anti-virus and anti-spam protection, standard. The user interface is improving and the inter-connectedness is obviously enhanced’ -‘ principally due to the wide-ranging applications Google offers’ -‘ with the transition. But the savings in no longer having to locally host the content and in outsourcing our anti-virus and anti-spam is important. Not only will the University save $60,000 per year in server management, it will also free up the administrators who have, in the past, spent the majority of their time on server maintenance; they will now be able to work on OIT’s many other projects. This change is unequivocally a major upgrade for students. They will receive all the benefits of Gmail and still have the professionalism of an ncsu.edu e-mail address. The days of running out of quota are over, unless students can fill a 7-plus gigabyte Inbox. Until that beautiful day when students will finally be freed of Squirrelmail, they should consider signing up for the beta testing phase and help OIT work out any kinks in the system for the full transition during the summer. If not out of service then out of self-love’ -‘ saving yourself the tormented hours of yelling at defenseless monitors on campus. ‘
