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Google Apps helps Swedish University overhaul email and save over 1 million Swedish KronorThe InstitutionLinköping University, recognised as Sweden's sixth university in 1975, is one of the most respected universities in the country. Differing from the traditional academic organisation, Linköping is divided into four separate faculties, each of which embraces a strong culture of inter-disciplinary learning. It is Linköping's approach to collaborative, cross-subject study, as well as its entrepreneurial spirit, that has earned the university a strong reputation as a leader in education, both nationally and internationally. ApproachOver the past few years, students at Linköping have been conducting more and more of their studies online. Because of these changing work habits, they have increasingly demanded more from their university email, including remote access and more storage. To meet the needs of its 26,000 students, as well as a staff of 2,000 and faculty of over 300 professors, Linköping needed to reassess its legacy email system. In October 2005, Linköping reviewed the cost and staffing resources necessary to keep the system up and running. Not only did the system require nearly 100% of a full-time IT staff member's time, the majority of students weren't using it. Yet Joakim Nejdeby, CIO for Linköping University, was disappointed by the lack of flexibility in many of the available alternatives for educational institutions. Solution
When Google launched Google Apps Education Edition in November 2006, Nejdeby immediately recognized that it was a flexible solution that would go beyond simply replacing email. "By adopting a 'software-as-a-service' model, it was obvious that much more could be achieved, and that email was just the start of what we should be looking at," explains Nejdeby. "With Google Apps, we were not only able to provide an email solution with benefits that far outweighed anything else we had considered, but we were able to really start changing the way our students interacted with our IT systems, making better collaboration more of a reality than ever before." According to Nejdeby, the ability to add new applications immediately with no upgrade or implementation costs is a major advantage. "With other solutions, any new application would involve large amounts of time in testing, implementing and managing any subsequent user bugs and issues -- not to mention the initial software costs," says Nejdeby. "With a fully hosted service such as Google Apps Education Edition, all of this is simply removed and handled by Google directly for zero cost." Once the decision was made, Nejdeby set about migrating 26,000 students to the new system. The university set up an initial pilot, and when users responded positively, Linköping opened up voluntary sign-ups. Over 2,000 students adopted Google Apps in the first day alone, shortly followed by another 10,000 students over the summer months. In November 2007, when all Linköping users had migrated to Google Apps, Nejdeby finally turned off the legacy email platform. Students and staff greeted the change with enthusiastic feedback, and were especially pleased with the increased email storage and search functionality. Now all new Linköping students are set up with Google Apps Education Edition accounts, providing them with a robust, well-supported suite of products for their studies. ResultsBefore implementing Google Apps, email maintenance was one of the primary costs for Linköping's IT department. Now, the university is saving more than 1 million Swedish Kronor that can be redeployed to other IT projects. Though Linköping originally chose Google Apps for its robust and flexible email solution, according to Nejdeby, "The addition of Google Apps has meant much more to the university than just an email platform replacement. The Gmail capabilities alone would see the project deemed a success, but with the additional products, including Google Docs and Calendar, we have been able to incorporate it as a critical part of our student IT ecosystem." Nejdeby believes that Google's reputation for innovation gives Linköping a competitive advantage over its academic rivals. "Students are becoming more tech-savvy than ever before, and will often look at the IT services a university can offer them before deciding on where to study," he says. "In adopting Google's Apps, we are not only aligning ourselves with a global leader in IT, we are also providing students with what they want. The appetite of students to use systems that they are already familiar with, rather than what is being forced upon them, leads to a far better user experience that reflects positively on the university as a whole." Nejdeby has big plans for future use of Google Apps at Linköping. He intends to apply the time and resources saved in email software and administration towards a project that includes creating student and lecture email work groups and virtual collaboration teams, which could gather to work on specific assignments and then re-form. "This will see a huge step forward in the way that students approach different aspects of their courses, making it easier, and more fun, to work with new people and new departments, and aiding them with their studies -- making the process more student-centered," he says. About Google Apps Education EditionGoogle Apps Education Edition is a free suite of hosted communication & collaboration applications designed for schools and universities. Google Apps includes Gmail (webmail services), Google Calendar (shared calendaring), Google Talk (instant messaging and voice over IP), Google Docs (online document creation & sharing) and a Start Page for creating a customizable homepage on a specific domain, as well as administrative tools, customer support, and access to APIs to integrate Google Apps with existing IT systems.
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