Last winter break I migrated our entire school from our aging Exchange 2003 Server to Google Apps for Education. Google Apps for Education is essentially the same service as Google Apps for Business except it has the added bonus of being totally and completely FREE to educational institutions. Forever.
The financial reasons for adopting this new platform are obvious, but how do I feel about the adoption of GAfE six months later?
Really good actually. I've saved the school money already by eliminating the need for purchasing another server. I have no more patches, security worries, backup or configuration concerns. Every single person on campus is using the same interface whereas before I had a half dozen different email clients plus the exchange web access to deal with- support calls for email have gone way down.
Remote access has become a no-brainer. Google docs makes sharing and collaborating easy for everyone on (and off) campus. The calendaring is as good or better than anything Exchange ever offered. And while I have kept this a guarded secret; it is entirely possible to use Outlook with Google Apps in an entirely seamless way- you honestly can't tell the difference from an end user perspective. So the few users that have a need for it (scripts that call Outlook for sending emails for example) can still use Outlook without a hitch.
My only advice to someone considering migrating away from Exchange to Google Apps for Edu/Bus is to do a very small and very short test run with a select group of users. Do not attempt to do a phased migration or a long drawn out testing period. I might advise that you use a gmail account yourself for a month or so an explore all it has to offer and discover it's quirks.
While it is possible to do split delivery (some emails for a domain go to google and some go to your exchange server) it's a configuration nightmare and frankly not really worth it. If I had to do it over again I would create a few accounts on the new Gmail server and forward emails from the exchange server to the new accounts. That would be the extent of my testing/ focus group.
After maybe a week of that I would just jump in with the transfer. Google has amazing tools that makes migration very quick and painless without any emails getting lost and they do have very good email support as well (phone support not so much). Read everything you can on the google support site and have a written plan so that you don't get lost along the way.
Make the announcement, do short training intro session(s)- and just jump into the transfer late on a Friday afternoon if you can. Remind people that their accounts will be available right away but that it may take some time for all of their old mail to show up (Get ready for lots of questions about folders/labels or be sure to cover this in the intro sessions).
Despite the occasional headlines about Gmail being down, it is a very reliable service. I've not had a single problem with it that lasted more than a few minutes and not many of those. For those concerned about backups and retention retirements there are reasonably priced services available to backup and archive Google Apps Gmail to a searchable and recoverable database.
For and educational institution it is hands down the correct choice. I can't say if it would be worth it in a business environment however I suspect that if you run the numbers Google Apps would come out ahead of an in house Exchange server.
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