Once mailbox access has been granted to someone they will be able to easily flip between their own mailbox and the one that’s been delegated to them.

Macquarie University, is home to approximately 35,000 students and 5,500 members of staff. The beautiful 126 hectare of park-like campus is an ideal setting for discovery and learning. Located within the high-technology corridor of Sydney’s north-west, Macquarie University graduates are highly sought-after. Macquarie University is one of Australia’s leading research universities, it is a dynamic, flexible and engaged university committed to excellence in research, teaching and global citizenship. Formed in 1964, the University prides itself on being enquiring, open to new ideas, new ways of thinking and new ways of ensuring a sustainable institution.

Business Need

Macquarie University have been providing a number of email systems for staff with the main system being a Novell GroupWise system. The GroupWise setup catered for approximately 80% of staff with the remaining 20% on a variety of other systems and provided email service to staff since 2005. With approximately 5,500 users, the Novell GroupWise system spanned over 29 GroupWise Post Offices. Beneath this impressive email infrastructure ran a well managed 8 Node Novell NetWare cluster.

In 2007 Macquarie University migrated the entire student body over to Google Apps for Education. With staff and lectures on GroupWise and students using Google Apps, managing multiple systems became a very costly undertaking.

“The main issue for Macquarie University was to remove the costs and complexity of managing multiple email systems and to consolidate on one system” – Norbert Attard, Technology Project Leader at Macquarie University

Solution

With a large student user base already happy on Google Apps, the choice was obvious. Macquarie University decided to migrate away from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for it’s staff users.

Marc Bailey CIO at Macquarie University says:

“Success at cloud-sourcing email depends entirely on two factors beyond feature/benefits, namely out-of-box experience and consumer confidence. Cloud Technology Solutions delivered Macquarie University the best possible impression of our new system from the very first customer click. Combined with a great project team, some intense planning, training and communication, we were able to engender the confidence needed to rapidly reach an adoption tipping point, then smoothly proceed to completion”

Migrating staff would have been an extremely complex process as the users all took advantage of calendars and scheduling, along with maintaining contact information within the GroupWise address book. The University did not have the option to simply move to a different email system, as it did with students, it needed to migrate everything, email, calendar, chat and contacts.

Cloud Technology Solutions

Cloud Technology Solutions were the migration partner of choice to provide assistance and support with the Cloud Google Migrator, the market-leading migration tool widely used to migrate organisations to Google Apps from Novell GroupWise. The tool allows entire organisations of any size to migrate to Google Apps efficiently and with no downtime. As the Cloud Google Migrator had proven ability to migrate to Google Apps and supported email, calendar and contacts, it was a perfect match for the Universities requirements.

The migration was smooth and efficient. Simultaneously running the migration tool on 8 Dual Core 4GB workstations, Macquarie University seamlessly migrated all 5,500 users from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps for Education over the course of a few weeks and with no data loss.

“Cloud Technology Solutions were invaluable in helping us migrate our staff to Google Apps. The migration tool itself was excellent and meant we reduced our migration time by about 30%. Where any problems did arise the support response was first class”

Benefits

Currently 8 million students, faculty and staff at educational institutions around the world are using Google Apps, so Macquarie University are not alone.

Google Apps for Education now provides the entire campus community, including students, faculty, staff and alumni all the tools they need to communicate and collaborate more effectively. Providing over 7GB of email storage per student, Google Apps for Education delivers all the email and collaboration needs of Macquarie University.

“Cloud Technology Solutions Google Migrator allows organisations to seamlessly and easily migrate legacy email platforms to Google Apps significantly reducing the cost of running an IT department” – Steve Kaye, CEO, Cloud Technology Solutions

To learn more about how we can help your organisation Go Google, please contact us now.

For a PDF version of this document please complete your details below.

$list_name = ‘casestudydl’;
$download_file = ‘cts-macquarie-case-study-may-2010.pdf’;
require ‘/home/cloudsol/public_html/wp-content/custom/download_form.php’;

Gartner reckons that 20% of the worlds corporate email will be in the cloud by 2012 and to be sure, Google will be a, possibly the, major player in that space so its right to be interested in developments whether you are a small business or a corporate giant.

The key point of this post though is not why or when you go Google but how.

I’ve had very disparate feedback in terms of how differing organisations aim to tackle the prospect of moving their organisation to this new platform. It has ranged from “I’ve used Gmail for years and I’m not anticipating any problems” to addressing the elephant in the room at big corporates with 2 year worth of analysis and study. Both extreme and both wide of the mark in my opinion.

There are of course a lot of options in between, but the ones least likely to succeed are the ones that don’t prioritise training and support at the very top of the agenda. The worst case is ‘customer revolt’ (and remember this could go all the way up to board level) and even best case is not satisfactory which is a serious delay in personal productivity amongst the users. The latter despite the fact that Google offers free, class leading help for users utilising all forms of media. That’s not the point though.

The point is that it doesn’t matter how easy it is to step on the Google bus and drive. Its different. And different means change and the management thereof.

So at the risk of teaching granny to suck eggs etc I’ve put the following guidelines down, aimed at IT Management/HR as a proven way of adopting Google and ensuring a rapid decrease in the time it takes for the end users to maximise their use of Google Apps.

Don’t worry! This approach shouldn’t delay or cost an inordinate amount of money!! For more information on our approach please go to http://www.cloudsolutions.co.uk/main/why-google/which-apps/how-to-go-google/ where you’ll also find links to referenceable and useful templates to get the job done easier.

ASSESS

the existing costs of the following; Messaging, Collaboration, Docs and Spreadsheets, Intranet development, email servers, backup servers, storage and tapes, SPAM, Anti Virus, administration, support and management salary costs etc.
Ask yourself who will be the agents of change within your organisation, hereinafter referred to as ‘Google Guides’! More on this later.

PERFORM

a total cost of ownership study over a 3 year period comparing the platforms you are considering and your existing legacy system. Also complete a Return On Investment study.

CONDUCT

a user survey to determine the use of messaging and processes they currently have adopted. If you haven’t already, determine who the ‘power’ users are. You should have completed a technical audit of servers, comms and software associated with delivering your existing messaging and collaboration platform.

SELECT

the most apt size of Pilot Program for your organisation. We recommend up to 10 users for a network of up to 500 users and spanning up to 50 users for much larger enterprises. These pilot users will become your Google Guides. So what does the ideal Google Guide look like? They may be a power user of your existing system but they must be adaptive to change and understand the benefits that the new system will give the organisation. They will represent a segment or more of your organisation (not necessarily by management) and will have an in depth understanding of the systems, processes and hidden protocols of your unique organisation.

This is the vital step. By mentoring the Google Guides from a technology standpoint you will equip them to mentor other users such that the new technology embeds in to your internal systems, processes and protocols and you will maximise rapid take up and so realise massive functional benefits in productivity.

SELECT

Any additional software that is required such as blackberry integration, microsoft integration, any migration tools needed etc etc (see http://www.cloudsolutions.co.uk/services/your-next-step/).
Start the Solution Supplier Selection process.

BUILD

your case for change and submit. Develop company training plan.

DECIDE

on the level of support required external to the company and agree SLA’s with suppliers.

MONITOR

end user satisfaction regularly via intranet and monitor performance of suppliers.

SIT BACK

and bask in the glory!

Steve Kaye