The University of Arizona and Pima Community College are dumping their in-house student e-mail and switching to free Google Gmail.
The UA expects to save $100,000 to $150,000 a year in equipment purchases by outsourcing student e-mail, said Derek Masseth, senior director for infrastructure services at the UA.
Old and outdated servers can be retired because Google will store messages on its own equipment, and information-technology workers can be reassigned to other projects, Masseth said.
The payoff for Google is thousands of potential lifelong users of Google products. The schools set out to outsource their student e-mail systems, but they say Google Apps Education Edition has more to offer.
"Google also provides a bunch of other features that students are going to love," said Chris Bonhorst, IT systems architect at PCC. They include an online calendar, word processing, chat and shared files for group projects.
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PCC freshman Stephanie Doyle said the features are exciting but will take some getting used to, especially for students who aren't computer whizzes.
PCC had received a lot of student comments about changing the old e-mail system, which lacked the ability to forward mail to a student's personal account, Bonhorst said.
Students who attend both the UA and PCC will have two accounts, and maybe more if they also have a personal account or one through a job, but they will be able to merge them all in one mailbox.
The UA is moving more than 38,000 active student e-mail accounts now. Problems have slowed the process, but the move should be complete by the end of the year, Masseth said.
PCC will move its 180,000 accounts at the end of the year.
Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and Maricopa Community College already use Gmail. "Higher ed in Arizona is all Google," Bonhorst said.
Both the UA and PCC will maintain in-house systems for faculty and staff members for now.
