On May 6, 2009, the Academic Computing and Educational Technology (ACET) committee approved the recommendation to move our Mirapoint email service to Google Apps Education Edition. Google Apps Education Edition provides a hosted suite of communication and collaboration tools to higher education institutions for free.

A team consisting of faculty, staff and students reviewed the current email offering, Mirapoint, and evaluated the offerings from Google and Microsoft. The email review committee unanimously selected Google Apps Education Edition to replace the Mirapoint email service at Binghamton University.

Google Apps Education Edition will provide services to the university community beyond email. Gmail will provide larger mailboxes, allow for larger attachments to be sent, spam and virus protection, mobile access, voice and video chat, and the power of Google Search in Gmail.

The communication suite of apps include: Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk. The collaboration suite consists of: Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Video. Google provides a safe and secure environment for faculty, staff and students with a guaranteed uptime of 99.9%.

Microsoft Exchange users will not be affected at this time.

A fall 2009 implementation is planned.