google apps or MS live@edu?

[reggiep]

So I am tasked with swapping out our current email solution for staff with a new one but I have no budget!
So I have taken a look at bot live@edu and google apps.
I can see pros and cons on both sides.
For example you can suspend an account in apps but not on live@edu.

Does anybody have an opinion on this?

PS I am using zimbra for our students but I don't want a large chunk of my time taken up looking after staff accounts on zimbra as I am not sure how I could restore my backups if i ever had to! the students are told that if there was a disaster they are not guaranteed to get their mails back.

[plexer]

Watched a presentation by a guy from Microsoft yesterday and he touched on the live@edu setup and I thought it looked good, appears to offer more than just owa on a standard exchange install.

Have you spoke to the MS education account manager for your region with the concern over not being able to suspend accounts? could you not just change the password on the account?

Ben

[reggiep]

Watched a presentation by a guy from Microsoft yesterday and he touched on the live@edu setup and I thought it looked good, appears to offer more than just owa on a standard exchange install.

Have you spoke to the MS education account manager for your region with the concern over not being able to suspend accounts? could you not just change the password on the account?

Ben

I don't have a MS account manager!
I did think about the password change option but then the user doesn't get any info about their account being locked and I don't get a list of suspended users.

The MS offering does look more powerful than the google one but it also seems to wander off into a lot of pages of ads.

[plexer]

There will be a MS account manager covering your area.

Ben

[plexer]

Maybe Ray Flemming from here could put you in touch?

The guy that presented to us yesterday was Phill Allen.

Ben

[p858snake]

I don't have a MS account manager!
I did think about the password change option but then the user doesn't get any info about their account being locked and I don't get a list of suspended users.

The MS offering does look more powerful than the google one but it also seems to wander off into a lot of pages of ads.

i thought i read somewhere that google disabled all ad's on their edu app accounts?

edit: opps sorry, misread that as google displaying the ads on their not ms.

[plexer]

There shouldn't be any ads on the MS one either they told us yesterday that there is no revenue stream from it apart from possibly getting you to pay for more support options.

They just needed to be in the markey like google.

Ben

[eean]

I think you also need to look further than email. Both are offering some really cool educational tools. e.g.
MS - Sky drive with 25gb online storage with document sharing, plus online versions of word etc...
Google - Allow 10 users to edit the same document at the same time.

What you don't get with either provider is things like message filtering or the ability to control (i.e. look at) user's mail boxes that you would with a locally hosted solution. Google lets you do some of this with an add on but then you're looking at a fiver per person per year.

[plexer]

Message filtering in what way? spam/viruses?

You can use scripting and powershell with the live@edu service.

Ben

[reggiep]

Can they both stop double posts as well plexer?

[eean]

Didn't know that @edu was scriptable. What does that allow you to do?

Both offer some spam filtering and their own virus scanning.
I mean, with the online tools, you don't seem to have that fine tuning/control that you have with a local system. e.g if you wanted to stop/allow certain people emailing other people, or prevent certain users seeing the global address list. That kind of thing.

[tmcd35]

My God Ben 1 dodgy powerpoint presentation from an M$ rep (who couldn't even demonstrate a working IM client) and you're sold!

Personally I thought they had an air of desperation about them. Trying too hard to compete with Goolge Apps and Google Wave.

[eean]

Have you seen the 'attempt to be funky' promotional videos on the website? Now that's desperate!

[plexer]

My God Ben 1 dodgy powerpoint presentation from an M$ rep (who couldn't even demonstrate a working IM client) and you're sold!

Personally I thought they had an air of desperation about them. Trying too hard to compete with Goolge Apps and Google Wave.

Hehe fair enough didn't get chance to say hello.

It's not because of his powerpoint to be honest I've just been looking at the MS site and of course they are always going to promote their stuff as the best etc...

To be fair he did demonstrate a working im client which isn't too hard it was the integration with the video conference/meeting bit that was a bit strained not having anyone to talk too.

I also thought his "mobile phone" was a bit big

However compared to the support we get on the LEA supplied emails systems I think live@edu could be a winner.

Ben

[tmcd35]

Hehe fair enough didn't get chance to say hello.

Actually didn't noticed you'd arrived tbh. Then again I got to talking to Mark from Oriel about SoftXpand.

I also thought his "mobile phone" was a bit big

Agreed his lappy was pants compared to my iPhone

However compared to the support we get on the LEA supplied emails systems I think live@edu could be a winner.

Must admit I was sitting their thinking that. The only part of his talk I actually woke up for. I'm waiting to see how Fronter E-mail works out but I think either Google Apps or Live@Edu may be better solutions.