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google apps or MS live@edu?

reggiep

By reggiep
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reggiep

reggiep

Posted
Posted

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. :o

plexer

plexer

Posted
Posted

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

reggiep

Posted
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Posted
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.

p858snake

p858snake

Posted
Posted (edited)
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.

Edited by p858snake
plexer

plexer

Posted
Posted

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

eean

Posted
Posted

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.

eean

eean

Posted
Posted

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

tmcd35

Posted
Posted

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.

plexer

plexer

Posted
Posted
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

tmcd35

Posted
Posted
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 :D

 

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.

plexer

plexer

Posted
Posted

I was late :)

 

Apparently his "mobile phone" is normally a netbook instead of that laptop.

 

It's all well and good saying you have all of these communication features available when you've got one device per person but I would think that multiple people sharing pc's and laptops as in school is whole different ballgame.

 

I'm going to look into moving the school generic accounts over to live@edu ones I think.

 

I didn't realise until yesterday that fronter didn't have an email solution with it.

 

Ben

jhiggins

jhiggins

Posted
Posted

Just to clear a few things up about Google's service. My school switched from Exchange to Google in Feb and we have been very happy with it.

 

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 does give you the ability to login to other user's mailboxes through a service called "OAuth", where, if enabled, you have a secret code you can use in the password field.

 

Some Google cons:

 

  • User manager for >250 users could use some work (no search option, only 30 users per page, etc.)
  • Sharing Documents does not allow sharing of organizational structure. So if you share 50 PDF docs, you can organize them into folders for each user
  • No mail folder sharing like Exchange, where we had Professors sharing certain mail folders with teaching assistants, now that is impossible.

 

Pros:

 

  • Spam/Virus is excellent!
  • We have students from 10 languages and all are supported
  • Google Apps Outlook Sync!
  • Uptime is great, the 1 time we had a problem they have a great site informing you of the problems and expected resolution
  • Great Troubleshooting/Help site with list of known issues and work arounds
  • Google Labs!
  • Once you get used to them, they are great: Labels, Conversations
  • Sync with ActiveDirectory/LDAP
  • Supported easily by mobile devices

 

There are probably more to add to each list, but those were the ones I thought of. Let me know if you have any questions about our experience with GApps. I can't really comment on the live@edu solution, though.

  • Thanks 2
RichCowell

RichCowell

Posted
Posted

I've looked into moving to Google's email service a couple of times...

 

@ JHiggins - Sync with ActiveDirectory/LDAP - doesn't that have to go through a 3rd party and end up pretty expensive charged on a per-user basis? That was one of the things that put me off...

tmcd35

tmcd35

Posted
Posted

It's all well and good saying you have all of these communication features available when you've got one device per person but I would think that multiple people sharing pc's and laptops as in school is whole different ballgame.

 

Surely the whole idea of Hot Desking and Active Directory is that all contact details follow the profile not the computer. The Network/USB phone/headphones should have it's number automatically reassigned as a user logs on.

plexer

plexer

Posted
Posted

It depends on where the users data is stored really especially when you are looking at all the emails, attachments, documents, voice mail files etc...

 

If it's in house then it's the management of that.

 

Sure I think everyone should have all their stuff available no matter what location or device they are using.

 

Ben

rayfleming

rayfleming

Posted
Posted

I've been away for a few hours, and come back to find somebody drawing me into this conversation...

I'm not going to dive too deeply into this, as I'm not an expert, but I can pass you along to someone who is.

 

We have mainly promoted this service to colleges and universities, because schools are guided to choose a service which has met Becta certification, which neither of the services do as they stand - they all require additional filtering services adding. So for schools use, we have been concentrating on working with the RBCs and LEAs to build a solution for school use, incorporating Live@edu into an appropriate solution. (Which is what London did when they announced their move to Live@edu last year - details here)

 

In terms of considering a choice between Live@edu and Google mail, I believe that the majority of education users (colleges and universities) in the UK have made the choice for Live@edu based on:

  • Data storage within EU (to comply with Data Protection act and Becta guidelines). This doesn't just apply to email, but any cloud-based service. We have to setup a specific data centre in Ireland to host the UK's Live@edu customers, rather than using our normal 'anywhere in the globe' data centre model
  • Integration with existing identity management (eg sharepoint).

 

(Becta Information Security info is here)

 

You may want to talk to your local authority/RBC to find out their future plans before making a jump yourself. PM me if you want me to get more info, and I'll put you in touch with the right person.

  • Thanks 1
nadeem

nadeem

Posted
Posted

I've actually deployed a Live@edu solution which I believe is now actually branded Outlook Live

 

I did consider Googe but in the end went for MS partly because of the fact that as Ray pointed out MS guarantee the use of servers in the EU.

 

The other considerations were, the skydrive (25GB), the fact that we get Word onlne (as opposed to something that can save as .doc), OWA is very nice, etc

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