live@edu vs google

[apearce]

So i'm doing some research into the whole live@edu vs google apps to see what the benefits of both are. Are you a user of either of these? If so what do you like and dislike about them?

 

Cheres

Alex

[IrritableTech]

We're currently doing the same. Thinking about replacing our LEA email with one of these for either our school, or our trust.

 

We're at the start of our journey, but so far it seems Google is easier to manage 'out of the box' but live@edu is more customisable once you've got your head around powershell.

 

I like skydrive, it's space and excellent office web apps, and outlook would be the easier option for staff training (we already use owa). Google apps seems to hold more opportunity for development (sites, blogs, youtube, Piccasa etc.). GA seems to be a more exciting tool, and has been around a lot longer. LDAP integration seems better documented on GA.

 

I posted the same question on twitter a couple of days ago. I'm waiting to talk to someone from Norfolk who have now moved over to GA. 150,000 accounts I'm told. One of my questions to this person will be what assurances from google did you get that this service will be maintained and continue to be free?

 

There are a number of posts on here discussing the merits and migrations of schools. Do a search to kick you off...

[edutech4schools]

You can setup Google Apps for Ed for free and without it causing any issues with your current settings. You don't need to change any dns or MX settings to try it out. I would go to the GA for Ed site and sign your school up. That way you can have a play.

 

If you like it you can setup mx records and dns directors so the system can replace your current setup.

[IT_Man_Dan]

We too are looking into moving away from LEA email and going to either live@edu or Google.

I had a chat to people on both stands at Bett.

 

Google Apps looks good but I don't feel it's what we're looking for at the school. I spoke to one of the developers who assured me that Google apps for Education would remain free.

 

Live@edu looks good. At the moment I'd look at using the live outlook and I like the look of skydrive. My concerns are about how this is changing regarding Office 365 as the person who I spoke to thinks certain things would be chargeable and not included in our EES agreement :-(

 

I've sent an email off to Microsoft asking about the changes and what costs might be involved. Depending on the outcome we might be looking at Google again :-)

[CyberNerd]

Some of the things that I noted when testing Google apps vs Live@Edu. We settled on Google and have been running for about 18months.

 

Google apps has FAR more services that are useful for schools - Picassa, Google sites, Apps, 3rd party apps, there is a huge list if you search.

Live@Edu is mostly email based - office 365 will integrate more features but some of these will be chargable.

Google apps has better active directory integration and synchronisation for an existing domain

Google apps has better collaboration features, these are really useful for education

Google apps allows SIMS integration through the secure data connector (you'll need to write some code here, but it has more possibilities due to the open and well used API) - these could allow building appengine sites or just linking to spreadsheets etc.

Google has a very good support system - I needed to call twice, both times I was called back by an engineer who could fix it within an hour.

[edutech4schools]

Back when I tested both I found I could control and lock down more with the Google system, although I would imagine MS will continue to add more control features over time and may have done so since I tested it.

[Iosoma]

Has anyone had issue with staff training when moving to Google Apps. And do you use google docs etc?

[plexer]

We're currently doing the same. Thinking about replacing our LEA email with one of these for either our school, or our trust.

 

We're at the start of our journey, but so far it seems Google is easier to manage 'out of the box' but live@edu is more customisable once you've got your head around powershell.

 

I like skydrive, it's space and excellent office web apps, and outlook would be the easier option for staff training (we already use owa). Google apps seems to hold more opportunity for development (sites, blogs, youtube, Piccasa etc.). GA seems to be a more exciting tool, and has been around a lot longer. LDAP integration seems better documented on GA.

 

I posted the same question on twitter a couple of days ago. I'm waiting to talk to someone from Norfolk who have now moved over to GA. 150,000 accounts I'm told. One of my questions to this person will be what assurances from google did you get that this service will be maintained and continue to be free?

 

There are a number of posts on here discussing the merits and migrations of schools. Do a search to kick you off...

 

To be honrst I'd be very suprised if the norfolk system is free from google.

 

Ben

[edutech4schools]

To be honrst I'd be very suprised if the norfolk system is free from google.

 

It is free for education and government

[edutech4schools]

Has anyone had issue with staff training when moving to Google Apps.

 

I used Sites to create a website for the school to log in to that has all the apps and resources in one place. I also created some very very basic walk through guides on the resources page.

 

I enabled 1 item at a time and showed the staff how to use that part, then when they were completely comfortable with that I would switch on another app.

 

I have had very very good feedback. The staff have found the Google system very easy to use and very powerful.

 

And do you use google docs etc?

 

Only one of my schools has started to use this. It is the last stage in my roll out. So far so good and I will be introducing it to my other schools. The local community college has been using the full suite of apps including docs for about a year and a half. The last time a had a chat with them they were very happy with the Google system.

[plexer]

Just because a school etc... could sign up for a google apps domain etc... for free doesn't mean that how it's been setup in norfolk with integration etc... is free

 

Schools in Norfolk are provided with internet connectivity as a county wide wan and an email solution using google as well as other connected services, this whole package is charged to the schools and I've never seen a breakdown of the costing yet.

 

Ben

[edutech4schools]

I may be wrong but they probably don't give the schools access to the admin pages and so could charge for the general up keep and admin side of things. Its like charging for open source, you cant charge for the software itself but you can charge for the service you oversee that uses that free software.

 

If I was a Norfolk school I would be requesting a breakdown of services / costings, just so I can compare against other companies.

[plexer]

Indeed allthougj regarding a breakdown until a school becomes an academy norfolk keep all the grant money for internet services and schools don't really have a choice.

 

Ben

[CyberNerd]

I may be wrong but they probably don't give the schools access to the admin pages and so could charge for the general up keep and admin side of things.

 

 

You can delegate parts of the google admin console to sub organisations.

[CyberNerd]

Has anyone had issue with staff training when moving to Google Apps. And do you use google docs etc?

 

Google provide a huge amount of training material when you sign up. We also did some training.

The only 'issues' were people who didn't want to use it in the first place.

[edutech4schools]

Indeed allthougj regarding a breakdown until a school becomes an academy norfolk keep all the grant money for internet services and schools don't really have a choice.

 

You are within your legal rights to request a break down, our la tried to do the same. Also if 15% of schools opt out the Grant can not be kept by the CC. They only have the power to keep the money if its going to benefit 85% of the schools or more. (or something like that)

[ChrisJ]

Currently looking making the move away from Zimbra to either Live or Google here too.

 

With Google offering the mobile device management as part of their package, I may be tempted to try that one. Not heard many horror stories compared to the pains of Zimbra that have been about.

[edutech4schools]

With Google offering the mobile device management as part of their package

 

Not had time to play with that but it does look good.

[drewp]

So i'm doing some research into the whole live@edu vs google apps to see what the benefits of both are. Are you a user of either of these? If so what do you like and dislike about them?

 

Cheres

Alex

 

We have been looking at both of over a year now, but we still can't make a decision!

 

I like that live@edu has a built a datacentre in Ireland, but I think that as both Microsoft and Google are on the safe harbour list and also have the patriot act applying to them I don’t know if this makes much difference?

 

I like that we already have pupils using their own SkyDrive’s in their own Hotmail accounts and that we also have pupils that are using google docs.

 

It would be good if live@edu could work with an easier ldap sync tool other than ILM, Google’s ldap tool is free...

 

I found it more difficult to find the documentation for Google Apps for shared address spaces, i was able to find it, but live@edu has a nice deployment guide which had all the different types of deployment in one place.

 

Google docs seem to already work on iPads, the live@edu outlook web access works and there is also a SkyDrive app, but the web apps for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint don’t seem to be available at the moment so no creation or editing, you can however view them in the SkyDrive app.

 

Something I can't seem to find out with live@edu is what age the pupil has to be before they can have an account. Google's T&C says 13; any younger has to have parental consent, would this be the same for live@edu?

 

Thanks!

Edited January 23, 2012 by drewp

[nadeem]

 

Something I can't seem to find out with live@edu is what age the pupil has to be before they can have an account. Google's T&C says 13; any younger has to have parental consent, would this be the same for live@edu?

 

Thanks!

 

 

MS have case studies and blurb about use in K12 schools, which I think means from age 5 upwards.

[zag]

We moved to live@edu from an exchange server 12 months ago.

 

Its the single best thing I have done in all my time as a network manager. Couldn't be happier.

 

I think I would have chosen google apps though if I could go back. Surprisingly live@edu doesn't integrate with active directory and Google Apps does. Incredible I know but thats the way it is!! Its not a huge problem creating accounts seperatlely though, much less than I thought it would be.

 

Some more comments:

 

- Hotmail and Live@edu conflict because you have to log in and out of each account. This annoys most of our teachers who use hotmail.

- Skydrive is a bit rubbish to be honest, you cant even copy multiple folders to it. Its no where near as good as dropbox anyway.

- In terms of email its been a revelation, people love the large limits, easy domain name, excellent webmail interface and fast outlook desktop client. So much better than an internal server in my opinion. I've not touched powershell in a year, it just works which is the way an email system should be.

- Office 365 apps like sharepoint and word are chargeable and is for some reason not covered in your licensing agreement. Its incredibly expensive for schools and not worth it. Email is however free.

- Live@edu uses TLS authentication which isn't supported by many web apps like photocopiers, climate devices or even internal sharepoint. This is a real pain sometimes.

 

It will be very interesting to see how Windows 8 develops, if they have login by Live ID functionality then I can see us removing local student logins at some point. This would be huge for things like tablets in the future. But maybe I'm dreaming

[nadeem]

- Hotmail and Live@edu conflict because you have to log in and out of each account. This annoys most of our teachers who use hotmail.

- Office 365 apps like sharepoint and word are chargeable and is for some reason not covered in your licensing agreement. Its incredibly expensive for schools and not worth it. Email is however free.

 

On these 2 points if it helps;

 

1) You can link hotmail and live@edu together, so solving that problem

2) Is that a new change in pricing - Office Web apps (Word, Excel, etc) are free for me, I just thought it was possibly things like Sharepoint that were going to be chargeable fo rstaff onlty (free for student use?)

[PiqueABoo]

Surprisingly live@edu doesn't integrate with active directory

 

In what way? Live@Edu has OLSync albeit with the ILM dependency or is it FIM now? I think the requirement for the latter is annoying and have been tempted to write a Lite AD-> Live@edu syncing app without the passwords, but as you say it's not a huge problem.

 

Hotmail clash: Am I the only person on the planet who doesn't go to work at tax-payers expense in order to spend the day reading some external personal e-mail account, faffing with facebook, miscellaneous forums etc?

 

TLS auth: I think that's a Good Thing[tm]. Here's SMTP Proxy, a little open source app on Codeplex which should solve your problems with any last-century SMTP clients. Don't need and haven't used it though... if you do, then let us know the outcome please.

[drewp]

I found this piece of software that can sync active directory groups to live@edu, could be an alternative to ILM.

 

Sysint - easySync

[zag]

In what way? Live@Edu has OLSync albeit with the ILM dependency or is it FIM now? I think the requirement for the latter is annoying and have been tempted to write a Lite AD-> Live@edu syncing app without the passwords, but as you say it's not a huge problem.

 

Well google apps for education has a simple Active directory sync. Microsofts way of doing this (Using ILM or FIM) is a joke really and in no way suited to primary, secondary or small organizations.

 

The hotmail clash is a problem simply because people want to keep their private and school email addresses separate. I really don't get why Microsoft cant add a 2nd profile to the Live login page.

 

According to this page Office web apps costs 2$ a month for students and 14$ a month for staff. That would be a cost $4,000 a year extra for our school. Why that isnt included in our agreement I don't know. Its actually doubling the cost of our licensing so puts it out of reach.