Collegiate Times

Virginia Tech Webmail will soon be replaced with Google Apps for Education, which will provide a Gmail-based email service for students, faculty, staff and alumni.

“It’s going to be like how Gmail works, but without all the advertising and still using a Tech email address,” said Jeff Kidd, a spokesman for Virginia Tech Network Infrastructure and Services.

The decision to switch to Google Apps from Webmail comes after a yearlong process in which Tech network officials considered various clients to select as the university’s new email service. Tech alumni have already been using this service for two years.

“Gmail’s not just a new upgrade, it’s a totally new service,” said Ron Jarrell, the technical team manager for Systems Engineering and Administration.

But Kidd said the choice was not easy to make.

“We had to be assured of the security of university information over that system,” Kidd said. “It has to provide cost benefits, be cost effective, and obviously, it has to be acceptable and similar to, or better than, what people are accustomed to using.”

Jarrell said the current Webmail software was free, but there are maintenance costs with the system. The VT Mail system, which includes the servers that emails are stored on along with virus and junk mail scanners, requires software that costs more than $100,000.

The Google software, however, is different. 

“The Google offering is free,” Jarrell said. “They’re not charging us anything for it, and it’s good for faculty, staff and alumni.”

The switch to Google marks a milestone in Tech’s email system. Webmail will be completely replaced, even after years of updates and system overhauls.

“We’ve upgraded (Webmail) a couple of times,” Jarrell said. “In fact, we did a major upgrade on it last
fall.”

However, Jarrell said Webmail is limited in its offerings.

“It’s just a read-your-mail client — it accesses the mail on the server and lets you look at it,” Jarrell said. “Gmail is a fully integrated collaboration environment.”

The new service is scheduled to be available to students, faculty and staff in the upcoming fall semester. It will provide Gmail-based email user access to services such as Google Docs, which offers online word processing, presentation programs and spreadsheet software, allowing users to collaborate on documents. The program will also offer online calendar software.

“It’s a full-blown environment,” Jarrell said. “It has your email client, your contact manager, the ability to do word processing and to do online collaborations between people.”

Through the contract with Google, there will be no advertisements within core services — email, documents and calendar programs — Tech offers. And these services will be subject to Tech’s privacy policy, not Google’s.

However, some of the external services Google offers, such as YouTube and Picasa, are subject to the company’s privacy policy.

“You’ll be able to use your PID to get any of the other Google services you want,” Jarrell said. “If you use non-VT services with your VT account, you’re subject to Google’s privacy policy ... Google has a clear definition of where our data is and where their data is.”

Tech might eventually expand its core offerings through Google, Jarrell said. Technical help with the software will initially be limited primarily to the email and calendar programs, but it may expand its areas of support in the future.

A version of this article appeared in the Feb 15 issue of the Collegiate Times.