College Solutions Why ? Michael Nowlan Information Systems Services University of Dublin Trinity College With thanks to the staff of IS Services, TCD

Why ?

Definitions  Undergraduate Students  Postgraduate and Research Students  All staff

Millenials & Digital Natives  Students today have never known a time without computers  Universal ownership and usage of mobile communications devices  Totally at home with the “new” digital world  Soon will be displacing the Digital Immigrants on the job market – totally at home with the always- on internet

Instant Everything  Survey!  How many people sent or received an IM in the last 24 hours ?  How many people sent or received a Text message (SMS) in the last 24 hours ?  What is the difference ?

Presence  Telephone Tag  Instant message with Presence is the future

 is an unsatisfactory communications tool  is for “old” people  is on its last legs…

CAO 2007  84% or applications online  16% foreign or “old” people  Of the online applicants 97.8% supplied an address – even though it was not required

for Students  Why do we go to the expense of providing an service for students ? If 98% of our incoming students already have an address and service.  In November 2007 – I cannot think of a single reason for 3 rd level Colleges to provide for their students!

Marketplace in November 2007 for storage  DIT: 40MB  Ireland.Com: 100MB – you pay for it  UCD: 500MB  Google: 2GB – now 4.5GB  Microsoft: 5GB  Yahoo: Infinite

Costs - Gartner  College home grown: $4/user/month  Microsoft old offering: $3/user/year  Exchange service: $10/user/month  External service: $1.5/user/month  “Free”: $1/user/month

TCD Undergraduate Costs  Internal€43K / year  Exchange€109K / year  Hosted€16K / year  “Free”€11K / year

Why Replace TCD’s system?  Hardware at end of life  Software very labour intensive  Limited future

TCD Review  Define requirements  Look at market  Segment service components  Select Products

Segmentation of services  Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Staff  Mobile and Fixed users  Management, SPAM/Virus  Select best point solutions at the time

SPAM/Virus Filtering  In-house too costly  Lack of responsiveness  Use a service which is dedicated to this function

Exchange Hosted Services  Easy implementation, no requirements for Exchange  Few problems  Massive payback  Eliminate SPAM/Virus overheads  Only processing 20% of  … no need to replace systems!

Enhanced Student Service  Familiar interface  Storage  Seamless access at home and abroad  Retain address  Retain address after graduation

Hosted Solutions Considered  Google - Gmail  Microsoft - Live Environment

Google Apps for Education  2 GB storage – now 4.5GB  Applications: Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Page Creator and Start Page  No ads for registered students  Price: no charge by Google

Microsoft EDU  5 GB storage  Applications: Hotmail, Calendar, Address Book, MSN, SkyDrive  No ads for registered students  Price: no charge by Microsoft

TCD Selected Gmail  Conceptual issue of hosted service  Fears of loss of control  Privacy concerns, data hosted off-island  Don't be evil ?

Implementation so far  Most students have moved voluntarily and with problems – largely password related  Privacy concerns  Accessibility issues  Yet to face legal issues over logs and tracing nefarious activities  Uncontrolled interface changes

Some Numbers on 1 st November 2007  Students would have been using a maximum of 750GB in TCD  22,297 TCD Gmail accounts  Using 309GB, up from 164GB on 1 st October, 1 person using > 1GB  Gmail quota 45,641 GB which does not reflect the increase from 2GB to 4.5GB

The Future for Students  Integrated Calendars  Online shared documents, collaborative editing, spreadsheets  Online storage for files  Integrated access in a mobile environment  Access facilitated through an Identity Management system/service

Staff  In November 2007 – I can think of many reasons for 3 rd level Colleges to provide for their staff and research students.  Intellectual Property (IP)  Privacy  Control

TCD Staff  Exchange Service  Outlook on the desktop  OWA for mobile users  2 GB resilient storage  Enhanced service rolling out in late 2007

Lessons Learned  Think Latterly  May be more than one solution  Beware of dogma  Beware of the capabilities of the Digital Natives – they may not live up to the expectations – limited narrow expertise

Illustrations by Ken Coogan