

Outlook Dropped For Gmail in Australia... 1.5 mil licenses - jasonlbaptiste
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/23/15-million-australian-students-dump-outlookexchange-for-gmail/

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chrisbroadfoot
This is pretty big news. I wonder whether other states will follow?

Also, there is mention that Google might host some of the e-mail in Australia
itself (I have the feeling the local govt would push for this.)

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bprater
And Microsoft continues to sit there and stare out the window...

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ideas101
why $9.5mil - isn't it free for educational institution?

anyway, if google focuses only on schools and universities then half the
battle is won against MS as millions and millions of student will have their
primary email from gmail and when they join the workforce they will
automatically become a marketing tool for google to implement similar products
in the companies.

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eru
> "why $9.5mil - isn't it free for educational institution?"

I guess: support contracts and legacy integration.

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maximilian
Why don't they just tell everyone to go get free gmail accounts? That'd be
free.

I guess they get more control or something..or it violates gmail's EULA or
something.

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bigbang
That would get them @gmail.com instead of @*.edu email address.

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maximilian
You'd think though, that google would work with them for less than the amount
they are spending to setup those domains. Assuming gmail is a money maker,
google would love to have that many more guaranteed users.

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mynameishere
Email is a solved problem, and it's mysterious to me why a school system
wouldn't just throw up a few servers and be done with it. Google can now data
mine millions of students for marketing purposes, and charge them for the
benefit. I don't get it.

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alaskamiller
\- Exchange was a AU$33 million contract and took four years

\- Gmail is $9.5 million and should be live by the end of 2008

\- User storage will increase from 35 MB to 1 GB

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mynameishere
Yeah, I read that. The alternative would be: Hire a team of 1st rate sys
admins, set up mail servers. Total cost: Maybe 1.5 million a year.

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helveticaman
_Hire a team of 1st rate sys admins,_

From what I understand, looking for 1st rate sys admins is like looking for
rockstar janitors.

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smanek
I don't really buy that. I know several great programmers who are now great
sysadmins, or vice versa.

Now, sysadmin may be a bit of a misnomer - sometimes sysadmins are given fancy
titles such as 'network engineer', 'network architect', 'IT Manager', etc.
They're all basically sysadmins.

Good sysadmins do more than just image laptops. They are familiar with the
software's architecture, so they can help scale it up to whatever proportions
are needed. They almost certaintly are proficient perl/bash/python programmers
as well.

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gaius
Education is not going to pay for top-class engineering talent. They pretty
much have to go for the lowest common denominator (Exchange, MCSE's are ten a
penny) or outsource altogether.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I personally know several excellent systems engineers who left the education
system because the pay is so miserable.

