Biggest Deployment of Gmail, Outlook/Exchange loses out
NSW schools has opted for Gmail for students rather than Outlook. Aside from a massive cost saving this will also allow easy email access outside of schools plus access to Gmail’s great spam filter system and other applications.
Google partner SMS Management and Technology has emerged as the leading bidder to supply the NSW Department of Education with 1.5 million student email services using a customised version of the search giant’s Gmail service. This will be one of the largest private deployments of Gmail in the world.
The win is Google’s second major victory in the academic sector after Macquarie University signed up for Gmail in September last year. It could have massive implications for the Australian software market, as it places Gmail’s online word processing software, Google Docs, in a strong position to challenge Microsoft’s Office software suite in the education sector.
The education department’s Gmail roll-out will increase current email storage allocated to students by a multiple of 170 times from 35MB to 6GB. Gmail is hosted offshore and the university chose not to extend the service to staff due to concerns that it would generate excessive bandwidth bills retrieving messages.
Tech Watch 
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