The NSW Department of Education and Training changes tack and opts for Gmail over Exchange. Is Microsoft Exchange on its way out?

NSW Government chooses Gmail over MS Exchange

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Danny Gorog25 June 2008, 2:00 PM

The NSW Department of Education makes a bold move and chooses Gmail over Exchange for 1.5 million students.


According to a report, the NSW Department of Education and Training has decided to switch 1.5 million student email accounts from Outlook/Exchange infrastructure to Gmail. The move is said to be one of the largest private deployments of Gmail anywhere in the world.

The contract between SMS Management and Consulting (a Gmail partner) and the Government is valued at $9.5 million but will include input from Telstra and Google who will be providing a customised version of Gmail to the department.

The CIO of the NSW education department, Stephen Wilson, said that the 'agency had no plans to switch on Google's online word processing software at this stage' but didn't rule it out in the future.

Google has already been involved in another large Gmail deployment to 68,000 students at Macquarie University.

This story highlights that Microsoft is coming under increasing pressure by competitors who are beginning to nibble away at its Exchange cash cow. Anecdotally, many businesses that I talk to forgo the expense of installing Exchange and maintaining their own email infrastructure for hosted solutions.

While the 'software-as-a-service' shift is inevitable Microsoft isn't standing still. There are many providers here in Australia that offer a 'hosted Exchange' solution that provides businesses with all the facilities of Exchange but without the headache of managing their own infrastructure.

Hosted Exchange is considerably more expensive than Google Apps at the Enterprise level. The monthly cost of a premium hosted Exchange account through Netspace is $AUD19.95 per mailbox, per month. An equivalent Google Apps Enterprise account costs $US50 per mailbox per year. Both accounts offer different features - the Netspace account, for example, offers free mobile email access while the Google account offers more than 10 times the storage (and also provides full POP3/IMAP access for use with mobile devices).

All these features are free to education users -- Google offers a full product suite to education which effectively gives institutions an unlimited number of email accounts plus full access to all other Google Apps services like Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Calendaring.

Is this the Trojan horse Google are riding into Exchange town? What do you think?

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Mr Internet (New user):

Funny thing is the Netspace pricing they quoted are not for schools, but for businesses. Prices for exchange for schools, and non-for-profit organizations (also from Netspace), is a lot cheaper than the retail pricing, 1300 008 009

25 June 2008, 3:31 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Danny Gorog (APC staff):

Couldn't find this info on the website, and costs something is still more than free.

25 June 2008, 4:04 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Hemma (User):

Just how did I guess that you wrote this article? Everything is bad for MS....

25 June 2008, 9:14 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

And trust me when I say there are literally thousands of people cheering at this announcement. It should in theory result in less "My email isn't working, sir" issues.

25 June 2008, 3:50 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

agami (User):

Good call. Now if only the rest of the states' Departments of Education would follow suit.

25 June 2008, 4:40 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Wazza (User):

Do you mean SMS Management & Technology (www.smsmt.com)? I know a bit about these guys. They really a Gmail partner?

I can understand the benefits using Gmail. Price, storage space, not having to manage your infrastructure etc. But I find the interface a little clunky compared to my outlook client...

25 June 2008, 4:52 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Danny Gorog (APC staff):

You can use Gmail via POP or IMAP. The big (and expensive) deal is managing the Exchange infrastructure.

25 June 2008, 5:11 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Dan Warne (Administrator):

Yep SMS MT. We got the name wrong in the story, sorry -- I'll fix that now. Google has a surprising number of Google Apps partners that do things like unified LAN and Google signon.

25 June 2008, 5:44 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Rick (User):

Great! I go to a nsw school and at current we are still using exchange. gmail, hotmail, yahoo etc etc are all blocked. If they use gmail the 'mail.google.com' domain will be opened up and i will be able to access my own domain email via google apps!

25 June 2008, 5:18 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Shadows (New user):

I really do wish people did their research properly. One they got a pricing comparison wrong comparing a corporate rate against a education rate i am shore gmail is using on this one. Who said that you can't use pop and IMAP against Exchange? IS there only one Hosted Exchange provider in Australia? I know of lots of Hosted Exchange providers in AUstralia that sell at a lot less than 19.95 for a business account let alone for a school. Oh by the way who uses 10 gig of email realistically. maybe 2% of mail accounts are actually over 1 gig in size. It's like all the web hosters who give away 200 mailboxs for users that only need 5 overkill.
BUt hey I am sure they will enjoy their AD's hope they block the adult content adds from the kids

25 June 2008, 5:59 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Mr Internet (New user):

Hosted Exchange for schools I believe is about the same price ($50 per year) as google enterprise, but offers sync'd mobiles, shared calendars etc, free business grade anti-virus and anti spam from message labs etc. The story that I am afraid you missed, is the desperate need for schools and businesses to move away from their own mail and exchange infrastructure due to costs, issues with new versions needing new hardware etc. Hosted Exchange offers a better alternative and the trend that the market has taken already in the UK, USA, and slowly here.

26 June 2008, 10:48 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Mr Internet (New user):

One word .. Security !
Free Google (no thanks). Not for my kids,

26 June 2008, 10:50 AM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AndyCee (Cornerstone member):

Not free Google - $9.5 million Google. What do you think that's being spent on?

I've also heard of the Department of Ed. implementing local security measures as well.

01 August 2008, 8:28 AM (11 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

MiCCAS (Regular user):

What people need to remember is that this decision may have been decided on price, rather than on functionality or quality.

26 June 2008, 8:46 PM (1 year ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

AndyCee (Cornerstone member):

That's a fair point. But it's easy to underestimate the time & effort put into the decision, when we're not the ones who made it. If they had offers from HP, Telstra, Unisys and Microsoft, it sounds like quality and functionality would have been factors in making the decision.

01 August 2008, 8:39 AM (11 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Rick (User):

My brothers email and most of the teachers have been changed to gmail. Mine is still on exchange. What I have seen is that it is just google apps with the det logo stuck on the left top corner.
Teachers email domain has been changed to @det.nsw.edu.gov.au << something like that, however the students email address remain at @education.nsw.edu.gov.au. Shocking email address I now however we have to use it becuase all of web mail is blocked.

Also the webmail address is mail.google.com, the same that is used for gmail. So I have yet to check if my own google apps email works.

13 November 2008, 8:13 PM (7 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Jonathon_in_Sydney (New user):

NSW Government IT agencies are full of "anti-microsoft" types. They have regularly made decisions that confound common sense. For instance Lotus Notes for NSW Police mail, or Netware Mail solutions in Treasury. This is rarely driven by common sense. It starts like a virus in one department and spreads to others until it's "adopted".

DET Mail was conducted as a fair tender and won based on cost and requirements as far as I can tell. That's far more telling than anything else that has been chosen in NSW Govt. I do find it interesting though, that the cost of ownership for some of these decisions is rarely taken into consideration. For instance, what integration products are there to work with the solution? What development do you need to do to make your phone/pda/iphone work with it? Are there any off the shelf products to support it?

The answer to this is increasingly yes, Microsoft are not the only players in town anymore, but don't assume the decision was always made for it's common sense.

28 November 2008, 6:46 PM (7 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

Tin (Regular user):

Despite the age of this article, I'll respond anyway...

Quoting Jonathon_in_Sydney:
What development do you need to do to make your phone/pda/iphone work with it?

Quoting Jonathon_in_Sydney:
but don't assume the decision was always made for it's common sense.


Common sense when dealing with hundreds of thousands of users is to pick a product that:
a) doesn't have per-seat licensing.
b) works well with hundreds of thousands of users.
c) does what is required either out of the box or by working with the vendor.

And finally, I'd just like to point out what OS and mail packages ISPs use for their users... Notably it's not Exchange. Ever.

Edit: For the record, I work in a DET school that was one of the early adopters of this system, so I have had plenty of time to experience how MS products "help" large scale email systems.

28 November 2008, 9:13 PM (7 months ago)report abuse Send to a friend reply

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