Gmail is a great email client too.

So if you just wanted mail, I think either would do, but if you were thinking of incorporating other things, then perhaps Sharepoint.

On the contract: what is it UoB would give them? Effectively the university is lending it’s name to the service, and that’s a valuable consideration. We would be giving Google or MS customers. While these customers don’t pay anything now the might be more inclined to buy products from the same supplier in future, and buy into their whole ecosystem.

Money doesn’t have to change hands. We did a similar deal a few years ago with the Freewire IPTV service.

For alumni e-mail, I’ve seen no mention of a subdomain (alumni.bristol.ac.uk) as a possibility — why not? From my University of Manchester degree I’m simply username@alumni.manchester.ac.uk, which looks professional and is clearly associated with the university.

On the Google/Microsoft choice: Google’s contributions back to open source software eclipse Microsoft’s. They’ve contributed almost all of Android & Chrome (Chromium), Google Web Toolkit, the Chromium OS (soon) and many more low-profile ones; they’ve sponsored the Google Summer of Code and been the main sponsor behind Firefox development many years running, hired many OSS experts to give them regular paycheques to continue their non-Google work, hosted many OSS conferences the Google Campus; they’ve also given away (but not opened) things like Google Earth and Google SketchUp and a slew of cloud services.

Perhaps most importantly, they’ve constantly respected and contributed to open standards and interoperability. I’ve been a sysadmin for an Exchange (Server)-based organisation and I’m currently a sysadmin for a Google Mail-based organisation; while I’m sure there are differences when Exchange is in the cloud, Google is transparent and standards-compliant all the way, and it makes a huge difference.

No company does this out of charity; they have shareholders to answer to and many of these charitable donations benefit their ad targeting in some way. Still, if it comes down to a choice beween the two and if arguments on a “good for society” basis count for anything, I’d personally much rather have the ad (and other) revenue go to a company that habitually gives a percentage back.

Regarding the (SLFAQ) “What if they start charging?” — it’s not a contract unless there’s “consideration” (usually money/services) both sides, so what is it (on paper) UoB would be giving them?

I definitely like the idea of an email for life, transient email addresses are highly irritating and a permanent one allows a level of professionalism as has already been said.

Both Microsoft and Gmail services are very good, personally I have moved all my personal email from my own domain onto the Google Apps service which provided all the Gmail services for you own domain.

So far I have been very impressed with the service, supporting Push email solid web-mail and good background services.

Microsoft Exchange is also very good an I know a number of people that use it, however I am skewed on this matter somewhat as I have and use an Android phone which integrates out the box with all Google services, even those on your own domain.

Some concerns I have are over browser support for webmail, Gmail appears to be very good in all browsers I have used (Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome and Internet explorer) Where as up until recently, the Outlook (Exchange) web mail displays incorrectly in firefox, one of the most common browsers.

Regarding the current system, the underlying service (IMAP, which actually includes push in the form of the IMAP IDLE command) is very good however the web-mail is really quick aged and simplistic compared to other offerings.

There is definitely a privacy argument for
the University maintaining control of it’s own email servers, and there are much better mail packages than SquirrelMail (SmarterMail to name one good example).

Originally my opinion was to stick with a university controlled system but I am leaning towards a Google hosted solution, simply for the speed scalability and feature set.

~Rob

Anybody know of others? If so would be great if you can mention them here.

@Nick(ResNet manager): One of the things that students need a .ac.uk domain for is the “ultimate steal” which gives them office for 91% of the RRP. There are also other websites that require .ac.uk addresses to prove that they are students (For example, MSDNAA).

Both suppliers offer IMAP access and I’d definitely want to keep that.

If we went with MS we’d get Exchange, not Hotmail/LiveMail. Exchange is Microsoft’s corporate email tool, and it’s a lot better than Hotmail.