Fordham Going Google!

Fordham University announced today that all faculty and staff email will move to Google’s Gmail in the coming months joining students and alumni already on the Gmail platform. Fordham IT plans to complete the migration by the end of 2012.

“This is an exciting and forward looking step for Fordham,” said Frank J. Sirianni, Ph.D., vice president and chief information officer. “The trend to Cloud computing, and in particular cloud email is very modern and continues to grow, and Fordham will grow along with it.”

Faculty and staff can get information throughout this transition on the employee tab at the new portal channel, All Things Gmail! Regular communications from Fordham IT will be shared with the community via email, web, iTV, meetings and events.

“We are focused on supporting the individual and providing complete support to meet each community member’s needs during this transition,” said Sirianni. “To that end, we are planning for a robust communications and training plan for this migration to the new email platform.”

Over the last year, Fordham IT consulted with many faculty and staff members via focus groups, surveys and meetings as well as with the Senate Technology Committee to understand everyone’s requirements for a new messaging platform. This collaboration yielded the consistent request for a stable, quality platform that can use email, contacts and calendars anytime, anywhere, on any device.

Google’s Apps for Higher Education is the most popular cloud email platform for faculty and staff deployed at leading universities including Brown University, Case Western Reserve University, New York University and University of San Francisco. It is also the email provider of choice for over 90,000 employees of the United States Government.

Sirianni noted that Google has set the trend in communications and collaboration leader with other major providers rushing to create similar offerings. Some of the many benefits of Google Gmail include the seamless provisioning of upgrades and continual improvement of the offering and services.  This transition will put the University on a single messaging platform for all students, faculty, staff and alumni for the first time in Fordham’s modern history.

Thanks to the community for helping to make the best decision for the University.