This document summarizes Eric Pierce's presentation about the University of South Florida's transition from a difficult to maintain on-premise email system to Google Apps. It describes the challenges with the previous system, the process of piloting and rolling out Google Apps to students over two years, and the successful results including improved user experience, significant cost savings, and expanded identity management capabilities. Key steps included getting student and faculty input, provisioning accounts, migrating email, and integrating with other systems. Google Apps transitioned USF's email and collaboration to a more reliable cloud-based solution.
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1. October 15, 2010 GoogleApps@USF From Development to Deployment & Beyond Eric Pierce Identity Management Architect #E10_SESS128
2. About Me Started at USF in 1996 Help Desk System Administrator Student Email Student Unix Accounts/Webpages Student Blogs Identity Management Architect Identity Reconciliation Provisioning Authentication & Authorization
3. University of South Florida 47,000+ students 4 Campuses Tampa St. Petersburg Lakeland Sarasota/Manatee Medical School & research facilities in Tampa #E10_SESS128
4. Student Email pre-GoogleApps Difficult to maintain Cobbled together over a number of years Assortment of Commercial & OSS technologies CommuniGate SquirrelMail AMaViS SpamAssassin Fighting spam was a losing battle 6 servers dedicated to spam/virus scanning Long delays & constant tweaking required #E10_SESS128
5. Student Email pre-GoogleApps Students wanted: More space Less spam Calendaring & collaboration tools More reliability I wanted: More reliability Geographic redundancy To spend less time fighting spam or fixing hardware issues #E10_SESS128
6. Upgrade or Outsource? Price About $1 million over 3 years to keep it ‘in-house’ Fully redundant storage for 70K+ mail users is expensive So is commercial spam/virus scanning Features No single package compares to GoogleApps or Live@edu Even with multiple applications, many features are not available Resources IT resources required to develop new features and/or upgrades More admin time required for maintenance and trouble-shooting #E10_SESS128
7. Get the students involved! Student Government Improving Email was a top priority during a ‘Town-Hall’ meeting with the CIO Helped generate ‘buzz’ about the switch Promoted GoogleApps to the students Create Pilot Groups We selected 300 volunteers to evaluate GoogleApps & Live@edu I stayed in contact with that group throughout the rollout period Pick students from across campuses/colleges/departments Limited-release beta testing The pilot group could send invitations to 5 other students Those students could send invitations to 3 more #E10_SESS128
14. Identity Management GoogleApps was a major component in our IdM plan Web Single SignOn (Jasig CAS) Automated account provisioning Unified Acceptable Use policy Increased password strength requirements 8 character minimum Regular-Expression tests Cracklib scoring Windows Password Complexity requirements 6-month password expiration #E10_SESS128
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16. Many new API features are not available in the PHP client#E10_SESS128
17. On-Demand Account Creation The announcement was in the middle of a semester, so a single move wasn’t feasible An outage during the migration was unacceptable Users were able to move when they were ready A ‘cleanup’ after the semester ended moved all remaining accounts #E10_SESS128
21. Password-Syncing All web-based access is done through SSO IMAP clients and mobile access use the password stored at Google We sync passwords - most schools don’t Most schools have students set their Google password separately Some enforce the separation and keep students from setting them to the same value Lots of discussion of this on the Internet2 IdM list http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A0=IDM #E10_SESS128
22. Mail Migration Mail Migration was semi-automated: GoogleApps account created automatically Username added to the migration DB Daily process: Changed legacy IMAP password Created the migration CSV file Emailed CSV to the admin group Admin (usually me) logged into the GA admin page and started the migration process #E10_SESS128
23. Promotion Student Government special event Multiple mass emails to all students Multiple articles in the Oracle New Student Orientation brochure Announcement in Blackboard Portal Lesson Learned Google has help with planning the rollout http://deployment.googleapps.com/Home/resources-user-adoption #E10_SESS128
25. Student Reaction Students love the new system 70x storage increase Docs & Calendar have been widely utilized Several classes use Sites for assignments and portfolios Biggest complaints? Not USF-branded enough Missing features from ‘regular’ Google accounts Some faculty felt like “second-class citizens” #E10_SESS128
26. Cost-Savings Outsourcing Email != fewer jobs The university gets more results from the same number of jobs Mail administration time has dropped from 2 FTE to .1 FTE Both mail admins have moved to Identity Management Most of the work involved with GoogleApps is now IdM-related Retired or repurposed 12 servers & 2 storage arrays HUGE savings over upgrading legacy system Hardware/software upgrades: $300,000/yr Additional Personnel requirements: $60,000/yr #E10_SESS128
33. Where do we go from here? Google Calendar USF Calendar of Events Athletic practice & game schedules Class schedules Blackboard Integration Bboogle project (Calendar & Docs) Gtalk links & status display #E10_SESS128
34. New Google Tools New GoogleApps Infrastructure GA accounts can be used with almost all Google tools Only for ‘early adopters’ right now Two-factor Authentication iPhone/Android app or text messages authenticate user in addition to their password Can’t be used with SSO logins yet #E10_SESS128
