Go Blue, go Google

Posted by Dave Girouard, Vice President of Product Management

(Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog)

I’m one of hundreds of University of Michigan alumni currently working at Google. So is this guy. I’m proud to have a degree from U-M—and that we made it to two Rose Bowls and one Final Four during my time there. But I’m even more proud that today we’re welcoming my alma mater to the Google Apps for Education family. By providing our cloud services to the entire university community, we’ll continue to build on the strong relationship that Google and the University of Michigan have had for many years. Many other alums—especially in our Ann Arbor office—are just as excited as I am:



Over a year ago, the University of Michigan (U-M) announced a new IT strategy known as NextGen Michigan, a plan to upgrade technology across the campus. Laura Patterson, U-M’s Chief Information Office, told us the switch to Google is just one of many projects that will make up U-M’s multi-year strategy for changing the approach to IT service and investing more heavily in technologies that will advance the university’s academic, teaching, research and clinical programs. She said: “Adopting Google Apps for Education will help support U-M’s leadership in teaching, learning and discovery, as well as improve collaboration across campus.”

As their first order of business, U-M kicked off a project to select a unified messaging and collaboration platform to help consolidate the more than 40 email and calendar tools which currently service about 90,000 students, faculty and staff. After a review process that included townhall meetings and a campus survey, the university’s IT steering committee overwhelmingly recommended Google Apps for Education as U-M’s preferred provider.

In addition to the suite of products in Google Apps for Education, U-M also plans to use APIs to build rich integration with existing campus services and encourage increased collaboration.

Hail to the Victors—The University of Michigan is going Google!