About UCSC Google Apps

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps for Education is a suite of web-based services provided by Google for education purposes. These services function on a Mac or PC, mobile devices, and are free to UCSC students, faculty, and staff. 

For more information about Google Apps at UCSC, visit: http://its.ucsc.edu/google/index.html

Why did UCSC choose Google Apps?

As part of our budget reduction strategy and in line with an emerging trend in higher education, UCSC migrated to Google Apps for Education to provide much needed and often requested services to the campus.

Decision Criteria

There were a number of important considerations that led to the decision to move to Google Apps. 

• Email and Calendar were identified as outsource candidates and Gmail was selected as the mail service. Integration between Mail and Calendar was an important feature.
• Disaster Recovery with the ability to continue service after an event like an earthquake was marginal with our own systems - going with Google and data replication across many data centers provided a capability we would not have been able to afford had we attempted something similar.
• The ability to take advantage of a suite of applications to enhance productivity and collaboration. Google Docs and Sites were offered as part of the package of applications.
• Mobile device support: We wanted a suite of products that would allow an ever increasing population of mobile devices to work.
• Innovation: The constant innovation that has been demonstrated by Google gave us confidence the product would continue to improve