University of Northern Colorado could be missing out

One of Porter’s five strategic forces concerns substitutability which provides new products or services that come from outside and offer customers a lower price and/or a higher quality alternative.   The University of Northern Colorado charges students a technology fee (over $300 for 30 credits for business students).  That fee and other funds from the IT instructional budget supports classroom technology, staff for computer labs and provides access to campus infrastructure facilities such as BearMail and BearDrive.

Google is offering free partnerships with universities that may provide a substitute for internal UNC  IS (Information System) resources and free up technology funds for other uses.   According to Google schools can substitute hardware, software, people and procedures to strategically take advantage of free:

“Gmail – With 7GB of storage, built-in chat, innovative search, and IMAP capability, students no longer need to worry about email quotas or spam.

Google Talk – Keep students in contact even when they’re not on campus, with instant messaging, file transfers, and voice calling over the web.

Google Calendar – Google Calendar makes it easy to organize schedules and share calendars with others.

Google Docs – Enable students to collaborate real time on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, across campus or around the world.

Google Sites – Google Sites makes it easy to share all types of information, without any technical language to learn and access from anywhere.

Google Video – Securely and privately share videos with your school’s faculty and students. (10GB free)

Extensibility APIs – Easily integrate with your school’s current systems or other third party solutions.

Help and support – 24/7 online and phone support assistance available. “

(see http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/index.html)

 Free is good especially since UNC students are now paying for internal email applications, virus and spam software, networks, computer equipment and staff to help users and staff to maintain availability and security. 

While there may be technical, privacy and organizational issues that need to be considered, we should at least be exploring free partnerships that substitute costly, proprietary and closed UNC IS systems for open and free substitutes available from companies such as Google.  

Here’s a partial list of schools that have embraced a  Google partnerships to save money and better support student computing at their respective universities: University of Notre Dame, Arizona State University, Northwestern University, Abilene Christian University, University of Southern California, Virginia's Community Colleges, Vanderbilt University, George Washington University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Hofstra University, Utah State University, San Jose City College, University at Buffalo, Northern Arizona University, University of Akron.  More are signing up every day.