The Auricle

by Derek Morrison, 23 January 2010

N.B. The following item represents the views of the author alone and should not be construed as necessarily representing the views of any other individual or organisation.

The UK Open University is joining the growing number of institutions adopting or exploring the Google Apps for Education offering. Another notable presences in this space are the University of Alberta and, in the UK, the University of Westminster. Is this another contributory blip or does it signal a fundamental paradigm shift? If good experiences are reported back over a protracted period then it could well be the latter. One “cloud” disaster, or exploitation by Google of a de facto monopoly position, however, and all bets are off.

Either way, university Directors of ICT (or the equivalent) have much cause for reflection at a time of extraordinary financial retraction even if only so that they can effectively hold back the waters that will soon be be pushing against the dam for a little longer. But look carefully at the user comments being cited by Google; they relate to far more than just email with words like “collaboration”, “sharing”, “remote working”, and “discussion” figuring large. I think here is much cause for reflection by everyone else working and learning in the HE sector as well as those whose current business models and services are linked to what may fast be becoming an obsolete view of how things can/ will increasingly be done in the future.

Postscript
There some big names now making use of Google Apps including the Telegraph Media Group, Taylor Woodrow, and Guardian News and Media. Interestingly, in 2009, the latter also dropped Microsoft Office and adopted the OpenOffice product as its in-house wordprocessing application with Google Apps being projected as its primary productivity application. Sun Microsystems was the main sponsor of OpenOffice and now that they have been recently absorbed into the Oracle empire if OpenOffice withers as a result then that may simply further reinforce the postition of Google Apps as the main disruptor to the established order.