2nd Quarter 2008
CGgMail case study launched
by Marco van den Berg (IRRI) and Tania Jordan (ICT-KM)
The CGIAR mail numbers are numbing. In just three months, from January to March 2008, more than 55 million messages were addressed to the CGIAR. About 45 million were spam.
Email, virus, and spam volume continue to increase. While the CGIAR has a network to be proud of, we cannot ignore that licensing costs are rising and alternative technical options are becoming available. Thus, in efforts to increase efficiency and innovation, we decided to explore alternatives, starting with Google Applications.
The case study to determine whether CGIAR-wide use of GMail is feasible was launched formally on June 24, 2008. More than 260 participants from 14 CGIAR Centers were provided with accounts, and within two days, about half of the participants had accessed the system.
CGgMail is the CGIAR branded version of the services Google offers with Gmail. As we are a not-for-profit organization, CGgMail users do not see the advertisements that users of "free" Gmail accounts see when using the service. Plus,we have access to 24/7 support. Each user gets a mail account with 6861 megabytes of storage, which is increased a little every day. For many users that amount of space is enough for a lifetime of emails. Forget about having to delete from full inboxes.
CGgMail is not only email. CGgMAIL account participants have options for a number of other services, such as:
We are finding interesting stories about how CGgMail access works in mysterious ways in some countries. For example, in Syria, people using a local service provider cannot access their account to accept the terms and agreements, but if they go through this process using a different service provider, they can easily connect to CGgMail using the first provider. In Germany, a legal dispute has forced Google to stop offering the service using the GMail brand.
Users' reactions have started to come in, and while it's clear that "CGgMail is different," we haven't had any people tell us that they want to opt out (which participants are free to do at any point). On the contrary, the word is spreading quickly in Centers, and we've had requests to add more users to the case study. A number of people have started to use the extended collaboration functionality of CGgMail such as Google Sites and Google Docs which offer a clear example of IT-facilitated knowledge sharing.
Worth noting: While for some people, 6861 megabytes of mail storage is plenty, we have already observed that some participants were using 2% of this amount in a single day. That's equivalent to 120 megabytes of mail in one day or 43 gigabytes per year. Since a large percentage of email is not or hardly read, it's no wonder that stocks of hard disk manufacturers are doing well.
If you are interested in participating in this study, it's not too late to join. Notify your local IT Managers about your interest, and contact support@cggmail.org to get your account activated.
Stay tuned to learn more about users' feedback as they continue experimenting with the tools.
Back
by Marco van den Berg (IRRI) and Tania Jordan (ICT-KM)
The CGIAR mail numbers are numbing. In just three months, from January to March 2008, more than 55 million messages were addressed to the CGIAR. About 45 million were spam.
Email, virus, and spam volume continue to increase. While the CGIAR has a network to be proud of, we cannot ignore that licensing costs are rising and alternative technical options are becoming available. Thus, in efforts to increase efficiency and innovation, we decided to explore alternatives, starting with Google Applications.
The case study to determine whether CGIAR-wide use of GMail is feasible was launched formally on June 24, 2008. More than 260 participants from 14 CGIAR Centers were provided with accounts, and within two days, about half of the participants had accessed the system.
CGgMail is the CGIAR branded version of the services Google offers with Gmail. As we are a not-for-profit organization, CGgMail users do not see the advertisements that users of "free" Gmail accounts see when using the service. Plus,we have access to 24/7 support. Each user gets a mail account with 6861 megabytes of storage, which is increased a little every day. For many users that amount of space is enough for a lifetime of emails. Forget about having to delete from full inboxes.
CGgMail is not only email. CGgMAIL account participants have options for a number of other services, such as:
- Google Calendar™ – users can schedule their events, create personal calendars, invite colleagues to events, set up meetings and even receive SMS notifications on their mobile phones.
- Google Talk™ – supports built-in instant messaging on your mailbox, with a chat history that is searchable
- Google Docs™ – allows users to create and collaborate on documents, presentations and spreadsheets in real-time with colleagues or partners worldwide.
- Google Sites™ is an online application that makes creating a team Web site as easy as editing a document. You can quickly gather a variety of information in one place – including videos, calendars, presentations, attachments and text – and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, your entire organization or the world.
- Google Start Page™ - offers the ability to create a personalized "Start" page that gives at-a-glance access to all these Google services in one page, including any key resources that may be useful. You can choose and organize content such as your latest Gmail messages, Chat, Calendar, headlines from Google News and other top news sources, weather forecasts, stock quotes, bookmarks for quick access to your favorite sites from any computer, or your own sections with content you find from across the Web.
We are finding interesting stories about how CGgMail access works in mysterious ways in some countries. For example, in Syria, people using a local service provider cannot access their account to accept the terms and agreements, but if they go through this process using a different service provider, they can easily connect to CGgMail using the first provider. In Germany, a legal dispute has forced Google to stop offering the service using the GMail brand.
Users' reactions have started to come in, and while it's clear that "CGgMail is different," we haven't had any people tell us that they want to opt out (which participants are free to do at any point). On the contrary, the word is spreading quickly in Centers, and we've had requests to add more users to the case study. A number of people have started to use the extended collaboration functionality of CGgMail such as Google Sites and Google Docs which offer a clear example of IT-facilitated knowledge sharing.
Worth noting: While for some people, 6861 megabytes of mail storage is plenty, we have already observed that some participants were using 2% of this amount in a single day. That's equivalent to 120 megabytes of mail in one day or 43 gigabytes per year. Since a large percentage of email is not or hardly read, it's no wonder that stocks of hard disk manufacturers are doing well.
If you are interested in participating in this study, it's not too late to join. Notify your local IT Managers about your interest, and contact support@cggmail.org to get your account activated.
Stay tuned to learn more about users' feedback as they continue experimenting with the tools.
Back
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