University of Westminster deploys Google Apps

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The University of Westminster has signed up to deploy Google Apps Education Edition across its campus, giving both students and staff access to Google’s web-based applications and email.

The university is the latest in a growing list of public and private sector bodies to adopt the low-cost hosted application suite.

The applications, rolled out to first year students during the first week of October, will be deployed to all 22,000 students and staff by January 2009.

Users can access all of Google’s applications including email, instant messaging, shared calendar, spreadsheet and word processor. To encourage use, each month a different Google application will be publicised to the student body through promotional campaigns.

"Already we are engaging the students' union and other bodies to be content creators, for example the football club will be responsible for a shared Google calendar containing fixtures," said Professor Roger James, director of information systems at the university.

"The cloud computing model allows us to mix and match our interactions in real time in many ways – students with staff, internally and to the outside world, academically and socially."

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