RE: Yale outsources email to Google

["Emery, Jill" <j.emery@austin.utexas.edu>]

Due to local and in some cases federal regulations regarding the 
security of both student/personnel data and regarding certain 
aspects of financial data; I cannot yet see a future where the 
majority of academic research universities can be entirely in the 
"clouds." Yale's move shows that certain services such as email 
can be moved into the SaaS environment. Many universities are now 
using Skype as a long distance provider. Neither of these 
applications are considered high security risks. However, it will 
be a very long time coming before student academic accounts, 
employee IDs, payrolls, and all the other myriad of academic 
financial services are moved into such an environment. The 
threats to the big guys are always greater than the threats to 
the little ones. Hackers cannot make a name for themselves by 
hacking into your small company (as you yourself call it). 
However, hackers can make quite a name for themselves if they 
manage to disrupt payroll at MIT for instance.

It's a matter of scale and security and it's still a vast, wild, 
& wooly Internet out there.

Jill Emery
Head of Acquisitions
University of Texas Libraries
Austin, TX 78713
e: j.emery@austin.utexas.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Esposito
Sent: Tuesday, February 16, 2010 4:38 PM
To: Liblicense-L@Lists. Yale. Edu
Subject: Yale outsources email to Google

The outsourcing trend continues:

http://j.mp/968Sov

Yale is outsourcing its email service to Google.  The question I 
have is, How long before all enterprise applications (including 
those for higher ed) are outsourced?  I would think soon.

Calling it "outsourcing" may be misleading.  Better to use the 
industry term:  SAAS, or Software as a Service.  I am puzzled why 
even as enterprises move to SAAS and Cloud computing, there is 
still a centripetal pull to have code written and maintained 
internally.

The small company I now work for, with employees on two 
continents and clients on three, is committed completely to Cloud 
computing, running the entire operation on Google Apps.  No 
employee keeps any data on his or her hard drive.  Presumably 
iTunes is the exception.

Joe Esposito

[NOTE: Yes, outsourcing the student service.  Perhaps if that 
works well, the faculty and staff service will be moved, but it's 
too early to know. Ann Okerson]