In just a month, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will launch a student e-mail beta service for Google Apps Education Edition. The new service, Google Apps @ NC State, will provide students with e-mail and other popular Google hosted services designed to improve collaboration, communication and education.

Since the announcement, more than 2,900 people have signed up to become early adopters of the service. Those who signed up and are eligible will receive an invitation during spring break (March 15-19) to move from the Unity mail system to Gmail and Google Apps. Students can still request an invitation to become an early adopter by visiting the Google Apps @ NC State Web site. The production Google Apps @ NC State service will be rolled out over the remainder of the year, when all students will transition to Google Apps.  The next phase after that will pave the way for faculty and staff to be able to transition to Google Apps if they choose.

NC State announced Jan. 20 that it would partner with Google Inc. to host student e-mail services. This action, recommended by the Student E-mail Task Force in its March 2009 report, enables the university to improve technology services for students while reducing costs. With the Google Apps Education Edition suite of applications, students will also get Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Calendar and Google Talk and more than 7 gigabytes of e-mail storage space per account. Students will keep their official @ncsu.edu address. For more information, visit the Google Apps @ NC State Web site.