When NC State students return to campus this fall, they will have a new university student email service and an array of collaborative tools, all bundled in Google Apps @ NC State. The Office of Information Technology completed its initial migration of student email accounts from Unity/Webmail to Google Apps @ NC State on July 16.

More than 26,000 student accounts were included in this migration, which involved only those individuals expected to be students in the fall and did not include permanent employees who were also students or those with WolfWise accounts. Since the Google Apps beta service launched in early April, more than 8,000 students had already signed up for an account and had their email migrated. There are an additional 2,600 student accounts that will be migrated beginning July 21. Those accounts belong to summer school students and new students who were not registered for the fall semester at the time of the initial Google Apps migration. Additional Google Apps accounts will be created as students become eligible.

As part of the new Google Apps services, students receive more than 7GB of storage space for their NC State email accounts, all from their university @ncsu.edu email address. In addition to Gmail, students receive Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Talk and Google Wave. Many of these tools are also accessible via various mobile devices. Students who are experiencing problems with the Google Apps @ NC State migration should direct their questions to the NC State Help Desk at 515-HELP (4357) or help@ncsu.edu. They can also visit the Google Apps @ NC State Web site for more information.

The university chose to outsource student email services to improve technology services for students and reduce costs. For more information about NC State’s implementation of Google Apps Education Edition, visit the Google Apps @ NC State Web site.