The University-wide switch from Zimbra email accounts to Google servers is humming along — with a few snags — and 50,000 have already made the jump.
Lacey Baze, project manager for the Google project, said students will be able to voluntarily switch their accounts until Sept. 23, when student emails will automatically switch over to Google. Student Neo accounts within the Zimbra server will remain as an archive until Oct. 15.
While some students fear they will lose their email data, Cheryl Cato, IT infrastructure and operations director, said data won’t be immediately deleted. Cato said there is a possibility of getting it back for students if needed.
“It is our hope that we have done everything to prevent that and if they do identify things that they think are missing, please just contact the help desk because we do package up the old data and put it in a file,” Cato said.
Cato said she recognized the challenges that come with switching email services and said students should address their concerns with Help Desk Central.
Baze said the work put into making the Google switch was designed to be a smooth process and A&M spent a lot of time developing the migration app at go.google.tamu.edu.
It is really simple, Baze said, and allows students to claim their Google account and then they just take a few steps to determine whether they want their email, calendar, contacts or briefcase to be migrated from Neo to Google.
Cato said Google will be more effective than Zimbra since Gmail is fundamentally cloud-based, so there will be more room for documents and emails, and it offers collaboration tools like Google Apps.