Critical updates planned for Google services in 2022
For more than a decade, Google has offered their full suite of services to higher education institutions at no cost. Google has announced that they would be placing caps on storage utilization. These storage caps are set at 30% of the current total data stored in the IU Google instance. As a result, the university must limit the total storage footprint used by all IU services in Google systems to avoid drastically increased costs. Apps, services, and features that contribute to our overall usage include:
- Google Drive and Google Photos for individuals
- Google Shared Drive for institutional storage
- Google @ IU Email for students
We need your input!
The Google Storage Task Force is partnering with the Storage Community of Practice to host an initial town hall-style discussion. IT Pros interested in learning more are invited to join us on Thursday, February 17, at 9:00 AM ET. We won’t have all the answers yet, so your questions will help guide our planning. Please submit any questions you have via the registration link below by February 15 [1].
A broader infoshare will be scheduled in the coming weeks to provide more information to the community.
Google Drive and other core services are not going away
Individual Google Drives will continue to be available at IU for the foreseeable future. These previously unlimited accounts will have new storage quotas to ensure IU can continue to utilize Google services at no cost to the institution. 85-90% of IU users will not be affected by these quotas. Additionally, IU will still have access to Docs, Sheets, Slides, Google Meet, Chromebook management, and the majority of Google services.
Creation of new Google Shared Drives has been disabled
Existing Shared Drives will work normally for the time being, but the creation of new Google Shared Drives has been disabled. This change is the first step toward containing IU’s total footprint in the Google platform.
Student Email will move to Exchange
Student email is migrating to Exchange Online later this year. While this change does minimally impact our storage footprint, the move will improve the student email experience in the following ways:
- Easier meeting scheduling due to one calendar system for students, faculty, and staff
- No risk of student emails going to faculty spam folders
- Ability to schedule Teams meetings
- Smoother meeting integration with Canvas (Teams is the default meeting tool for Instructure)
More information about the student email migration will be sent out in the coming weeks the details are finalized.
–IT Community Partnerships on behalf of the Google Storage Taskforce
[1] Microsoft Forms: https://forms.office.com/r/5LgctUGAj1
~~~~~ Today’s IT Pro Tip ~~~~~
For upcoming IT Pro events including infoshares, coffee hours, and more that you may be interested in, please visit the ITCP Event Calendar: https://events.iu.edu/itcp/