The university has decided to switch all e-mail hosting from Google to Microsoft later this year.

Faculty and staff at the university are being moved to Microsoft Outlook as the new e-mail client, while students are being moved from Gmail to Microsoft Office 365.

“Combining all of the university’s e-mail clients under Microsoft would help integrate certain features in Microsoft e-mail accounts and help improve communications on campus,” David Crain, assistant provost and chief information officer, said.

He said the university has 36 different e-mail clients for students and faculty, which makes it difficult to contact faculty who are not currently using Gmail accounts.

“Having that many clients causes a few problems,” Crain said. “We are in different systems, we do not have shared calendars on e-mail and our global address list, which is the directory you see when you e-mail people, does not include all faculty.”

He said if university faculty primarily use Microsoft e-mail accounts, all faculty would be able to share important dates on calendars, know who is on their e-mail at the time and also share contact information.

Joyce Shemonia, office manager for the department of english, said she has worked more with Outlook in the past, but after using Gmail for nearly four years, she might be reluctant to return.

“Originally, I did not want to use Gmail after working with Outlook, but once I started understanding all the options, such as sorting and labeling conversations in your inbox, I started to really enjoy using Gmail.”

Shemonia said the option to use Google Drive, a file storage system that allows file storage, file sharing and editing online, was one of the initial features that impressed her the most after switching.

She said being able to save documents to an online file and send it to other departments at the university through Google Drive saved her plenty of time and effort.

While Gmail’s features may be more user-friendly, the switch to Microsoft may also have benefits for both faculty and students. 

Alex Merchant, a junior from Effingham studying computer science, said many of the services provided by Microsoft Office 365 are also provided by Outlook, but there are some features that help Microsoft Office 365 stand out from Gmail.

“One feature Gmail has that Microsoft Office 365 does not is e-mail scanning,” he said. “Basically, Google takes keywords from your e-mails and sends your information to advertisers so they can advertise products you might be interested in.”

He said although the feature does not make a difference in how Gmail works, it is comforting to know that if the university switches e-mail clients, his personal information will not be open to the public.

Merchant said Google does have a significant edge over Microsoft in the amount of data a Gmail account can store. He said the switch won’t make a difference to him since Microsoft Outlook offers 10 gigabytes and Google offers 15 gigabytes.

“E-mails are almost always text-based, so it makes little difference to me whether I have more storage space or not,” he said. “For some people it might make a difference, but I never had an issue with my e-mail filling up.”

Crain said the university has already bought the licenses needed to use integration features on Microsoft accounts, so the need to switch to another e-mail client is pointless.

“The licenses are already part of our Microsoft campus agreement, so we are already paying for licenses for Microsoft programs,” he said. “But we are not currently using it, so it would be an unnecessary waste of money,” Crain said.

Shemonia said whichever e-mail the university decides on does not make a difference to her and said she will be happy as long as she has access to e-mail.

“I can’t complain with whatever the university decides to go with,” she said. “Whether they are using Gmail or Outlook, as long as I can send out my mail faster than using a pen or paper, I’m fine.”