Lakehead University Success Story

Lakehead University is a leading post secondary located in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada that provides an unbeatable combination of quality education and one of the most beautiful campuses in Canada. With more than 38,000 student, staff, and alumni, the university was in search of a collaborative communication tool to complement its existing progressive, technology-enabled learning environment.

The Challenge

Lakehead University’s legacy email system presented a number of ongoing operational challenges, including server overcapacity, non-delivery, and slow response time. In addition, administration of the legacy email system, just to maintain status quo, was consuming 50 percent of the university’s daily Technology Service Centre’s Server Support team time. And related issues were taking 25 percent of the Service Desk team's time. In the past, steps had been taken to address overcapacity and slow response time by asking users to delete old files. These steps were short-term fixes that did not address strategic issues, prompting administration to seek a final and permanent solution.

The Solution

Lakehead initiated a detailed analysis of all top-tier solutions for its future collaborative environment. After the analysis Lakehead concluded that Google Apps Eduction Edition would be the right choice as the current offering and potential for future enhancements complement Lakehead’s technology strategy of enhancing the user learning experience. Google Apps Education Edition gives Lakehead University users the ability to harness the power of the web and the right set of technology tools, such as instant messaging and shared Calendaring, to complement teaching and learning at Lakehead.

"Google is already a step ahead of its competition in converting email from being a conventional communication tool to being a robust, collaborative discussion tool. Other companies require purchasing and deployig three or more products just to do what Google Apps' email program, Gmail, can do." Shahzad Jafri, CIO Lakehead University. "In addition, Google’s track record is consonant with Lakehead’s philosophy of innovative thinking and a nimble approach to adopt technology to enhance community experience."

In their selection criteria, Lakehead noted that Google Apps Education Edition would be able to meet the following criteria:

  • High availability
  • Scale to grow with Lakehead's enrollment growth
  • Be fully secure
  • Have storage space similar to, if not better than, what is being offered by free email service providers, and
  • be able to offer email for life for Lakehead alumni

The Google Apps Education Edition replaces Lakehead’s legacy enterprise email solution and related functions. Lakehead's deployment of Google Apps Education Edition includes:

  • Gmail for email and in-browser IM for 38,000 faculty, staff and students
  • Google Calendar for shared calendaring
  • Google Talk for instant messaging and VOIP

The Results

Lakehead was able to successfully migrate 38,000 users to the Google Apps. Lakehead Univesity was further able to avoid upcoming design costs for Microsoft Exchange for 38,000 users of between $6-7 million (CAD), and the ongoing annually cost of maintenance of between $2-3 million (CAD) / year. By aligning with Google, Lakehead will be now be able to apply these resources to other educational needs for the university and benefit from the advancing technology curve created through the partnership with Google.


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