four groups of people using computers for work and communication

In February 2021, Google announced significant changes to its cost model for higher education institutions. The new model moved away from unlimited “no extra cost” storage, which had been in place for over a decade, to consumption-based storage costs. With more than 202,000 user accounts and 5.2 petabytes of data stored in Google at the time of this announcement — and increases in storage anticipated each year — continuing to provide unlimited storage to our users would be cost-prohibitive.  

In response, Virginia Tech formed the Google Workspace Program (GWP), a multi-year effort to:

  • Evaluate the use of Google services at Virginia Tech (Project 1);

  • Assess different service options and plan for the storage impacts to the university (Project 2);

  • Arrive at a service decision in the best interest of the university community (Project 3); and,

  • Communicate and implement the service decision (Project 4).

The GWP was facilitated by a steering committee that included key stakeholders from the Division of IT, distributed IT, teaching faculty, staff, alumni, retiree, and undergraduate and graduate student bodies. Under their guidance, the GWP conducted thorough assessments of the university’s storage needs and users’ preferences to determine the best path forward. They also helped the university negotiate a new agreement with Google via an Internet2 contract, which delayed their storage enforcement deadline from July 2022 until July 2024, affording the GWP more time to finalize a service decision. 

In April of 2023, the GWP announced an official service decision to consolidate VT email and calendar services to Microsoft Exchange Online, offer limited Google storage to students, employees, departments, and alumni, and offer more substantial Microsoft cloud storage to students, employees, and retirees. 

Leading up to this announcement, the GWP formed a Communications Working Group, who along with contributors from Collaborative Computing Solutions (CCS), Division of IT Communications, IT Experience and Engagement (ITEE), University Communications and Marketing, and Alumni Relations embarked on a massive communications effort to inform users of these changes. This included a new website, email campaigns, campus notices, meetings with university governance groups, knowledge base articles, and other materials to prepare for the change.  

A GWP Support Working Group was also formed to plan for increased user support needs during this transition. 

Then, just as the university began to prepare for these changes, Microsoft made a similar announcement that their storage costs would dramatically increase starting in 2025. As the fiscal year ended, the GWP, with the support of the Division of IT and university leadership, heavily revised the original service decision to account for storage restrictions in both Google and Microsoft.

Going into fiscal year 2024, the GWP working groups are rapidly developing new communications, implementing plans for a large email migration effort, and building new tools to support an aggressive timeline to meet deadlines for Google’s new storage contract, which will go into effect July 1, 2024.