Our student government team uses Google Apps every day to make Vanderbilt a better place. Google is changing the way Vanderbilt students engage, interact, and learn.

Wyatt Smith, Vanderbilt Student Government President

Challenge

Wanting a better way to collaborate, Vanderbilt began the search for a system that would empower students to work and communicate and work collaboratively, and that would deliver a better technical experience. When student government urged a switch to Google Apps, Vanderbilt’s IT staff listened. Vanderbilt also needed a search solution that could handle the large volume of searches – nearly 300,000 per month – on its public website.

Solution

Vanderbilt selected Google Apps Education Edition, a free version of Google Apps optimized for on-campus use. Within thirty days they were up and running an opt-in email solution for their undergraduate population, providing new email and collaboration tools that students welcomed and quickly put to use. Once Vanderbilt started using Google Apps, evaluating the Google Search Appliance (GSA) was a natural next step. Relevance and speed were particularly important since search would need to process some 30-60 queries per minute on the public website.