IE University, among the pioneers in working with Google Cloud

IE University has now joined the Cloud Universities Forum  powered by Google, which has been presented at the Academy of Arts, Sciences and Motion Pictures of Spain in Madrid. Thirteen Spanish universities are part of the group that aims to create a place where all universities would adhere to share their codes of good practices and ideas as well as to help maintaining contact with each other in a fun and simple way.

The agreement between Cloud Universities Forum  and Google will provide students, faculty and staff with a series of customizable tools to work together and students to learn more effectively. This set of tools includes email, word processing and communication tools, private file storage and sharing that set up a 'virtual desktop' which increases the current storage space and services of students’ e-mail accounts and will be accessible to both via Internet and mobile devices.

IE University, an institution that uses the educational version of Google Apps since last April, has opted for this new way of working in order "to give better service to about 58,000 students, faculty, and alumni, both of our university as well as those in IE Business School in Madrid, who now have access to the cloud e-mail and online applications and can share and store documents, use chat applications and instant messaging, and so on. “says Isabel Guillem, General Manager of Information Systems and Technologies at IE.

"Cloud computing is a technology spread throughout the world, especially in the U.S., where over 60% of the top universities have already adopted Google´s cloud technology. Europe is moving rapidly in this field. We are pleased to announce that Spain, along with other leading countries like the UK and Ireland, is leading the adoption of the cloud technology. With this innovative group of universities, we can say that over 19% of all universities in Spain have taken a step forward in innovation, "said William Florance Director of Google Apps for Education in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa ).

With the creation of this group Google could establish a direct and simultaneous contact with the universities to explain the operation of such new applications and inform them of developments in Google Apps. The 400,000 new users of these universities are in addition to over 15 million users who already use Google Apps for Education worldwide. Google Apps tools that are to be implemented will enable universities and business schools to work in a 100% web environment, which is also known as cloud computing. Spain is the only country in Europe with 19% of its universities using Google cloud.