Canberra's Oobe sends tomorrow's soldiers to Google

Canberra-based Oobe has completed a two-year project worth $330,000 to migrate the Australian Defence College to Google Apps.

The college migrated its entire workload from a legacy system to Google’s cloud-based applications, which includes Classroom, Gmail and Google Drive.

Google Apps replaces ADC's on-premise open student network, which was originally implemented by Oobe seven years ago.

The initial project saw 400 students and teachers migrated to Google Apps. New students to the college will sign up to Google Apps on enrolment.

Federal Defence minister Marise Payne said the project reflected the Australian government’s policy of adopting cloud platforms where appropriate.

“Defence selected Google Apps following a detailed evaluation of market offerings,” said Payne. “This is a proven platform that is already used by sections of the US military, UK government and a number of Australian universities. I congratulate the Australian Defence College and Defence’s chief information officer group on implementing this program.”

Oobe managing director Stuart Kilduff said the project would hopefully open the door for other Defence departments to adopt cloud-based solutions. “The challenge wasn’t migration, it’s been adopting the platform and showing them how Google Apps can co-exist with traditional IT,” said Kilduff. “It works as part of the ecosystem, not one or the other.

“Organisations are either in the Microsoft of Google world. This is looking at it from a holistic approach. There is a world of tools we think organisations should have access to, regardless of their IT environment.”

Oobe has also been awarded a $2 million contract for software-as-a-service with Defence, but was unable to comment on the details of the project.

The IT provider originally won the contract for a Google Apps for Work rollout two years ago, but was changed to a Google Apps for Education solution instead.

Google Apps for Education is a free product suite for the education sector, as opposed to the subscription-based Apps for Work. However, last month Google announced it will offer its Apps for Work suite free to businesses currently locked into Enterprise Agreements with other office software vendors. The offer is only available in the US and Canada right now.