Re: Yet... some people are all in with Google
My former workplace was a private school whose entire infrastructure is now reliant on Google.
They produce about 1m Google Docs/etc. a year.
All the teaching, back-office, SLT, governors, policies, etc. documents are on Google, all email is on GMail. Over lockdown, everything was Google Meet.
All the clients are Chromebooks for the kids (every child has one), all Chromebook Flex for the classroom desktop computers and laptops (for teaching staff), and the few PCs that still exist are basically pulling everything from Google drives via Google Chrome with Google Docs, etc. because of the need to interact with the Google data.
It costs them almost nothing (Google services and storage are all free for education, the only thing they pay Google for is a managed device licence one-time per device, whether that's a Chromebook or a PC with Flex installed). Some of the machines they deployed Flex on (rather than update to something that could run Windows 11) are now 10 years old.
Shortly before I left (after which they went full-Google), I was told to stop backing up Google into their backup system because "it's Google". Obviously, they'll never lose a single file, ever, right?
I have to say that the Google service actually works rather well. It's rarely down and rarely problematic and very easily manageable (with their desktops and laptops now on Flex it's even easier) and extremely cheap. And, because it's an outside third party... if it goes down, what can you do as an IT guy? Nothing. Maybe send Google a stroppy email, that's about it. Great from an IT management point of view because when it all goes wrong, you can do nothing about it.
But I'm not sure they realise that they've lumped all their eggs into the one basket. The only saving grace is they didn't also jump down the Jamboard route because that's been killed off by Google already.
It's fabulous when you have a single, integrated, managed, flat system like that - where everything is basically the same. Until it all goes wrong. And then your IT guys have *nothing* they can do about it and, in this case, not even a on-site backup to pull your documents from.
My successor at that school worked with me for many years - and they took over when I left and realised that they just have no money at all, that's why they're doing that and why they denied all reasonable routes to actually progress. Brexit, losing all the international kids, stopping boarding, interest rate rises, etc. has meant that their incomes have tanked. My successor is looking to get out because it will all go wrong one day, which is kind of why I left too. Also because it was literally just the two of us managing 1000 users/devices as well as all the IT and every associated system (access control, CCTV, etc.).
Hilariously, they would often demand Surface tablets, and full Office 365 licensing for everyone, and all kinds of stuff (and have just done that again to my successor), and they've been demanding that for 10+ years from me when I worked there. I was always for it. Strangely it never, ever, once got into actually purchasing anything because it was always vetoed when the costs were quoted. Not just by one person, but by about three successive leaderships when they see the price that other schools are paying for 365, Windows devices, etc. It's not that they *couldn't* afford it, but they are so set in not increasing the IT budget (including staffing!) that they just stagnated and won't ever make the leap out to "normal" IT pricing, and instead waste their money elsewhere instead.
It's worked out fine for them, most annoyingly. But one day it will collapse around their ears, and they can't say they weren't warned.
When you're paying almost zero for the service, it doesn't really matter if it fails, so long as you know that and spend the money where it can join the gaps. It wouldn't work for a business, but a lot of schools are run on that basis (by a short survey I did, to kind of prove my point, one third of schools were Microsoft-only, one third were Google-only, and one third were both).
There's nothing wrong with going all-in on Google. But you want to be backing that up with something. I know when the Internet connection went down, the whole school just stopped as they could do nothing. Their solution: Buy another leased line from another provider. I'm not sure that's the solution you want, especially if the Google end goes off.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
