The Google Apps suite, which has been around for a couple of years now, is by far the most popular free application suite used by individuals and bloggers alike, globally. From the house of Google, Google Apps Suite is a collection of free to use tools that let you use and offer Google’s services, although using your own domain name. The services that are available as a part of the Google Apps suite include E-mail, Chat, Docs, Webpage creator, Calendar etc. It is very easy to set up, and lets you offer these services under your own brand name (For eg: username@yourdomainaname.com)

It seems that Google India has cranked up the gears and are trying to bring as many users as possible under company’s umbrella. After the recent tie-up with Sify, that will enable Sify to offer Email and Chat by using the Google Apps Suite, Google India is now targeting the Engineering and MBA colleges in the country by announcing the launch of the ‘Got the “App”titude Challenge‘. As a part of the challenge, Google is encouraging the students, faculty members or alumni leaders from any of the engineering or MBA colleges in the country to implement Google Apps within their colleges and encourage its usage.

Interested? You can go ahead and sign up for the challenge before September 15th, 2008. You will then need to get an approval from your college’s administration on or before October 15th, 2008 and successfully implement it by December 15th, 2008. Google has laid down 3 simple objectives for the challenge

1. Convince the decision makers in your college to use Google Apps.

2. Implement Google Apps in your college.

3. Ensure that everyone in your college is using Google Apps

Of course, as it’s with most competitions, this one has prizes too. All participating teams that successfully implement the Apps suite in their college receive

• A Certificate of Implementation
• Publication of your team’s name and member names on this website

Also, the team that achieves the highest level of Google Apps usage at their college will receive:

• A case study to be featured on our Google Apps website as well as a video testimonial featured on our Google Apps YouTube channel
• A letter of recommendation from FMS and Google
• An all expense paid trip for your team to visit one of our Google India offices

There’s also a bonus prize in store for a few lucky ones.

It is interesting to see Google encourage the use of Web-apps among technical institutions. I have seen a few students make use of Google Docs to collaborate on group assignments and projects. Use of Google Apps will only facilitate collaboration on a much wider scale. Obviously, the administrator has every power to control what services are offered.

What is sad, is the fact that the challenge is open only for the Engineering and MBA colleges. Why can’t other colleges implement Google Apps?

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