The suite includes Gmail and Google's Calendar, Talk and Page Creator applications, all of which have either been rolled out in recent months or are being integrating with each other this year. More applications will be added over time.

Another user, Michael Renzi, director of finance and administration at San Jose City College in California, said the school joined an early-user program last February and created the school's first e-mail accounts for its approximately 11,000 students.

"It's providing them with services that we haven't been able to provide before" because of budget restrictions, he said.

While providing e-mail access to students has been in the school's technology plans for several years, the money wasn't available to set up servers, administrators, software and other equipment, Renzi said. Gmail made it work for the school, which is a two-year college. "I know there are other products out there, but this is just the best fit for our organization," he said. "We wanted a primary means of communications with students," as well as training them to use e-mail so they could go on to use it successfully in four-year colleges and in business.

For teachers, the Google Apps package offers calendaring for assignments, Web page creation tools and other needed features without huge expenses, he said. The college has been testing Google Apps since the first trials last December. The school developed testing groups and provided additional training for faculty members so they could use the included applications.