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The Future of E-mail and Calendaring Services: Part 2
In the previous edition of One On One with ITS, “The
Future of E-mail and Calendaring Services” article discussed
new e-mail and calendaring directions for CU-Boulder and delved in depth
on the new general-funded Exchange 2007 service for faculty and staff.
In summary, the article identified the rationale for switching services
(better collaboration, simplified support, a common solution for all
faculty and staff, and improved features) and provided information about
the plans for the new Exchange 2007 service (general-funded, 500MB quotas,
support for mobile device access, and future plans for unified messaging).
That is only half of the picture, however. Changes are in store for student
e-mail and calendaring services as well.
External E-mail and Calendaring Services for Students
Several years ago, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo began offering “free” externally-operated e-mail and calendaring services to higher education. “Free” isn’t entirely accurate though. The companies do not charge for the service, but universities still incur costs related to e-mail routing, account management, support, and other associated items. In actuality, the services help reduce, but do not eliminate, cost by decreasing the number of on-campus servers purchased and operated for these services. Looking beyond the cost reduction factors, the services include many appealing features:
- modern and continually evolving e-mail and calendaring user interfaces;
- features that exceed the offerings of the current CULink solution, such as personal web sites, web-based file storage, and integrated text and instant messaging;
- disk quotas of 1GB, which is five times more than ITS currently provides with CULink.
These external e-mail and calendaring solutions provide a level of service and features that would be very difficult for a university to fund and operate locally. As a result, a growing number of higher education institutions across the country have begun flocking to the vendor-offered services. CU-Boulder has decided to head in that direction as well.
During the fall 2008 semester, ITS began working with the UCSU Tri-Executives and Communications Director to explain the reasons for moving to an external e-mail and calendaring service and to form strategies on how best to decide which service to use. UCSU formed a sub-committee called the E-mail Service Steering Committee (ESSC). ESSC is composed of UCSU executives, legislative council members, volunteers from the general student body, and ITS in a purely advisory and assistive role, to work through the decision. After an initial briefing from ITS about the services, ESSC decided they wanted to hear in depth details about the Google Apps for Higher Education and Microsoft Live@EDU solutions directly from the vendors. In early December, sales representatives from each company came and talked about their services; the ESSC left with a sense that both solutions had a lot to offer.
Since both options seemed viable, the ESSC decided the next step should be to seek broad student feedback about their preferences. The ESSC, with assistance from ITS, crafted a web-based survey to gather this information. The design of the survey was influenced by the ESSC’s meeting with the vendors. Many committee members noted that their perceptions before the vendor meeting were very different from their post-meeting perceptions. Several committee members acknowledged that company branding had predisposed them toward a certain solution. Hearing about the details of each service changed many members’ opinions. Due to this outcome, and due to needing to receive as much feedback as possible from students while requiring only a small amount of their time to understand the options, the ESSC thought it would be best to craft a survey that focused purely on features and functionality in order to attempt to eliminate preconceived biases based upon branding.
The survey asked many questions about specific features offered by Google and Microsoft. The survey attempted to ask a balanced set of questions, presenting an equal number of unique features offered by each individual vendor. Consider two examples:
- In addition to e-mail and calendaring, Google provides an additional service called “Google Docs” as part of their solution. One of the unique features of Google Docs, compared to the current Microsoft Live@EDU offering, is the ability to have multiple people simultaneously editing documents on the web.
- An example of a unique Microsoft feature is the support for directory services. Microsoft Live@EDU provides a hosted version of Microsoft Exchange which enables students, when sending e-mail messages or scheduling others in their calendar, to use a pre-created directory list of everyone at the university. Google, on the other hand, allows each user to maintain contact information but does not provide a full university directory service.
By crafting the survey to include four unique features from each offering then asking students about which features were most important to them, the ESSC hoped to better understand which service would best meet the functionality requirements of the student body.
In mid-February, an E-memo was sent to all students asking them to take the online survey. Over the course of five days, a total of 1034 responses were received. The results were clear and consistent when asked two different ways. One question asked students to consider Google and Microsoft as “whole” services. The question presented a Service A (representing Google features) and Service B (representing Microsoft features), listing many features in common, but emphasizing the unique differences between Google and Microsoft. Considering the whole service, students voted 68% in favor of the Microsoft solution and 32% in favor of Google. A second set of questions asked about individual features and resulted in the same outcome. Microsoft-specific features, particularly online document storage, directory lookups, and integration with Microsoft Office appeared as some of the highest-rated features. The highest-rated Google features, such as simultaneous online document editing, easy management of multiple calendars, and integrated text and instant messaging, rated in the middle, landing above a few lesser Microsoft features but below others. Based upon the survey, students demonstrated a strong preference for the Microsoft Live@EDU functionality.
The ESSC met to discuss the survey outcome and other considerations in order to make their final decision. The survey gave clear direction. Further, the ESSC astutely noted another difference between Google and Microsoft. Other than having university branding and Colorado.EDU e-mail addresses, the Google Apps offering is nearly identical to what anyone can get by signing up for Gmail today. On the other hand, the Microsoft Live@EDU hosted Exchange environment is not available to the general public. Given the survey outcome and the recognition that anyone who wanted Google could sign up for the service on their own, but anyone who wanted Microsoft Live@EDU couldn’t have access unless the university adopted it as the new student e-mail solution, the ESSC decided to select Microsoft Live@EDU as the new student e-mail and calendaring solution. To make the decision official, a Legislative Council bill (70LCB6-Email System) was approved on February 26, 2009.
Next steps are already underway. ITS continues to work with UCSU to form plans for the transition, including creating a “test” instance of the service which will allow the ESSC to explore the service. An ITS project has been initiated to bring up the new service and migrate students to it from CULink. The project is expected to start in the late spring to summer timeframe. Significant work will be required, but the end result will be e-mail and calendaring services with increased functionality, updated web user interfaces, and less operational overhead for the university – changes everyone can look forward to.
General-Funded Exchange 2007 for Faculty and Staff Update
ITS has continued making progress on the general-funded Exchange 2007 service for faculty and staff. In order to help design a robust new server environment, ITS decided to bring in outside consulting expertise. Beginning in late March, an Exchange Ranger from Microsoft Professional Services began working with ITS. The consulting engagement has resulted in final plans for an all new server infrastructure capable of scaling to meet the needs of up to 10,000 users. An implementation of the new solution will begin soon. During the summer ITS hopes to test the new service and begin a limited number of migrations. The fall and spring semesters will see larger scale migrations to the new service.
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