New e-mail system costs more than $200,000, will replace Exchange, Mirapoint
Vast improvements are in the works for the Central Michigan University e-mail and calendar systems.
The Board of Trustees approved a contract Thursday morning with Merit Network Inc.
“This will provide better service to our faculty, staff and students at no greater cost,” said interim Provost Gary Shapiro.
Roger Rehm, vice president of Information Technology and chief information officer, said the upgrade to the e-mail system will increase storage to 10 gigabytes from 250 megabytes.
The upgrade will hopefully occur by July 1 for students and before the start of fall semester for faculty and staff, Rehm said.
He said the new contract, which uses Zimbra software, will cost just more than $200,000 its first year.
The current yearly contract costs about $225,000 to $250,000 and uses Microsoft Exchange for faculty and Mirapoint for students.
Rehm said the new Zimbra system offers a host of Web 2.0 features enhancing the browser-based e-mail and calendar experience.
It is still fully compatible with clients and services such as Microsoft Outlook, Apple Mail, iCal and Google Calendar.
“All of the tools people are used to using should continue to work,” Rehm said.
Cost saver
Rehm said the analytical tools available in Zimbra will help drive down the costs of maintaining services by facilitating the elimination of inactive accounts.
It also will allow online hosting of documents in an “integrated briefcase,” which users will be able to save to from their computers just like a hard drive.
“When I’m in an internet cafe in Hong Kong, I can pull up the Web interface and all my documents are there, on the secured CMU network,” Rehm said.
He said IT has plans for comprehensive improvements to the technological experience at CMU that will be revealed next week, including personal online storage and a new student printing solution.
IT also is planning on an enforced password reset for all CMU accounts over the summer.
When users go to enter a new password, it will only be accepted if it is strong enough against potential hacking attempts.
This means no more “central1” or “pa$$w0rd” entries, Rehm said.
“It will make a big difference in the amount of spam that happens on the network,” he said.
Fenton junior James Murray uses his CMU e-mail as his primary account.
He said he is impressed by the increase in storage capacity coming with the new system, but is not sure he will be able to make use of it all.
“That’s a lot of space — I’m not sure it’s all going to be fully necessary,” Murray said.
