New Student Email System Launched

IT managers at educational institutions face the challenge of deploying mail servers to meet the growing demands of their students for efficient, secure email with collaborative services. Most legacy higher-ed email systems consist of loosely integrated suites of hardware and software from disparate vendors and are often based on open-source code, making the task of management difficult. In early 2006, GSU administrators realized the current student email system was being outgrown in terms of both performance requirements and functionality.

The Student Email System Task Force was charged with the responsibility of recommending a student email system replacement. Members of the committee included the Dean of Students, a Student Affairs representative and ITS staff.

First, the task force conducted a web survey that asked students for feedback on what they wanted in a new email system. The results of the survey formed the list of requirements. The task force conducted research on the Internet and by talking to other universities to identify a field of vendor contenders. Features of those contenders were compared to the list of requirements and evaluated in relation to fit for our campus infrastructure.

The three finalists were invited to come to campus to present a one hour demonstration of their products to a group of students in three separate sessions. The students were given an opportunity to ask questions about features they were interested in. At the conclusion of the demonstrations, students filled out a product survey. The surveys, along with bids and support information was used to select the new email system.

Georgia Southern University has purchased an M5000 Message Server from Mirapoint, the leading secure messaging provider who serves and secures over 100 million mailboxes worldwide, including among their customers the educational institutions The University of Georgia, Temple University, The University of Tokyo, The University of Chicago and CalPoly.

The M5000 is an messaging appliance, meaning that it is a single-purpose machine whose purpose is to efficiently and securely receive and send mail. Mail to and from the machine is encrypted and there are no known exploits to the secure, hardened operating system. Users will have the ability to create calendars, to-do lists, and have reminders sent to themselves for calendar and to-do list events. Collaborative services will allow users to share mail folders, calendars, and to-do lists. Group contact and address books should make address lookups easy.

All current email, addressbook and forwards will be converted from the old email system to Mirapoint. After the conversion on March 14th, students will enter through the mygsu web portal as usual. Their mail, addressbook and forwards will have been transferred to the new system. The only difference will be that they will be interacting with a new and improved interface.