Re: Discontinuing student email service

["Michael J. Wheeler" <mwheeler () PITTSTATE EDU>]

Jesse,

I wrote the provisioning code, which I wrote in Java, but 99% of it was
already there in the Google code samples.

As for maintaining it, we've actually handed off to our helpdesk manager.
It no longer takes root access to mess with accounts, so there is actually
a net reduction in the work for my Unix administrator.

--
Michael J. Wheeler
Assistant Director, Systems and Networking
Pittsburg State University
Phone:  620-235-4610
E-mail: mwheeler () pittstate edu

On 1/26/2010 12:39 PM, Jesse Thompson wrote:
> Google Apps is *not* free to implement.  You still need to provide
> support, administer the service offering, provision the users, maintain
> email delivery and spam control (in common configurations), deal with a
> non-responsive vendor, rename/delete/migrate/merge accounts, migrate
> email between services, deal with e-discovery, you *still* have to deal
> with compromised accounts, etc.
>
> Basically, you have to do everything you did before, plus some
> additional stuff, but you have a less useful administrative toolset.
>
> About the only thing you save is disk space. But students don't use
> nearly as much disk space as fac/staff, and disk gets cheaper over time.
>
> To the schools that have decided to outsource only non-fac/staff email
> (something like half of our students are also fac/staff.) I would ask:
> why are you maintaining 2 email services? Now you have to deal with the
> difficulties with providing a collaborative environment between users on
> disparate email services. I contend that this isn't saving any money,
> and it is probably costing more money overall.
>
> So, back to the original question "Why do we still provide student email
> accounts?". Well, we need students to have email accounts so that they
> can communicate and collaborate with fac/staff. I contend that the best
> way to do this is to have both user populations using the same email
> service. If that means that fac/staff are also on Google, then that's
> OK; it's still just one email service.
>
> So, if you don't care about keeping students on the same system as
> fac/staff, do you need to *provide* the accounts - either locally or on
> Google? No. I think that it is possible to just ask the students for
> their email addresses (it works for Facebook and other web communities.)
> The problem with this model is that it is hard to deliver mail to the
> big free-mail providers because they reject, rate limit, bitbucket and
> filter your mail. This problem isn't easy to work around, but it's
> possible, and it is cheaper than hosting students locally or on Google.
>
> Another idea that I have been pitching on our campus is the idea of
> creating a "secure messaging" system (akin to a bank, or an HMO, or even
> Facebook) within our portal. Ideally, the only email that students would
> ever receive would be notifications that they have messages waiting for
> them in the portal. If they don't get the messages, then they will
> eventually log in to the portal to find the messages anyway. In reality,
> this would still be an email service, but it would be used strictly for
> the purpose of official communication, so it should be easier to justify.
>
> I neglected to mention alumni accounts. I can see how cost control can
> be a problem for schools that offer free alumni email accounts. In that
> case, it doesn't make sense to locally host alumni accounts (unless
> you're just forwarding.) But, it probably doesn't make sense to offer
> alumni email at all IMO. We're unique, since we deactivate student
> accounts and our alumni association offers their own service.
>
> Jesse
>
> On 1/26/2010 8:59 AM, Charles Seitz wrote:
> > If the question comes to one of cost, as an educational institution
> > you are
> > eligible to get aboard with Google Apps free of charge. The University of
> > Tennessee system is going this way a campus at a time quite
> > successfully and
> > is offloading all of the student email from the Exchange system. The
> > students will have their email address for life, the University
> > doesn't have
> > to maintain anything for them, and the University now has a point of
> > contact
> > with alumni for the rest of their lives. It's a win for everyone.
> >
> > Charles A. Seitz
> > Senior Security Analyst
> > University of Tennessee Information Security Office
> > Martin Campus
> > cseitz () tennessee edu
> > (731) 881-7966
> > Mobile (615) 948-3641
> >
> >
> >
> > On 1/26/10 8:52 AM, "Matthew Gracie"<graciem () CANISIUS EDU> wrote:
> >
> > > Hall, Rand wrote:
> > > > On the heels of another student email outsourcing question...it has
> > > > occurred to me that some of us may want to step back and reflect on
> > > > the following question:
> > > >
> > > > Why do we still provide student email accounts?
> > > >
> > > > We once provided labs full of typewriters and then computers. We used
> > > > to provide our own dialup service. Once these things were
> > > > commoditized we were able to largely eliminate them. Do student email
> > > > accounts fall into the same lifecycle pattern?
> > >
> > > I can't speak for anyone else, but here at Canisius, the
> > > college-provided email address is an official point of contact for
> > > departments like the library, the registrar's office, and the bursar's
> > > office. It's used in our CMS, our class-specific email lists, and a
> > > dozen other places.
> > >
> > > Getting rid of it would mean either lots more postal mail or coming up
> > > with some backend database of student's voluntarily provided home email
> > > addresses. I shudder at the thought of maintaining that mess.
> > >
> > > --Matt