Re: Discontinuing student email service

[Stephen John Smoogen <smooge () GMAIL COM>]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Jesse Thompson
<jesse.thompson () doit wisc edu> 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.

Depending on the University each of those comes from different
budgets. Yes buying disks seems to be cheaper, but the cost of
electricity for the server room (floor space also) seem to be the
budgets that get cut the quickest. Staff answering questions and such
are paid for out of something that is usually the last to be cut... or
can be repurposed from other departments that are losing funding.

The usage of students to run email services which was a long ago
reason to do it internally (teaching skills useful in the outside
world) seems to be a lot lower due to legal implications (depending on
state etc).

So the view from the C-level is outsourcing for students is a win for
a tight budget whether its google mail or microsoft Live. And the
features that students expect from an email system tend to be higher
than they were just 8 years ago. The amount of "Why don't you do it
like Google/Hotmail?" seemed to get higher as time went on. The
faculty/staff fall under the "Why can't I get onto the mainframe
anymore?" type and so usually aren't as pushy. They also come under
different rules depending on if its a medical college or not.


...
> 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.

My limited experience with this hasn't been too good. Portal's are
very last century to the students and the faculty/staff are just
getting used to the one from the beginning of the century. Now if you
could export that to Facebook, now that would be a winner :). [And no
I don't seriously mean it.. though I am sure some CxO would think it
is a great cost saver.]



-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?
-- Robert Browning