Campus Email & Collaborative Tools
Email plays a vital role in university business and communications, and Information Technology Services periodically reviews such mission critical systems. Additionally, there is an increasing demand for greater functionality, no downtime, larger storage spaces, and calendaring. Iowa State University is developing a campus email plan and re-evaluating current spam and anti-virus solutions. Third party options are being considered that would allow for improvement in the current level of service to the campus community.
Objectives
- Improve and modernize messaging services for students.
- Upgrade Microsoft Exchange email service to more recent software and build out hardware platform to be more robust.
- Investigate innovative solutions for integrated messaging.
- Implement a common calendar and email for faculty and staff.
- Investigate expanding Microsoft Exchange email for all faculty and staff (half of the faculty and staff are currently using it).
- Investigate life-long ISU email addresses.
- Investigate encrypted email for certain transactions.
Benefits
- Provide a higher level of email service to campus.
- Reduce the cost of spam and anti-virus software.
- Improve collaboration tools.
- Strengthen business continuity and reduce the time to recover from a disaster.
- Address increasing regulatory need for email archiving.
Leadership
- Oversight will be provided by the Office of the CIO.
- An email group comprised of technical staff and users will provide input on technical issues and future direction.
- IT Services will provide the operations leadership and guidance.
Investments
- Staff time for investigative efforts.
Contact
- David Popelka, Associate CIO, IT Services
Next Steps
- Continue the investigation into costs of anti-virus and anti-spam software.
- Investigate local and off-campus options for providing messaging services.
- Develop plan to migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 to support faculty and staff.
- Identify relevant university policy issues concerning mail archival and eDiscovery.
