E-Communication Project Self-Study Report Executive Summary
NOTE: For the full version of the Self-Study report please download the linked PDF.
In July 2005, ITS sponsored a multi-collegiate team to study the current state of and future need for electronic communication tools at The University of Iowa. Since January 2006, ITS has successfully implemented all but one of the key recommendations — to significantly enhance the existing Blue Cluster Email system by improving performance and substantially increasing quota capacity while maintaining today’s functionality.
ITS frequently conducts internal reviews of large projects at major milestones and in line with this, a self-study of the implementation project has been conducted to evaluate the project and its future direction.
During the self-study we investigated three options for meeting the recommendations related to the Blue Cluster e-mail system: 1) implement the identified Cyrus architecture, 2) move all Blue Cluster users to Exchange, 3) use an outsourced option to replace the Blue Cluster. The analysis is focused on three areas: infrastructure, financial impact, and user experience.
Based on our evaluation, we have reached the following conclusions:
- The cost to implement and support two disparate email systems is more expensive than a single system.
- Consolidating email from two email systems to a single email system aligns with the Board of Regents Internal Audit Department recommendation to reduce parallel systems on campus.
- The voluntary migration of email accounts to Exchange has been higher than we anticipated.
- While some users are concerned with architecture issues, the vast majority are more concerned with the client they use rather than the underlying architecture.
- External factors, such as the growing trend to outsource email, suggest we continue to evaluate our offerings.
Recommendations
Given the limited useful lifetime of the existing Blue system, the unknowns of the outsourcing options, and the tradeoffs of a replacement for the Blue Cluster based on Cyrus when compared to Exchange, we recommend the following:
- Discontinue the Cyrus implementation project as a replacement for the Blue Cluster
- Move the remaining users with Blue accounts to Exchange, while maintaining the spirit of the initial E-Communication recommendations by increasing quota levels and supporting diversity of choice through multiple e-mail clients
- Continue to investigate the outsourcing of e-mail, possibly moving selected groups of students on a trial basis
There are several options for implementing these recommendations that we will continue to analyze and discuss with affected users.
For the full version of the Self-Study report please download the linked PDF.
For further details on the Implementation Project, direct your browser to http://www.uiowa.edu/ecommunications.