UNC to switch faculty, staff e-mail systems to Microsoft Exchange

By March 2011, faculty and staff will no longer sign onto UNC Webmail for messaging.

Information Technology Services is looking to revamp technology for faculty and staff e-mail and calendaring systems by switching from Cyrus — which is the server currently used by faculty, staff and students — to Microsoft Exchange.

MS Exchange offers a messaging system that is not dependent upon Web browsers or a network connection, which will provide a more PDA-friendly option and ensure offline availability.

This will provide an “anywhere access” component that the current system is unable to claim. Faculty and staff e-mail addresses will not change.

Larry Conrad, vice chancellor for information and technology and chief information officer, said the upgrading of the faculty and staff’s messaging environment has been a longtime plan of ITS.

“I can be answering e-mails on a five-hour flight to the West Coast,” Conrad said. “It is a rock-solid, bulletproof messaging environment.”

Joe Templeton, chemistry professor and former chairman of the Faculty Council, said the main goal of ITS is to provide successful and reliable communication.

“For something as everyday, fundamental and important as e-mail, it needs to be reliable,” he said.

Reliability and anywhere access is not the only reason ITS planned the switch. Bain & Company, a financial consulting firm the University hired in the spring of 2009, named ITS as one of the University’s 10 areas for potential cost savings.

Bain specifically recommended that the University consolidate faculty and staff e-mail to one centrally supported server.

Conrad said that although the switch to MS Exchange will cost more initially — about $500,000 — it is a more highly functional and capable program.

He also added that money will be saved in the long run because different campus units will not be running their own servers.

Faculty Forum Chairman Tom Griffin said UNC should reconsider how much the switch will really help both financially and with usability.

“We have to look at how much it is going to cost to save the money,” he said. “And a lot of our staff don’t even have computers at home or are just computer illiterate.”

UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health is one of the University units that has already switched to MS Exchange.

“Exchange is very simple on my iPhone,” said Jerry Salak, director of alumni and donor relations for the School of Public Health. “It is definitely better in that it is integrated with the calendar.”

Conrad said that e-mail servers such as Google and Zimbra were considered but did not offer the confidentiality, level of integration and set of options that MS Exchange provides.

Max Beckman-Harned, co-chairman of Student Government’s Technology and Web Services Committee, said the Student Technology Advisory Board is currently examining options for improving student e-mail.

Conrad said options for outsourcing student e-mail, including Google and Microsoft, have been discussed. These clients offer almost triple the amount of storage compared to student Webmail accounts.

“We think we can offer better service to students by outsourcing,” Conrad said. “But it really doesn’t matter what I think about it, but what the students think about it.”

Beckman-Harned said a decision will be made regarding the switch for students by April.



Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.