Plans to implement new faculty email system now underway

Plans to move university faculty and staff to a new email system are currently underway, although the process is only in the early planning stages and the date of the move has yet to be decided.

The new faculty email system would ideally feature a number of improvements over the current MEMO system including up to 25 GB of storage, integrated calendaring features, and support for mobile devices, said Ron Secrest, director of Enterprise Servers and Messaging, in a recent town hall meeting.  

The search committee has narrowed its search to three potential email clients: Google Apps for Education, Microsoft Office 365 (which is an enhanced version of WindowsLive, the client software of MasonLive), and VMWare Zimbra Collaboration Server: Professional Edition. 

Although MasonLive launched for students last year, faculty and staff were not moved to a new system simultaneously primarily due to cost reasons. The three above clients all have a free higher education component now, but they did not at the time of MasonLive’s launch, according to Secrest.

Secrest also hinted at the possibility that students, faculty, and staff might one day all use same email system. “Many believe that if faculty, staff, and students are on the same system that it would improve collaboration,” he said in an email. “We just want to include language in the requirements document to ‘leave the door open’ for adding students/alums to the new system if desired.”

Photo by Jake McLernon