Issue date: 4/17/08 Section: News

Click here to view a video demo of Zimbra, Cal Poly's future e-mail client.

As Cal Poly's five-year contract with Oracle comes to an end in September, students can expect a new campus e-mail client before the end of 2008.
Cal Poly Information Technology Services announced Tuesday that the new system, based on the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, will be reliable, include collaboration tools, reduce costs and provide more storage.

The current e-mail system, part of the Oracle Collaboration Suite, has received a great deal of criticism in the past few years for being slow, inundated with spam and prone to being unavailable at any moment.

Ultimately, it has caused approximately two-thirds of the student population to forward their Cal Poly e-mail account to offsite locations, such as Gmail or Yahoo! Mail, said Linda Sandy, information services infrastructure director at ITS.

To reduce the headaches and frustrations that Oracle had caused many students, ITS started to look for a new collaboration suite two years ago.

"One of the primary considerations has been to improve the reliability of the system and reduce the complexity for us to manage it," said Vice Provost/CIO of ITS Tim Kearns.

Kearns added that Zimbra will make it easier for ITS to fix and maintain the e-mail system.

Although Oracle became more reliable in 2007, students and faculty still wanted more, namely more functionality and collaboration tools.

By implementing Zimbra at Cal Poly, ITS hopes to provide just that: the ability to share information, such as calendars, address books, documents and various other content among both students and faculty.

"One of the key things is that it's something that will meet both students and faculty needs and allow them to work together," Kearns said.

Continued...

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