The Virginia Informer

Last Updated:2/9/10 Section: News

Chair of the Student Life Committee, Sen. Betty Jeanne Manning ('12) announced in the January 26th Senate meeting that Information Technology would be transitioning the school's student email server from Mirapoint Webmail to Gmail and Microsoft Exchange.

Chris Ward, the Director of Systems and Support here at the College, explained why the change is necessary: "Several years ago, W&M discontinued deleting student email accounts when they graduated and our student email accounts quickly grew from 8000 to the current 15000. The strain on our Mirapoint email system became obvious. At the same time, Google and Microsoft started offering a free email hosting service for Education. A number of universities started using the services and were happy with the decision. We formed an evaluation committee comprised of 4 students, 3 IT staff and the CIO. Both Microsoft and Google presented the features their product offered to students. In our research, both companies were able to offer larger email quotas and other features that we couldn't match and they were offering it for free. The committee decided Google was a better fit for W&M."

It should be noted that whereas up until now, students and faculty have shared email providers, as this change comes into effect, students will be transitioned to Gmail while faculty and staff will transition to Microsoft Exchange. Mr. Ward also explained the reason for this split, stating, "The administration felt college business email needed to stay on campus servers. In addition to email, Microsoft Exchange offered a full featured calendar solution that will replace our current Oracle calendar and will interface with several other college systems."

As Mr. Ward pointed out, students will benefit from a wide range of add-ons which come with the Gmail package beyond a simple email service. Gmail will provide more than 7.3 gigabytes of free storage, spam and virus protection, Google Calendar, Google Sites for website creation and collaboration environment, Google Talk for instant messaging, and finally Google Docs which is essentially a word processor which also allows for the creation of spreadsheets and presentations. Student accounts will also be Ad-free.

According to Ward, IT hopes to transition students to Gmail by March 22, 2010. Due to the need to update necessary hardware and software, faculty and staff will not see the change to Microsoft Exchange until a later date.

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