Information Technology Services announced the decision to begin initiating the transition of email accounts from a traditional hardware-based storage system to the Cloud. The transition will provide users with 25 gigabytes of storage, 250 times larger than the previous storage space.
Philip Repp, vice president for Information Technology, said IT is creating a lower-cost operating environment that will last long into the future and provide an environment with more functionality for the user than the current one.
"By doing that, it creates much more flexibility for the institution and operations, that is, we don't have to maintain as much hardware and software and people running that system on campus as we had in the past," Repp said.
The process is part of a bigger campus-wide initiative that started with the changes seen in course registration and financial aid with MyBSU, Repp said.
"That's a different initiative replacing all the administrative systems on campus, which is a much bigger project that's been going on for about 24 months," he said.
Senior IT Architect Todd Meister said the migration of more than 60,000 email accounts into the Cloud and Office 365 would begin taking place over the next three weeks. Meister also mentioned a few other changes.
"We're currently on campus using Exchange 2007, and in the migration to Office 365, we're moving up to the next version which is Exchange 2010," he said. "It just happens to be hosted in the Cloud."
On top of storage expansion to the Cloud, the new system will provide better browser support for the Outlook web application, he said.
"There's some other browsers that are now supported consistently, where as in the past, it's pretty much been Internet Explorer," he said.
Meister said keeping mail hosting services on campus has little to no benefit because of the major cost differences there would be with moving to the Cloud.
"We had to pay for some migration services and stuff like that; obviously, nothing's for free," he said. "For us to provide the same level of service and the size mailboxes on campus would be a multi-million-dollar endeavor and there's really no extra-added benefit to host it on campus."
On top of Microsoft hosting the storage space in the Cloud, it also provides multiple data centers where the mail will be replicated and they take care of disaster recovery, Meister said.
Repp said although 25 gigabytes is a great increase in storage for Ball State users, it still won't be enough for some.
"The numbers I've seen, some students can fill it up pretty quick with all kinds of video files and things like that," he said.
All faculty and staff accounts will be migrated beginning July 10 while all students will be migrated in two stages beginning on July 17 and July 24.
The migration should be simple and users shouldn't lose any functionality with the new system, Meister said.
"I can't think of anything they would lose," he said. "Like I said, they get a new version, an upgraded version and a larger mailbox so I think those are the two big benefits."
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