Student E-Mail Governance Today s Agenda l introductions

Student E-Mail Governance Today’s Agenda l introductions & overview of the committee charge l proposed meeting schedule l housekeeping: nomination of chair & scribe l overview of current student e-mail service l future plans / outsourcing primer l proposed outsourcing timeline l action items: committee members need to report back with respective current & future student e-mail usecases by the next meeting

Student E-Mail Governance Our Charge l As part of the restructuring of Instructional Computing, U-Mail operations have moved to OIST with customer service residing in LSIT l Campus consultation for U-Mail has historically been handled on an ad-hoc basis – as part of the restructuring we’re formalizing this governance process l Advisory group of organizational stakeholders whose business processes are dependent upon student e-mail l Our charge: formulate strategy that’ll drive the technology requirements and operational policies l Short term – U-Mail outsourcing/replacement project l Long term – guide student communication services into the future

Student E-Mail Governance Meeting Schedule l Late January: today’s meeting l Early February: – cloud e-mail services products: summary of pros and cons – outsourced email product selection criteria – review of proposed implementation timeline – discussion of pilot services l Late February: – review product selection – present pilot implementation plan • Mid March: – TBD

Student E-Mail Governance Current Services – U-Mail l U-Mail: e-mail service based on standards-based messaging protocols – broad support for various desktop and mobile e-mail clients in addition to webmail service – four tiers of UBE filtering, including blacklisting, greylisting, heuristic content scanning, etc. – bulk mailing service to allow campus departments and organizations send announcements and marketing – automated account pre-provisioning based on hooks to UCSB Identity Services – average around 2 M messages/week in volume

Student E-Mail Governance Current Services – U-Web / U-Storage/ U-Lists l U-Web: student web publishing service – provides empty “webspace” for the creation of web pages – no server-side processing (php, asp, jsp, etc. ) for application development – mixed academic and personal use l U-Storage: online file storage service – provides “network drive” service, with access over standard protocols (SFTP, CIFS, web UI) – doubles as upload interface for U-Web service l U-Lists: course mailing lists service – automatic creation of course mailing lists based on dynamic enrollment information – roughly 700 lists activated each quarterly; 1000 messages distributed / week

Student E-Mail Governance Proposed Timeline l Winter 2012 – understand various use-cases of student e-mail by campus departments and organizations – evaluate requirements against vendor options & select an appropriate vendor to meet these needs – plan pilot service for l Spring 2012 – roll U-Mail outsourcing pilot to selected group of students – collect continual feedback from pilot group to iteratively improve service l Summer 2012 – assuming pilot success, migrate to outsourced service

Student E-Mail Governance Future Plans l Outsourcing? Why? l Cloud-based email services outstrip the level of technology that can be provided in house – better interfaces & user experience – better message hygiene services (anti-spam, anti-virus, anti-phish) – more options for future student collaboration services (calendaring? ) l Ongoing budget cuts means service is running at a deficit – no funding for ongoing hardware replacement or continued service development • Little opportunity for further cost savings, but potential synergy with operation of (future? ) outsourced employee email service