OIT Exchange Email Consolidation Project Overview

E-mail Consolidation Project

The E-mail Consolidation Project was proposed by the Statewide IT Steering Committee and supported by then Executive Vice-President of The University of Tennessee Eli Fly in May, 2004. At that meeting it was suggested that OIT investigate software packages in an effort to:

• Improve the service offered for e-mail, calendaring, and related functions
• Focus the efforts of OIT resources by consolidating to a single software package
• Provide a standard solution that others in the university might use as they look to save their own resources
• Implement a solution that will allow new tools and techniques to be used that might improve the efficiency of various aspects of the university community

The goal was to have a package chosen and available by July, 2005.

A critical aspect of this project was that it be an open process, even if the project would be slowed as a result. To this end, a twenty-person business area committee was formed to help determine the functionality needed and to provide a means of communications to the parts of the university they represented. This group provided their insight as to what is needed both now and in the future. They were instrumental in providing guidance and in developing a survey to gather information on a broad scale. They will continue to be involved after the package is chosen and as implementation details need to be resolved.

In addition to the business area committee, an IT technical committee was formed to include representatives from OIT departments that support targeted functions.This committee was asked to provide the technical research needed to evaluate the packages and to determine how well they meet the functional requirements and how easily they may be implemented given the current university technical environment. Representatives from this committee will also continue to be involved as the package is chosen and the implementation phase is started.

To make sure the project and committee members understood the needs of the university community, a survey was developed. The survey has provided some very interesting information. See http://oit.utk.edu/emailsurveyresults for complete survey results and comments. The survey was made available to all personnel located in the Knoxville area.There were 4,000 respondents. Some of the results were expected such as e-mail and calendaring being the most important function to all. However, there was also a strong correlation among the various constituencies (faculty, staff, and students) for the other functions queried including instant messaging, file sharing, discussion forums, and web presentations. Most respondents suggested they felt these additional functions could help them in their duties; therefore the package chosen should have those features available. File sharing and instant messaging were slightly more important than discussion forums and web presentations according to the survey.

The survey also showed that reliability and availability were of paramount interest to the customers. They depend on e-mail and calendaring to support their efforts. They want a continuous level of support on a 24-hour, 7-day per week basis. Downtime or slowness of service can hurt all customers as they perform their duties.

We then requested information from vendors we thought might deliver this functionality. We chose IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and SUN. Later Mirapoint heard about our effort and asked to be considered. When the vendors answered our questionnaire, we started narrowing the field. One vendor was almost non-responsive. Their information was minimal and didn't show they could do the job. Another did not have the install base that was sufficient. We had a bad experience with another and another did not have all the functions we required. That left two options we felt were viable. After reviewing those options, we felt that Microsoft was the better choice because 1) more customers were familiar with the software and it was easier to use by the customer, 2) we might be able to reduce current expenditures with a better contract, and 3) it gave us a good option for desktop management. It also didn't hurt that it was the industry leader, but that is probably redundant.

On January 13 we met with IT leadership from all entities across the state. This was before the decision had been finalized, but we were leaning toward Microsoft by that time. When we presented the options, it was nearly unanimous that Microsoft was their preference for the same reasons we were leaning toward it. As it turned out, each campus already had a centrally supported Exchange implementation. UTSI was completely migrated and UT Martin was getting close to being finished with their migration. This group was in much more accord than with most issues.

Between January 13 and March, we realized the President and his staff wanted to make this a statewide solution. So, we had to regroup and get more serious about involving the other campuses. Before we had asked their opinion and they were supportive, but now they were going to be impacted by this project. We had to find a plan that would meet the President's needs, but still allow the campuses the flexibility to support their environment.

Between May and August we spent time working on contracts and licenses. We still have some outstanding contracts in the works, but we are moving ahead. We also worked on tentative plans, but our plans needed to work for all campuses and that was proving difficult. On August 9 we finally had a Microsoft consultant at our location to help us with the plans. (One of the contracts we put in place allowed this support.) He had good ideas and we resolved the coordination issues for Active Directory - the foundation for this environment. On Wednesday, August 17 we got agreement from all campuses for the general approach. We can now begin our planning in earnest.

The plan now is to focus on implementing Active Directory. We will purchase some starter servers next week. Larry Jennings will continue leading a group of people from around the state to finalize the schema. In parallel we will start work on an Exchange cluster. We will buy that hardware next week as well and build a cluster to verify we understand Exchange clusters. (We have built 2-3 Exchange systems on stand-alone machines already.) When we finish, the Active Directory Forest will be maintained out of Knoxville, but everyone will administer their own Domains or Organizational Units. The Forest will be responsible to a committee of representatives from each campus. Schema changes will be discussed and approved before they are implemented.