Iowa colleges outsourcing student, campus e-mail

Google seems to dominate a lot of technology markets, and college e-mail may be next.

The University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa are considering a move to free, outsourced e-mail, such as Google or Microsoft. Iowa State University and Coe College are among schools that have already switched to Google e-mail - ISU in August for student accounts and Coe in January for all campus e-mail.

Almost half - 42 percent - of the 600 colleges and universities that participated in the 2008 Campus Computing Survey had switched to outsourced campus e-mail, and another 28 percent were considering it. Of those campuses outsourcing student e-mail, Google was the provider for 57 percent, followed by Microsoft at 38 percent.

There can be some savings in a switch, Iowa officials said, but the main driver is student demand. Google and other providers can deliver - for free - larger storage capacity and applications beyond what universities provide, including calendars, instant messaging, video chat and document sharing integrated with Web-based e-mail.

“Those are just things no university can hope to replicate, and when it's out there being provided for free, why should we?” said Jim Twetten, ISU's assistant director of information technology.

A lot of students already had free Gmail accounts through Google, so they appreciate the switch, said James Caughren, Coe junior and student senate president.

“It has a lot more options and easier ways to share information with a lot of people,” he said.

ISU at its peak had 22 servers for student e-mail that were on a four-year replacement cycle at a cost of $5,000 each. Not replacing servers will mean savings of about $27,500 per year and energy savings of almost $7,000, Twetten said.

The UI has 36 such servers to run about 50,000 faculty, staff and student e-mail accounts. Server replacement is approaching in 12 to 18 months, leading UI officials to consider outsourcing student e-mail by fall, Chief Information Officer Steve Fleagle said. The UI's annual IT costs are about $200,000, mostly salary, but there would be some savings in not replacing servers, he said.

Universities that switch to private providers do not lose domain addresses - @uiowa.edu or @iastate.edu, for example - but because the e-mail is handled off-campus, that raises some confidentiality and security issues, especially for faculty and staff e-mail, Fleagle said. Information about student grades is protected by federal law, and faculty often deal with private patent or research information.

“We're working through those details,” Fleagle said. “We just want to make absolutely sure we're doing the right thing for the university.”

That's why many universities outsource student e-mail but are slower to adopt it for faculty and staff. Coe, however, did switch all 2,100 campus accounts, and UNI is considering it.

Coe signed a contract with Google that gave ownership of the information to the individual account holder, with secondary ownership to Coe. Google has no ownership of the e-mailed information, said Tony Bata, Coe's director of academic computing.

Coe expects to save up to $25,000 a year in replacement and energy costs for seven on-campus servers, Bata said.

UNI likely will outsource student e-mail and are considering outsourcing all campus e-mail if privacy and legal concerns are addressed, said Steve Moon, interim assistant vice president for information technology. Replacement value of UNI's servers is about $150,000.