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I'm one of the system administrators on campus maintaining my own email
system for my college.  Here at MSU-DCL, we currently use Groupwise 6.5
running on a Netware server for our email, as well as
calendaring/scheduling, and some room resource mangement.  As happens
every so often, I've been asked to revisit the question of what email
system we are using, and look around at the available alternatives. It
is unlikely that we would move our faculty and staff to the new
mail.msu.edu system because it lacks calendaring features, so I'm
looking at other commercial and open source systems.

To start, I'd like to ask the members of this group if you currently
are running your own email system, and you're willing to share
information about what you use for your email?  I know there are other
MSU colleges and departments that don't rely on Pilot for their email,
and I'm curious to know what your experience has been with other email
systems such as Exchange/Outlook, open source, or other commercial email
servers and applications (with version numbers where possible.) I'd also
like to know what your general experience has been working with the
product you use, and any challenges you've had in supporting the
product. If you don't wish to share this information with the group, but
are willing to share information, please respond to me directly and I
will keep that information confidential if you so indicate.

Since I wouldn't ask without being willing to disclose my own
information:  here at the Law College, Groupwise was the system of
choice here before I took over systems administration in December of
2001. The Groupwise system has successfully served our email and
calendar needs for the two years that I've been here.  Most staff use
calendar features to schedule meetings, and we also use the resource
feature to create resource records for our classrooms.  The calendaring
system is also used to schedule rooms available for events and special
functions held at the college.  While we have technology staff trained
in creating IDs and doing some of the day-to-day administration, it is
my responsibility to also handle server maintenance, patches, and
upgrades. Other than a particularly nasty crash we had in late
October/early November, it has been a solid performer for us, and
handles most of our needs quite well.  We have a moderate number of
users (approximately 200 live users plus resource accounts), and most
are well satisfied with the features in the product.

I am curious to hear about other's experiences with their own email
systems, whether you use Groupwise or any other product for your own
email server.  I thank you in advance for any information you are
willing to share.


John A. Resotko
Head of Systems Administration
MSU - Detroit College of Law
208 Law College Building
East Lansing, MI  48824-1300
email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 517-432-6836
Fax: 517-432-6861