LISTSERV 16.0 - MSUNAG Archives

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.