That is a good point, I do not like to use
public reliant servers for things like Chat, or collaboration projects due to
the fact that I can not see who is copying the data being passed through there,
nor do I have the ability to guarantee customers compliance or privacy is being
adhered to.
Online data is great for our artistic
sides or hobbies and personal fun time, but in our endeavors to perform our daily
“business” I can not sign off to google, yahoo, or any third party “use
me I am free and robust” that some one else runs.
We need to have a have a tangible system
that is “owned and operated” by us. Then we have to prepare our
designated staff to operate and maintain the environment, then be able to share
information or train the rest of our volunteer force if you will. That will be
a strong sense of “ownership” with in the community we are trying
to bring together. The big obstacle I see is getting a majority to agree on
what Software and Platform we agree to use. I am flexible as long as the
aforementioned points about Tangable, Owned and Operated etc… are some of
the deciding factors.
Timo Vasquez- D.S.S. Team Member
Michigan State University
Administrative
Information Services
517-353-4420 ext 249
From: MSU Network
Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Jon Galbreath
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007
10:13 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [MSUNAG]
University-wide messaging and calendar system
Zimbra’s a
pretty good alternative to Exchange for a collaboration suite. My only
thought on it is: what’s going to happen to it now that it’s been
purchased by Yahoo?
From: MSU Network
Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Troy Murray
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007
9:46 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] University-wide
messaging and calendar system
I enjoyed attending the MSU IT Exchange last Friday to
discuss the technology direction and concerns for the University as well as to
share ideas on what might be the best solutions.
In particular the topic Mr Davis discussed on the current University email
system and the possible directions that could be taken with it ("stay the
course", replace, upgrade, discontinue, etc) and the thoughts and feelings
of the audience. I can see their are some passionate individuals about
this topic.
While I feel the mail system could be better with updates, like a refreshed web
interface, I feel there is a much greater need for a University-wide calendar
system. I seem to remember Mr Gift commenting on how this topic can be
very sensitive with individuals and that one of the biggest challenges with it
is personal control to who can access your calendar and what they can see or
do.
Personally I've been looking into the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (http://www.zimbra.com/products/)
which seems to provide a fully featured messaging, calendaring, contact
management package. The system can be run in a hosted enviroment or
purchased and run at the University level on our own servers.
For those unfamiliar with Zimbra, it provides messaging using all of the
standard protocols (POP3, IMAP and SMTP with or without SSL) so stand-alone
programs like Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora or Apple Mail.app
would work with it. In addition a fancy AJAX webmail interface is
provided, as well as a non-fancy HTML one, and a very nice mobile interface for
those wishing to access the system that way.
Zimbra also provides a calendar to each user and allows the user to control
access to it from other users. With permissions set users can even
"subscribe" to anothers calendar using the iCal standard protocol
with programs like Apple's iCal or Mozilla Sunbird (Windows, Linux, Mac) and
Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2003 with a plug-in.
One advantage I see with this system is that users of Outlook can still
maintain their calendar, contacts and mail through Outlook, like they do now,
and all of that will be syncronized with the Zimbra server. It even
supports Outlook in cached mode. Those of us with Macs can use Mail.app,
iCal and Address book and this will sync (using iSync) to the server as well.
There are a number of other features that I haven't looked at yet, such as
instant messaging, creating documents and custom components for VOIP or
mapping.
I see on their web site that they are having some webinars about campus wide
messaging using Zimbra, and comparing it to what Google is offering (http://www.zimbra.com/about/webinars.html).
I'm curious, has anyone at the "University level" looked at Zimbra as
a possible replacement for the current messaging system? Is anyone on
campus running Zimbra? If so, what has been your experience with it?
Just my thoughts to try and get a discussion started on this topic.
--
Troy Murray
Informatics Specialist
Michigan State University
Biomedical Research & Informatics Center (BRIC)
100 Conrad Hall
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: 517-432-4248
Fax: 517-353-9420
E-mail: [log in to unmask]