To EM or Not to EM?
By Harold Shin
Background:
Enterprise Messaging (EM) is an email and calendaring system that is part of the recent UCLA IT initiative. So far all of UCLA Administration and several other departments, including the Library, School of Nursing, OIT, ATS, School of Arts, Summer Sessions, Society & Genetics, and CNSI Administration, have all migrated to EM. EM uses the same Microsoft Exchange 2003 server and supports the same email clients (e.g. Outlook, Entourage, MacMail, Eudora) as CDH currently does. Part of our Technology Infrastructure Fee (TIF) goes towards the support of EM. The Humanities Departments are projected to pay about $22,000 for FY 2007-2008 towards EM.
History:
CDH Network Services had met with Communications Technology Services (CTS) back in Spring 2006 to discuss the possibility of migrating our Exchange service to EM. At that time EM did not meet our expectations in three major areas; single sign on, directory services integration (Active Directory), delegated administration to local units, and could not offer mailboxes to graduate students.
Present:
CDH Network Services have met with CTS twice recently to discuss these hurdles to see if we could move forward. EM services seem to have evolved to better accommodate customers needs. CTS has come up with Kerberos solution which would enable customers to use single sign on. CDH is currently looking into this. EM now offers delegated administration including reset passwords, lock/unlock accounts, create distribution lists, add/remove contacts to DL’s, remove DL’s, and view Barracuda (user access) setttings to name a few. Active Directory integration is still something that CTS has not provided a solution for. We discussed the issue of graduate student mailboxes and they don’t see this as road block anymore. They are willing to create these mailboxes and we both agreed that they will treated as a specialty mailbox.
In September Stacey, Joseph and I met with Reem and the Humanities MSOs to discuss the possibility of migrating to EM and it was well received. Reem asked the MSOs to go back to their departments and chairs for feedback. Meanwhile CDH Network Services will be testing Kerberos and the test accounts for functionality.
Future:
At our next meeting with CTS (TBD), we will determine whether to move forward with EM or not. More to come…
