In light of the growing popularity of e-mail services from Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, representatives from Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services are investigating the possibility of outsourcing University e-mails to another provider.

Time

As for when CITES expects a final decision from the University, both Bridgewater and Cetin said they are unsure.

“I can’t speak for the groups that are actually involved in this,” said Cetin. “But I would hope that we could have some directional decisions probably early in the calendar year.”

Security

Security has been one of the main focuses in CITES’ attempt to provide better e-mail services to students and faculty.

With a change in provider, the University’s control of e-mail services would diminish, said Kelly Bridgewater, customer relations coordinator for CITES.

The University:

may not be able to prove that a student received an e-mail

may not be able to assist someone with data recovery

Cost

“And indeed, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google all want to provide services at no cost to us, but there’s always a cost involved.”

Bridgewater said any kind of cost-benefit analysis will reveal that dropping Express doesn’t necessarily mean savings.

“When we talk about cost savings, we’re probably talking more about a cost-avoidance rather than a savings,” Bridgewater said.