UD moving to faster, more reliable e-mail

3:59 p.m., March 1, 2005--The University of Delaware is implementing a new e-mail system from Mirapoint Inc. that will provide faster e-mail delivery, increased e-mail storage and improved anti-spam and anti-virus protection for all UD users.

According to Dan Grim, executive director in IT-Network and Systems Services, “The conversion to the Mirapoint e-mail system is part of the University’s strategy to provide the best possible network, computing and information resources to its faculty, students and staff.”

The new system will work with all supported e-mail clients currently in use on campus; however, those who use programs such as Pine, Outlook Express, Outlook, Netscape and Mozilla to send and receive their e-mail will need to make minor configuration changes. After making these changes, they will be able to use their e-mail programs as they always have. In addition, Webmail Direct, a web-based service for reading, processing and sending e-mail from any computer’s web browser, also will be available.

“We think that, as members of the UD community become familiar with it, they will prefer using Webmail Direct because it will work from any computer’s web browser,” Ron Nichols, manager in IT-User Services, said.

“More than 12,000 UD e-mail accounts have already been moved to the new system,” Grim said. “The feedback has been very positive, especially about the speed of Webmail Direct and the way the new system handles suspected junk mail.”

Users are being moved to the new system based on how they have accessed their University e-mail to date. “For example, the 6,000 users who forward their UD e-mail to other ISPs were moved to the new system about Feb. 9, and about 1,000 users of our old webmail service were moved to the new system during the first week of February,” Grim said.

“The very small number of people who have chosen to use other mail systems on the central UNIX servers--programs such as Elm, Mush and mailx--will need to migrate to Pine or Webmail Direct,” Grim said. “In fact, we expect a lot of people to migrate to Webmail Direct from other e-mail programs.

“We continue to solicit volunteers to move to the new system,” he said. Those who want to switch to the new system should visit the IT Help Center’s main web page at [www.udel.edu/help] and select “Request early migration to new e-mail system” from the list of new items.

Grim said that IT-Network and Systems Services plans to move the majority of e-mail accounts to the new system within the next six weeks, with the last “special cases being moved by the end of June.”

“Those users who do not volunteer to move will receive e-mail notification when it’s their turn to be moved,” Nichols said. The notification will include links to conversion information.

“The transition for most users will be very simple, requiring minimal changes to the software they are currently using,” he said. “We expect that they will be very pleased with the speed of the new system, Webmail Direct’s ease of use and the system’s improved spam-blocking capabilities.”

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