After years of having an array of different email services used throughout campus, the university has chosen one provider.

Chancellor Rita Cheng said the change in emailing systems is more efficient, will save the university money and is a step in a more technologically friendly SIU.

Student and faculty email systems have been migrating to Microsoft Outlook from Gmail since Dec. 18. Previously not all students and faculty were using the same mailing systems, Cheng said.

“To put it in context, we had 35 different email systems that were being used on campus,” she said.

Several problems arose because of the numerous systems being unable to integrate, Cheng said.

She said one of the larger problems was while sending out mass emails, some recipients would not receive the information.

“There were a lot of challenges with calendars and address lists, and the Google solution was also not meeting our needs in terms of our regulatory compliance,” she said. “It wasn’t secure enough.”

The decision to migrate all SIU employees was made based on several factors, one being cost, Cheng said. It is cheaper to have one system, because campus technicians can then upgrade everybody at the same time.

“With 35 systems we had individuals all across campus that were spending their time supporting email,” Cheng said. “Now we can have them spend time supporting the other things we need to do as far as supporting Banner, D2L, our research computing and other things.”

Assistant Provost and Chief Information Officer David Crain said along with the cost factor, the new system is going to work more efficiently with the university tablets.

“We’re doing the tablet project, Mobile Dawg, for freshman and Office 365 integrates better with the Windows operating system,” he said.

Because of this the next version of Mobile Dawg will integrate with Office 365. Along with the programs efficiency through the tablets, Microsoft solution is more secure than previous options, he said.

“(Google’s) terms and conditions say they will give your information to any local government that requests it, like subpoenas it,” Crain said. “But a number of their data centers are in China, really meaning the Chinese government or any government where any Google center is could get our email. Where Microsoft agrees to keep all of our emails at least in the continental US.”

While the migration is happening for all students now, new freshman and transfers were set up with Outlook at the beginning of the fall semester. The change will also include a transition to Lync, a video conferencing and instant message system, Crain said.

Originally the migration was considered for just faculty and staff, Cheng said.

“So in short, while we were moving the faculty and staff to Exchange and Lync, we thought what also made a lot of sense was to move the students to the same system,” she said.

Faculty and staff emails will be fully migrated in February, Crain said. The SIU email addresses will not change, still ending with siu.edu. The university has been sending emails since last semester letting people know of the migration.

Crain said the university is on what Microsoft calls a Hybrid Solution, where all the programs work together and connect as one system.

“We had to roll out Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager as the identity management provisioning solution for Exchange and Lync on Primus and that same identity management solution works for Office 365,” Crain said. “Where had we kept students on Google, we would’ve had a whole different provisioning system.”

Not only is the new system convenient, but also it virtually will appear as the same as any other mailing program, Cheng said.

Cheng said while Office 365 doesn’t look much different than the Gmail interface it gives students, faculty and staff many new benefits.

“You’ll have access to the instant messaging, the video conferencing and sharing calendaring which our RSO’s greatly benefit from,” she said.

Gmail has been the main emailing system at the university for several years now, and some students wish it was not going, including Bryce Webster, a senior from Woodstock majoring in psychology and sociology.

“I was a huge fan of Gmail, I really enjoyed the interface of it and how user friendly it was,” Webster said.

Webster said while he has not given Microsoft email a good look yet, he has set his Outlook to forward to his Gmail account. He has been using Gmail for six years, and is happy that while the system is changing, he can still use some of the Google applications.

“I do like that they’re still giving us the options to have access to the Google Calendar and Drive and all that through our SIU email,” Webster said.

Crain said aside from the mailing aspect, Microsoft would also allow a cheaper voice phone system.

“We’re having to replace an aging phone system, all of our traditional phone system is 25 to 35 years old and needs to be replaced,” he said. “We’re going to move toward voice over IP.”

Changing to a voice over Internet protocol is convenient, as the university already owns the license for Microsoft Lync and would save the university money in the long haul, Crain said.

“It will literally save us millions of dollars over going out and getting Cisco VoIP or one of the other VoIP’s,” Crain said.

“This is all part of a larger transition related to Google apps and Office 365 so that the email is one component, but there’s a lot of things the students and staff use everyday that they’ll really like,” Cheng said.

For general information on the transition to Microsoft Office, go to helpdesk.siu.edu/Office365.