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HelpExchange 2007 Project
Exchange 2007 Migration Information
April 2009
Background
The Campus Exchange email service replaced the ITSA email service in 2004-2005. Designed for 12,000 subscribers with 100 Mb mailboxes, Campus Exchange is now the primary email and calendaring system for over 13,500 subscribers. Provided at no cost to users, it is essential to the daily teaching, learning, research and business operations of the university. Ancillary recharge services include Blackberry support and storage in excess of the base allocation of 100 Mb/user.
The campus has now exceeded the designed capacity of the system and fully expended the equipment purchased when the system was installed. After four years of continuous operation, the servers, storage and network equipment supporting Exchange must be replaced to avoid service degradation. Support for the installed hardware and software is becoming more expensive and may be difficult to obtain in the future. Without a hardware upgrade, the system will not be able to accommodate additional subscribers. The application software, Microsoft Exchange 2003, must be upgraded to Exchange 2007 to maintain its currency and compatibility. Furthermore, without a software upgrade, subscribers cannot take advantage of advanced security features in Exchange 2007. Since Exchange 2007 runs in a 64-bit environment, gradually upgrading hardware is not an option.
OAAIS will replace end-of-life equipment and upgrade the application system from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. It should also be noted that in addition to increased performance and reliability, a new technical architecture would be deployed that provides cost efficiency value in three forms. First, because it is scalable, it allows for incremental growth to be addressed without wholesale replacement of the entire system; second, on an “apple to apple” comparison, it is slightly cheaper to deploy than the old technology; and, third, the incremental cost of adding storage to mailboxes is considerably cheaper.
In particular, this project will deliver:
- Increased mailbox size: standard mailbox size will increase from 100 Mb to 1 Gb
- Improved performance – faster processors and more memory will reduce system latency
- More user-friendly features such as the enhanced Out of Office Assistant
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Better synchronization with the Outlook Web Interface
- Increased capacity - the proposed investment will accommodate 18,000 users. The current system was designed for 12,000 and resources are over-extended at approximately 13,600 subscriber accounts and 2,700 resource accounts.