This product emerged as the consensus choice among our students, Maas said. This was their favorite.

Improvements to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee e-mail and online calendar services could begin as soon as fall 2007, with a complete overhaul of PantherMail and PantherCal expected by spring 2008, UWM officials said.

Zimbra Collaboration Suite, an Internet browser-based e-mail and calendar system, is now officially the future of e-mail at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, said professor Jacques du Plessis.

Vice Chancellor Rita Cheng said she signed a three-year contract between UWM and Zimbra, Inc., on Friday, March 30 after UWMs legal team inspected it earlier in the week.

As recommended by the Educational Technology Fee Committees team for upgrading the campus e-mail system, UWM has purchased three years of annual maintenance and upgrades to system software and will be given the option of renewing the contract at the same price, according to Information & Media Technologies Director Bruce Maas.

Maintenance costs will be under $1 per mailbox and because the system is largely based on free open-source code, Zimbra is charging no initial licensing fee, Maas said.

Du Plessis, leader of the committees team, said with the contract signed, the only remaining question is when Zimbra will be implemented. Maas said work will begin immediately to draft a plan for when and how elements of the new system will be put into place.

Were hoping that less than a year from today, Maas said on Wednesday, March 28, that well be able to roll this out to the whole campus.

Maas said the project will be complicated and must be done in sections. Time is required to insure a smooth transition.

As important as e-mail is, you have to make sure everything is done right.

Features a campus favorite

Maas and du Plessis said Zimbra emerged as the decisive user favorite when tested by UWM students and staff alongside competitors CommuniGate and Sun Microsystems Java Messaging. Maas said he believes Zimbras usability and exciting features had to do with its success in campus testing.

This product emerged as the consensus choice among our students, Maas said. This was their favorite.

Cheng said when she tried the three options with UWM students and staff in December of 2006, Zimbra was her favorite as well.

While Maas and du Plessis said they cant yet be positive about all the features Zimbra will bring to UWM students, they said e-mail, shared calendaring, drag-and-drop message management and cell phone integration would definitely be available. Zimbra Inc.s Web site suggests features such as contacts, Voice over Internet Protocol (a type of Internet telephony) and online document authoring could also be in store.

Maas and du Plessis said while Zimbra doesnt currently offer integrated instant messaging, it almost definitely will by the time UWM switches to the new system.

Du Plessis said one of Zimbras most important distinguishing features is that the system is browser-based like the current version of PantherMail. This means Zimbra has many advanced features typical of software-based applications, but with no required software to download or install. Any user can access a full-featured version of the system anywhere in the world on any operating system and through any type of up-to-date Web browser.

Du Plessis said having a system that would work just as well on a Windows PC as it would on an Apple Macintosh was important because of the diversity of UWMs computing community.

Looking to the future

Because Zimbra is based mainly on free open-source code, du Plessis said UWM administrators will be able to tweak the systems code to suit the needs of campus users, allowing added features tailored to fit UWM students.

Maas said the codes malleability could potentially even allow Zimbra to incorporate PantherFile to manage e-mail attachments.

Maas said the team also intends to focus much of its attention on Zimbras calendar system. One feature Maas hopes to have available would allow students to subscribe to certain calendars. A student could subscribe to the athletic calendar, for example, and their personal calendar would then show dates of games and other athletic events.

Easing the transition

While students can expect the look, feel and features of Zimbra to be largely different from current versions of PantherMail and PantherCal, Maas said students can count on keeping their current e-mail addresses and will likely be allowed to transfer most content from their PantherMail inboxes to the new system.

The name PantherMail itself could also go largely unchanged, du Plessis said. Though the official name of the new e-mail system has not yet been discussed, he said he personally hopes it will remain PantherMail, possibly with the word new temporarily added.

For less tech-savvy users, du Plessis said Zimbra has offered to fly in training staff free of charge. Maas said students dont need to be concerned with learning the new system.

Our belief is that [Zimbra] is very intuitive, Maas said, however were going to focus a great deal of attention on training and orientation.

Maas and du Plessis said users of other campus e-mail systems will not have to make the change to Zimbra if they dont want to.

No ones going to be forced here, du Plessis said. Theres no politicking, no strong-arm tactics. The moment you put pressure on people, that starts it off on the wrong foot.

However du Plessis said he hoped everyone would at least look at Zimbra, as it could be an improvement over their current systems. Maas said he agreed.

Our goal was to find a product that was very high quality so that the campus community would want to use it, Maas said. We know thats not the case with our current e-mail and calendar.

To help make the transition easier for administrators, UWM will be able to compare notes with Georgia Tech, which also recently signed a contract with Zimbra. Cheng and Maas said it was nice to see another comparable institution making the same decision as UWM because it provides affirmation of their choice, and sharing information will help them better serve users.

The price of change

Du Plessis said current e-mail infrastructure at UWM is already ready for Zimbra and the university only plans to purchase some new hardware for additional storage and server space. This causes the overall price tag of Zimbra to be relatively low, definitely one of the selling points for du Plessis, Maas and the rest of the team.

[The cost is] almost exactly what we were hoping for, Maas said. The budget plans we had put together were almost spot on.

In fact, Du Plessis said Zimbra was the only of the three evaluated systems that was within the teams targeted price range.

Du Plessis said another cost of changing systems is that two to three full-time employees will need to be hired by UWMs Information and Media Technologies department specifically to help with facilitate the switch to Zimbra.

A thought-out process

Du Plessis, Maas and Cheng all said the signed contract is the result of three years of work and research which included meetings, soliciting bids from several companies, multiple testing sessions and advice from outside consultants. The three all said they believe that through this process it has become obvious this is the best possible move for the campus at this time.

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