Quote:
Originally Posted by duran.goodyear  setting up a "redirect" for their accountname@domain that points at a personal inbox they have elsewhere (gmail, hotmail, etc...) |
I think that particular approach would be very foolish, because both of those providers (and possibly Zimbra/Yahoo, per a hint in a previous thread) will provide
user@foo.edu addresses, not just forwards, for free, with generous quotas. In fact, your students might have signed up for Google Apps without your knowledge; see
Welcome to Google Apps
For a large university, I think outsourcing email, as has been done by Arizona State and others, could be a good idea. But some university data needs to be local, so you are going to want something like Zimbra or Exchange for at least the administrative staff. Once you've committed to a fixed cost for a few dozen users, and figured out how to make it reliable, the incremental cost of adding a few thousand students really isn't that great. So for smaller schools (less than 5000, say), I really think it makes sense to manage locally, and Zimbra is the best option available (unless you happen to have > 90% Microsoft penetration, in which case Exchange makes sense).
"Co-sourcing" among local colleges should be pursued more than it currently is. I've been trying, so far without success, to offer to manage other small schools' Zimbra installations in barter for hosting of a DR site and sharing of other relevant expertise.