With Zimbra we see an opportunity to add value and provide better service for our students.
We have a lot of ideas floating around for how we can leverage Zimbra's open APIs and having a single messaging platform for everyone to provide a better learning experience. We see things like integrating class scheduling with student calendars as big opportunities.
Right now a lot of our students forward their mail because our student mail system is outdated. It's a constant source of problems and frustration and there is quite a bit of effort wrapped up in responding to questions about when and whether messages were sent and received. Obviously a lot of that is outside of our control with a forwarded address. With an internal mail system we have an end to end view of all transactions.
As they say, there is no free lunch. When companies start offering "free" email you have to ask "What's in it for them?" Are they mining your students' data? Are they advertising to your students? Are they building brand equity with human capital that you're providing them? Are these things that you want to allow? Are these opportunities that you should be taking advantage of yourself?
We're in the email business for the same reason we're in the chat, bulletin board, wiki, and teleconference business - to provide the best infrastructure we can for student learning.  |