All Vanderbilt faculty, staff and graduate student email will be powered by Vmail, Vanderbilt’s new enterprise messaging system, by the end of the academic year, resulting in expanded online collaboration tools and significant savings to the university and medical center. Vmail is the university’s institution-wide implementation of Microsoft Enterprise Exchange 2007.

“Our new enterprise messaging service frees people to collaborate however they choose, whether it’s in person, using their mobile device or at their desktop,” Matthew Jett Hall, associate vice chancellor for Information Technology Services and associate chief information architect for enterprise infrastructure, said. “We want to get as many people as possible on the same tools because it facilitates cooperation and transinstitutional collaboration.”

New features include a better mobile experience, enhanced Outlook Web Access features, shared calendaring and increased base mailbox space of one gigabyte. Mac users are encouraged to upgrade to the new Snow Leopard operating system to take full advantage of the new integration and features using Mac’s Mail program.

In the past, university and medical center email ran on five different systems. When the email consolidation project is complete there will be just two -Google’s Gmail for undergraduates and Vmail for graduate students, faculty and staff.

“Our primary goal is to merge all mail storage into one environment for faculty and staff with as little user interruption as possible,” John Osborne, ITS service delivery manager, said.

The consolidation offers substantial savings to Vanderbilt by dramatically reducing the amount of hardware, staff time and data center space dedicated to multiple email platforms, space that is at a premium at both the university and medical center.

“If we have one tool that needs to be managed rather than 20 tools that need to be integrated, we spend more time on the real act of collaboration,” Hall said. “Rather than requiring us to serve the infrastructure, we’re allowing the infrastructure to serve the collaborative needs of the institution.”

The Enterprise Exchange 2007 environment is more secure than existing systems and offers important new features for the over 10,000 people on campus using PDA smart phones such as iPhones, Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices.

“With Vmail you can remotely wipe your PDA in case you lose it, so your information doesn’t fall into the hands of someone that shouldn’t have it,” Shanmuga Sundaram, director of ITS strategy and planning, said. “That is a very big security advantage as an enterprise - at least 10,000 or more people on campus have PDAs.”

The project’s cost and space savings are just a small part of its benefits. Vmail will facilitate broader use of Microsoft’s Office Communicator and Unified Communications, which enable full integration of phone, instant messaging, video conferencing and more. For example, with Unified Communications, missed phone calls and voice messages appear in your email inbox, emails and calendar items can be heard through voicemail, and your calendar indicates when and how you are available for a phone call, video call or instant message. (The Office Communicator and Unified Communications project is pilot project at this time).

“Collaboration requires access to other people. With these tools, you can more easily access others for decisions, data and analysis no matter where they are or in what mode they choose to work,” Hall said. “Today people come to the work; tomorrow the work comes to the people.”

Full use of these new tools relies on enhanced identity management, which, at Vanderbilt, is linked to one’s VUnetID. Online collaboration between different institutions is often stymied due to different platforms and methods of verifying someone’s online identity. ITS is working with its American Association of Universities partners, as well as national laboratories, to “federate” these online identities to ensure seamless collaboration with colleagues at other universities and research facilities. For instance, Vanderbilt recently “federated” access with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

“Any researcher who has Office Communicator and a colleague at a institution we federate to will be able to have extemporaneous collaboration,” Hall, who has worked with his counterpart at the University of Kentucky using these tools, said. “We can now immediately video conference as if we are in the same institutional space. It’s boundary-less.”

Next steps in the project include educating faculty and staff about the availability of these collaboration tools and how best to use them.

“Part of the obligation of cyber-infrastructure is making sure people know this technology is available and how to use it,” Hall said. “Making people technically aware of the capabilities and how to effectively use them are our goals.” 

Vmail Quick Facts

Public Affairs media contact:  Melanie Moran, melanie.moran@vanderbilt.edu

ITS media contact:  Cindy Frank, cindy.frank@vanderbilt.edu