Overview

In January 2011, IPSC approved the outsourcing of the staff email service (Microsoft Exchange/Outlook) to the Microsoft Live@edu service and this has subsequently been ratified by the University Senate.

The project to deliver this has now started and we expect to start piloting the migration in November 2011.

The current service needs to be replaced to ensure IT Services can continue to provide an email service which meets the requirements of our customers. Various options were considered, before deciding on the Live@edu service, including keeping the service in-house but were dismissed due to anticipated cost or technical fit with other University systems.

Consideration was also given to a similar service, provided by Google, but this is a less attractive proposition because:-

• Microsoft commit to keeping our data in the EU, but Google do not.
• We currently run Exchange for staff, so the transition would be more transparent for our users, and the technical fit is better.
• We require system administrator and proxy access to accounts, which Microsoft support but Google do not.

What is Live@edu?

It is a Microsoft-hosted service which provides users with:

• Outlook Live - a 10GB email account
• Support for calendars, contacts and tasks within the email account
• Windows Live Messenger instant messaging is a fully integrated part of the Live@edu service
• Mobile phone access is fully supported via the Activesync system; any phone which supports Activesync (Nokia, Windows Mobile, Apple iPhone, Palm Pre) can have email, calendar, contacts, etc. synchronised between the phone and the desktop.
• Office Live Workspace - store, access and edit Microsoft Office documents online.
• Windows Live SkyDrive - 25 GB online storage space for photos, music, etc. accessible from anywhere online. (Note that Skydrive is intended for the storage of personal data such as photos or music, not for corporate data. It is not implemented or managed in the same way as the email and Office parts of the service.)

Access to live@edu is available either through a desktop client such as Outlook or Thunderbird, or through a web browser. Live@edu offers much better cross-platform compatibility than our current in-house Exchange implementation, with an identical web browser experience across Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Email would be stored at Microsoft's Data Centre in Dublin, with a copy also held in Amsterdam. It is important to us for legal reasons that email data is held within the EU rather than the US or elsewhere in the world.

The University of Warwick retains ownership of the data. Our agreement with Microsoft is very clear that data held within this system is classed as Organisational Data and as such is the property of the University, not Microsoft; they acquire no rights to do anything at all with the email they store other than to hold it on our behalf; they do not scan the contents of messages (except for virus and spam filtering) or otherwise utilise the data in any way.

Questions and Issues

Through our own investigations, and feedback from recent Roadshows, a number of questions about outsourcing have been raised:

No Service Level Agreement (SLA)

As with other services of this type, there is no Service Level Agreement and no provision for Disaster Recovery in the event of the service being unavailable. However many Universities and higher educational institutions are using Live@edu and as a highly visible service, there is an incentive for Microsoft to ensure Live@edu is always available.

To date there have been no significant outages.

When will my department be migrated?
The staff email migration strategy will be piloted in November 2011, with the main rollout due to start in January 2012. Once the timeline has been agreed with each department, a departmental migration plan will be published before the rollout commences.

 ‘Send As’ Permissions Not Supported
Our current email system supports the use of ‘Send As’ permissions, effectively where Person A appears to send the email, but it has in fact been sent by Person B. This can be particularly useful where Resource Accounts are used and email is sent as, for example, Customer Service, but many people are in fact using that account.

We recognise that ‘Send-As’ functionality is an important feature of the email service and we are exploring alternatives which will provide the same functionality.

How secure is the new Email System?

The Live@edu system is as secure as our own in-house system, in that the underlying technology/protection is the same, and as such a move to an outsourced system will not weaken the security of emails. This was checked by the University’s Data Protection Officer prior to the move of students to this email system.

As with anything, the biggest weakness comes from the human element and we have no control over emails being printed out and left lying around, forwarded to personal accounts and phones which we have no control over, or laptops being lost. Unfortunately, one of the biggest sources of hacking, both here and elsewhere, is people revealing their passwords to others, either deliberately or via a phishing email.

Maximum of 250 Unique Recipients
The Live service imposes a limit of 250 Unique Recipients in a 24 hour period. Note that there is no limit on the number of emails you can send to any one person. If you exceed this limit, your email account would be suspended until the next period starts.

This limit applies regardless of whether you are sending email internally or externally.

If you use Warwick’s Mass Mail system, ListServe or other Mailing Systems to send mass mailings, only the one mail sent to the external system would count and not all the emails those systems subsequently sent.

There is no limit on the number of emails which can be sent to you.

Maximum of 100 Recipients per Email
The Live system only allows for 100 recipients on each email. Currently we have a limit of 150per mail.

Maximum of 30 emails per minute
The system will only allow you to send 30 mails a minute. While this is unlikely to be a problem for most people, it may cause a problem for any automated systems.

Folder Permissions
Although your existing folder structure would be moved over, it is not possible to migrate any permissions you have set on folders. For example to allow others to see some of your mail. As such you would need to recreate any permissions that you have set , these permissions can only be set using Outlook 2007 (or later) and cannot be set in the web client.

Outlook 2007 (and above) Required
If you wish to connect using the Outlook client, you will need to use Outlook 2007 or above. This is because Windows Live is based on Exchange 2010 which uses auto-discovery to connect, rather than typing in server names as now.

This would also be the case if the service remained in-house as it would be our intention to upgrade to Exchange 2010.

General FAQs

Other questions which were asked regarding the new email system are below. FAQs realting to the use of Live@edu can be found here

Will email be moved across into the new system?

Yes – all mail will be moved. This includes all emails which are currently in the archive system.

Will there still be an archive system?

No – with a 10GB quota there is no need for a separate archive system, which will make the management and access of emails easier for everyone.

All emails currently in the archive system will be migrated across to the Windows Live service.

Will my folder structure be retained?

Yes, folders will retained in the same structure that they are now. However, you will need to re-set any permissions on these folders as it is not possible to migrate individual folder permissions.

 Will my Calendar by migrated?

Yes your calendar information would be moved across to Windows Live.

Will I need to move the data myself?

What will happen to Resource Accounts?

These accounts would also be migrated.

How will mail folder permissions migrate?

Mail folder permissions will not be migrated and any permissions will need to be re-created manually. Permissions will have to be set individually on each folder as the service does now support hierarchical folder permissions.

What happens if migrating all archived email puts an account over 10GB?

If the current warwick mailbox is over 10GB before migration it will not be possible to migrate this. In these situations we will review alternatives on a case by case basis, for example the provision of an offline copy of data for reference purposes

When we migrated from GroupWise to Exchange, the stored size of emails nearly doubled - will this happen again?

We are not anticipating any significant change in mailbox size as a result of this migration.

What provision is there for Disaster Recovery and backup?

Our data would be held in the Dublin Data Centre as well as another Data Centre in Amsterdam to provide resilience. There is no backup to tape, as resilience and backup is provided through having copies of our data on two geographically separate datacentres.

Where would the MX record point to?
They would still point at the Warwick Mail Relays, but this may change in the future.

Would the alias system still be available and will a department be able to run their own email service if required?

  Yes - it will still be possible to change delivery address in the alias system if you want to forward mail to a locally run system.  

Will mail lists set up in SITS and elsewhere still work?

Yes - all that is happening is that the delivery location has changed. The addresses in the lists are unchanged.

Will Warwick still manage the SPAM filtering?

Initially SPAM filtering will still be maintained and run at Warwick. However we will review this if necessary as the Live@edu service also includes SPAM filtering.