Messaging Upgrade Gains Marquette University Improved IT Management and Performance

Located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Marquette University has more than 11,500 undergraduate and graduate students, and 2,000 faculty and staff members. As part of the services the university provides to students and employees, it staffs a small IT department that oversees the messaging and collaboration environment for the entire school.

The IT Services group was in charge of hosted e-mail services for 15,000 mailboxes on Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Recognizing the integral part e-mail played in connecting teachers and students, IT Services continually looked for ways to improve performance and enhance user collaboration.

For example, just four years ago, the IT department had migrated to Exchange Server 2000 when it realized its messaging environment was not effectively handling the rising volume of traffic. And recently, the university was once again beginning to see performance limitations in how its hardware handled mail services. Heeding the complaints of student and faculty members, who noted reduced performance, for example, in the filtering of unsolicited e-mails and other areas, Marquette's IT group decided to upgrade their hardware with 64-bit machines.

Solution

In 2006, the IT Services department installed two 64-bit servers into its network environment using Windows Server 2003. Since the university was participating in the Microsoft Technology Adoption Program, which enables customers to adopt early versions of newly release products, Marquette decided to take advantage of the opportunity to maximize the capabilities of their new hardware by installing a beta version of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

For help in deploying the beta technology, the university engaged Avanade, who helped the IT department make an initial deployment of Exchange Server 2007 to a single server for 100 users, mostly IT and Research and Development department employees. The IT Services team also deployed Exchange Server 2007 in its current installation of Microsoft Office Outlook 2003.

Following the official release of Exchange, Marquette plans to roll out a full implementation of the messaging system. The deployments of the beta technology went smoothly, giving Marquette's IT Services team confidence that they will have a smooth rollout of the official version of Exchange 2007.

Benefits

The test deployments of the beta version of Exchange Server 2007 revealed several ways the university would be able to increase the manageability and overall performance of its messaging environment. For the IT Services team, this increased efficiency would also free valuable IT time, enabling the department to be more productive in other areas of focus.

For example, the new features in the 2007 version of Outlook Web Access will enable students and faculty to more reliably access their e-mail and calendaring services, while providing a much more user-friendly interface that will require less helpdesk services from IT Services. The university predicts that once the entire network environment has been migrated to Exchange Server 2007, both the administrators and students will gain efficiency and productivity.

In addition, the ease of use of administrative features such as the Exchange Management Console in version 2007 of Exchange Server enables the IT Services team to bypass looking at multiple screens while managing tasks. The Console's integration with the Exchange Management Shell also enabled IT administrators to work in the Console while still viewing commands in the shell, enabling faster completion of tasks, such as configuration.

The IT Services team also anticipates being able to bring users more flexibility in how they can access documents, while maintaining security. Functionality in Exchange Server 2007, for example, enables remote users to securely access data hosted on SharePoint Portal Server without having to connect on a VPN.

By trying out the beta technology, Marquette University was able to determine ways to extend the capacity of its messaging environment while increasing its efficiency and productivity. The deployment also helped the university determine its interest in migrating its entire network environment the full version of Exchange Server 2007 to bring these benefits to all its users.