This spring, the Calendar and Email Advisory Committee completed its
work and issued a report describing three options for meeting the
University's calendar, email, and collaboration needs. For
several reasons, including the ongoing search for a Chief Information
Officer, a final decision on the committee's recommendations is being
postponed. Work is proceeding on key performance, reliability,
and usability enhancements to the current email system.
Writing to the advisory committee, Chief Information
Officer Mara Saule and Vice President for Finance and Administration
Michael Gower said, "We should be considering the
integration of calendar and email tools with a University portal, and
we
should be exploring document management needs and options. A document
management study (Project CATalog), lead by Al Turgeon, is currently underway, and we
expect to pursue a portal in the near future. The choices we make in
those areas can have significant implications for our calendar and
email
systems, both in terms of our needs and in areas of system
compatibility.
At the same time, we are searching for a Chief Information Officer, and
we are reluctant to make major infrastructure decisions before that
person is on board.
We simply need to have more open questions answered -- more pieces of
the puzzle on the table -- before it's appropriate or wise to make a
multimillion-dollar commitment to calendar and email systems."
The ten vendors that had submitted proposals received the following
notice:
| Thank
you for your proposal in response to the University of Vermont's
RFP #03-07-05 for Email, Personal Organization,
Calendar, Collaboration, and Communication Systems. A task force has
examined the proposals in depth, considering factors ranging from
technical and functional merit in meeting the University's varied and
complex needs, to ease of conversion, user references, and one-time and
ongoing costs. As announced in November, our most recent work has
looked very closely at Microsoft Exchange, Mirapoint, Oracle
Collaboration Suite, Stalker Software CommuniGate Pro, and various
options for enhancing and refining systems that are already in place.
The task force wants, in particular, to express its appreciation to the
vendors who dedicated their time and talents to on-campus system
demonstrations this winter and spring. We have chosen not to embark on the implementation of new calendar and email systems at this time. Several factors have influenced this decision: we want to consider the integration of calendar and email tools with a University portal; we are exploring our document and content management needs in greater detail; and we are searching for a Chief Information Officer. Our portal and document management needs and options need to be much clearer before we make commitments to calendar and email systems. These factors are of much greater impact and importance than we perceived them to be when the RFP was published last year. We are reluctant to make major infrastructure decisions before our new CIO is on board. I hope that you will continue to keep us up-to-date with product developments and success stories from other higher education institutions, so that we'll be better able to move quickly when all of the pieces of the puzzle start to come together. Again, thank you for your thorough work in responding to our RFP and to our many questions, for providing us with reference sites, and for your visits and product demonstrations. We sincerely appreciate your help in meeting our communication, organization, and collaboration needs. |
For more information, including the RFP and the advisory committee's
report, please see the Email, Personal
Organization, Calendar, Collaboration, and Communication Systems
web site.
Author: Dean Williams, CIT Client Services
Last modified July 12 2005 04:24 PM
