Email Server Justification

Reasons to keep our email server

technical reasons why our server is better

• Tried gmail: sucked for client users
  • IMAP is very slow
• Security/encryption
  • We have end-to-end SSL
• IP issues
• Large message size 100MB vs. 25MB gmail
• Higher availability
• Easier to add users
  • Collaborators from institutions with more restrictive systems
• Trivial to add aliases (newegg, request, etc.)
• Server log mailing
• Support for Pine
• We control the size of inboxes and can scale hardware

Reasons not to switch

administrative reasons why ours is better

• Hardware and admin setup is a sunk cost
• We can switch to gmail at any time, no reason to hurry
• Users who prefer gmail can simply use campus accounts
• Forwarding from isu addresses is supported
• LDAP and user authentication is already needed for numerous other projects
• First email, and then what? Web servers? File servers?