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Unisa embraces Microsoft

Audra Mahlong
By Audra Mahlong
Johannesburg, 03 Dec 2008

At a time when many public organisations are migrating to open source solutions - the University of SA (Unisa) has chosen to embrace Microsoft.

From 2009, registered students at Unisa will be required to sign up for a Microsoft-provided e-mail service.

The free e-mail system - myLife - will be the only system Unisa will use to communicate with its students. This marks a move away from the university's Sakai community source platform - myUnisa - which the university runs on a Linux platform.

In a welcome e-mail sent out to students, Unisa states: “We'd like to make it easier for you to communicate with us, so from 2009 Unisa will be offering all registered students a unique e-mail address. We will create your myLife e-mail account for you, which you MUST activate when you rejoin myUnisa. From this point onwards, Unisa will disregard all other e-mail addresses it has for you on record... If you decide, therefore, not to activate this e-mail account, you will not receive e-mails from Unisa.”

Why Microsoft?

Jason Ming Sun, acting manager for portal and academic solutions, says Microsoft offered the university the solution it needed.

“We needed a sustainable and manageable service. It was important to ensure mailboxes were large enough and managed to ensure important communications always reach students.”

Ming Sun notes that Google was approached, but - though willing to accommodate the university's 200 000-plus students, it was not able to guarantee administrative and management reporting features - which he says are essential to see how well the system was being used.

In the end, Microsoft was chosen because it won on cost. “Some services ran into tens of millions [of rands] and this may have reflected in a cost to the student. Microsoft was able to provide the solution free of charge and that was core for students,” Ming Sun explains.

Interoperability concerns

In its statement to students, Unisa notes: “In phase two, we plan to include other Microsoft Live services, such as social networking facilities, online file storage, and Office Live workspace.”

Ming Sun states students will not be required to use these services, but Unisa would look at capitalising on these available solutions as a means of marketing the university. “Our only intention,” he says, “is to bring about an e-mail service.”

A concern for the future is that students might be required to submit assignments prepared from Microsoft portal pages or through Microsoft applications - a claim Ming Sun dismisses. He also notes that the system is not restrictive as it is IMAP- and POP-enabled and students can, therefore, use Thunderbird to access it, as it is not restricted to Outlook.

Ming Sun notes: “The e-mail service is giving them a place to receive e-mail. Students must remember they can always set up and redirect any e-mail destined for myLife to their personal e-mail, such as hotmail.”

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