The future of e-mail at Penn's largest school is up in air as officials weigh possibilities ranging from equipment upgrades to outsourcing.
The current system for the College of Arts and Sciences -- based on what administrators call an outdated infrastructure -- is reaching the end of its useful life, College Dean Dennis DeTurck said.
As students and faculty use e-mail to send increasingly large files -- including documents, music and video clips -- the strain on the system has become apparent.
A 30-megabyte quota upgrade planned for this winter break will nearly double the current storage space. But at a cost of about $50,000, it will merely alleviate short-term issues.
"Where we go from here is a question," DeTurck said. "Our choices range from buying a lot of new equipment to outsourcing e-mail to a company like Google."
Several other Ivy League schools have already decided to completely replace existing e-mail infrastructure. Dartmouth College recently upgraded its mail servers to increase storage quotas to 500 MB. Columbia University-- which uses the same e-mail system as Penn -- will upgrade its quota to 250 MB.
The new Columbia system -- based on the advanced "Cyrus" technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University -- will be faster and more stable, according to Columbia IT Director Alan Crosswell.
DeTurck said he is looking at the option of a similar upgrade at Penn -- though he said that such a move would have to wait until next summer at the earliest to ensure stability of the service.
But Crosswell said that the rollover at Columbia -- scheduled to take place over the next six months -- will cause minimal disruption to students.
"Students are locked out of the system for just 15 minutes while their individual account is transferred," he said, adding that all old e-mails are retained on the new server.
Crosswell said that the new system will be worth its $500,000 price tag.
"E-mail is a service that everyone relies on," he said. "It's like electricity."
However, DeTurck is not so sure the money would be well spent.
"Would outsourcing e-mail and using the half-million dollars for something else be smarter?" he asked, adding that although he had not yet negotiated any specific terms with commercial providers, he felt outsourcing would be the cheaper alternative.
"The cost to Penn could even be negative," he said. "We might be able to get these companies to provide something beyond e-mail."
If Penn outsources e-mail, it will be the first to do so among its peer institutions, DeTurck said.
"We are trying not to just be in the pack somewhere, but ahead of the curve," he said.
Crosswell said that Columbia had not considered outsourcing before replacing its e-mail infrastructure -- though he wished they had.
Under an outsourcing system, a student e-mail address might include a company name: johndoe@upenn.google.edu, for instance. But students could gain access to the state-of-the art technology of leading e-mail providers, he added, and money saved could be spent on upgrading other computer equipment.
But outsourcing e-mail would also mean that Penn would lose control over the system. Other problems could include internal advertisements and a loss of privacy.
DeTurck said that ultimately, the decision about the future of Penn e-mail should lie with students.
