North Orange County Community College District School of Continuing Education gains control and flexibility with IMail Server Premium
Company: North Orange County Community College District School of Continuing Education
Website: www.sce.edu
Industry: Education
Business challenge: NOCCCD needed administrative control. Having access to a local server with the power to make quick and independent adjustments in their system and to also improve efficiency among shared users.
Outcome: Greater flexibility and control over mail server for user additions and improved collaboration and efficiency with shared calendar features has simplified weekly calendar changes.
With a broad array of classes for students of all ages, the North Orange County Community College District (NOCCCD) School of Continuing Education (SCE) offers English-as-a-second language, high school equivalency test preparation, literacy, and many other basic skills courses. Along with their thriving computer program which covers topics such as word processing, graphics and web design, SCE also offers specialized training in areas such as child development, culinary arts, electronics, hazardous materials, and pharmacology. SCE serves over 70,000 students at three main campuses (Anaheim, Cypress, and Fullerton/Wilshire) as well as 160 off campus facilities.
Prior to utilizing IMail Server for its email service, SCE used a standard ISP hosted email system which provided email service for students. Aside from spam and extra storage costs, the school felt their major challenge depended on the need for more control and flexibility with their email server solution.
"In a hosted environment, we found we required more control over configurations and other specific issues that needed to be addressed within our local reach," says Peter Teipe, IT Services Coordinator for SCE. "The prevalent reason for transitioning to IMail Server was for the administrative control. Having access to a local server with the power to make quick and independent adjustments in our system has been a huge benefit for us."
Initially, SCE began its relationship with Ipswitch Messaging in effort to provide email for its students. By including the faculty and staff, they have found IMail Server Premium to be an indispensible tool for their network of users. One feature they particularly benefit from is the shared calendar. Teipe feels that IMail Server Premium has helped them achieve a much more efficient way for conducting business by providing this calendar feature which allows appointments to be shared between the web interface and Outlook.
"Prior to the shared calendaring system, our managers, Deans and Provost emailed their weekly calendars to one another in word documents as attachments. The shared calendar features have eliminated the need for weekly calendar exchanges," says Teipe.
The Value of Ipswitch for the School of Continuing Education
Currently, SCE provides IMail Server Premium for approximately 1,500 users who have requested email accounts. These accounts are used for the typical everyday email access as well as in classroom instruction. "The majority of the students who take a computer class, such as 'Intro to Computers' and 'Discover the Internet' use email for course study," says Teipe. "Course curriculum for some classes connects students with hands on internet browsing, messaging techniques such as creating/replying to email and address book set up. This is all accomplished with IMail Server Premium."
As the email administrator, Teipe says the lead advantage to using IMail Server is anywhere access, web-administration. "I particularly value the 100% web-based management, says Teipe. If I happen to be off-site and an issue arises, I can access the system quickly and determine within minutes what issues need to be addressed." He also boasts IMail Server's affordability, versatility and dedicated technical support staff.
"Ipswitch Messaging has always offered great technical support with quick return responses on phone calls and email support, and the Knowledgebase has provided me with valuable information and resources for supporting SCE's IMail Server system". Teipe also says he has no concerns about adding future accounts. With SCE's unlimited user agreement, IMail Premium provides reliable, scalable, and versatile standards-based email service that makes adding users simple and speedy.
The NOCCCD School of Continuing Education proves that with Ipswitch IMail Server, end users and administrators are both winners. End users can enjoy the ease of secure messaging and collaboration tools, while administrators replace hard-to-administer messaging and collaboration systems with IMail Server's fast, proven technology.