Saint Michael’s College sets the stage for email to be primary communication channel to studentsSituationSaint Michael’s College, a leading Catholic liberal arts undergraduate college, planned to make email the primary method of communication to students, elevating email to the status of a “mission-critical” IT system. But the existing system was not up to the challenge. Designed to handle 4,000 email accounts, the system was outdated, overstressed, and operating 60% over capacity. To upgrade their infrastructure in response to new needs, the college engaged C2. C2 consultants assessed the college’s current environment and analyzed business and technical requirements. Saint Michael’s new messaging and calendaring platform is based on Microsoft Exchange Server and integrated with Active Directory. The platform uses redundant server groups to guarantee uptime and is designed to allow for future growth.
ResultsWith a tight end-of-summer deadline imposed, C2 implemented the new environment with no downtime, a seamless transfer of email accounts, increased security, and a significant reduction in spam in overall incoming email. The college now has an email platform that meets their enterprise communication needs, supporting email’s new mission-critical status and ready to grow with them well into the future.
“Our C2 consultants were clearly knowledgeable and professional,” said Billie Miles, Director of Information Technology at Saint Michael’s College. “Throughout the project there was a sense of teamwork. C2’s goals were our goals – a successful implementation for the college.”
| 
|  | The completion of this project has permitted us to run our operation the way it should be run. We are able to apply best practices to many network operations that we could not improve with older technology . . . These changes permit changes in other business rules (mandatory communication by email, for example) that give us the ripple effect of improved service and better management.
|  | |
Bill Anderson,
Chief Information Officer ,
Saint Michael’s College | |
|