I&IT's David Drivdahl was featured in a Microsoft Customer Solution Case Study for his work shifting university alumni email from a forwarding service to Microsoft Live@edu.

Drivdahl, a systems analyst, and his colleagues in I&IT Systems evaluated Microsoft Live@edu and Google Apps for Education. They selected the Microsoft service for three reasons:

• Microsoft provided more pre-sales support, making Drivdahl conclude post-installation support would be sufficient
• The Windows Live SkyDrive online storage, included with the service, provided many types of storage for files that can be large
• Among current students, more were using the Microsoft services and technologies than Google.

The shift has already paid off for Alumni Affairs.

"Offering a free, reliable email service associated with the university helps us to maintain a relationship with alumni as they go on to postgraduate education or professional life," says Janeth Rodriguez, assistant director of Alumni Affairs. "This strengthens our fundraising efforts and our ranking in the U.S. News & World Report college survey and others, which are based partly on the percentage of graduates who are active in the alumni association."

Drivdahl notes that email administration is easier and alumni are enjoying a more reliable email solution.

"In contrast to the instability of the prior solution, in all the time we have used Live@edu we have experienced no reliability problems," Drivdahl says. "This eliminates the administrative burden of having to periodically restart the system and makes our alumni account holders a lot happier."

To read the case study, visit www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000007207.