Over the summer, Library and Technology Services will undertake the largest overhaul of the University e-mail network in nine years with the purchase of the open-source software Zimbra according to Director of Networks and Systems John Turner. The new system will replace the current e-mail client IMP, based on the software Horde, he said.

"The webmail system today is terrible," Turner said. "In fact, it is such a resource hog that we explicitly tell people not to use our webmail as their primary interface," he added. LTS will be promoting the new system for use as a primary interface, Turner explained.

The new program, which LTS has dubbed Bmail, will include many new features, most importantly an improved webmail interface, Turner said.

The software also offers an integrated address book and calendar system among other functions, he said. Yahoo uses the Zimbra software for its Web-based e-mail, Turner said.

The new interface works just like a desktop e-mail client, Turner explained. "If you hit the delete key, it actually deletes a message, if you use the arrow keys it goes up and down and doesn't have to refresh the whole screen," he said.

With Zimbra, LTS is also "moving away from Oracle calendar," Turner said.

The program, used by some 800 administrative staff and students cannot relate with other calendaring systems and has not been updated recently, he said.

With the new system, everyone at Brandeis will automatically get a calendar account, Turner said. The Zimbra calendar will be compatible with the Macintosh iCal program and Google Calendar, and it will allow students to grant others to access their schedules, he explained.

Zimbra will allow users to synchronize e-mail accounts, calendars and contacts on their Treos, BlackBerries or iPhones, Turner said, meeting the requests of many senior administrators.

"Mark Collins, for example, uses a BlackBerry, and he loves it, but he has to go back to his desktop every day and clean up all of his mail because it's a one-way synchronization," meaning that e-mail deletions on the BlackBerry do not appear on the desktop computer, he explained.

In the future, LTS might look to import students' class schedules or the MyBrandeis calendar into the new program, Turner said.

He added that with Zimbra, large numbers of campuswide e-mails will not take up as much storage space as they do now. Instead of sending out many copies of the same e-mail, only one copy of the message will exist, with the system sending a link to the message to every addressee's inbox, he explained.

LTS is planning a rolling conversion of the system over the summer together with a concerted publicity effort, starting in June, Turner said. Turner said he hoped LTS will be able to set up a Web page where users will be able to see when their accounts will be converted.

After the changeover, webmail users of will see the new interface while those using desktop clients such as Thunderbird or Outlook will have to change the server name they connect to, Turner explained.

However, users who have their mail forwarded to another e-mail account will not notice any difference.

Accounts that appear to have been abandoned for over one year will not be converted, he said.

LTS has been testing the new system with all of its 150 employees to gain feedback and optimize the system for Brandeis.

Stephanie Marshak '10, who works at the UNET help desk, is one of the students who has been testing Zimbra. Marshak wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, referring to the current system, "I have been using it instead of my mail client because it seems to have features that my mail client lacks."

Although she wrote that she found sending attachments with Zimbra easier, Marshank reported encountering some difficulties using an offline function of Zimbra.

Zimbra came highly recommended from a former systems administrator at Brandeis, Rich Graves, now at Carleton College, as well as from other sources, Turner said.

Turner called Zimbra very cost-effective. "Essentially, the cost of what we're paying for calendar today covers the cost of the entire e-mail, calendar address book [package from Zimbra]," he said.