Customers: Education: Case Study
Central University of Technology Increases Collaboration Amongst More Than 10,000 Students and 1,000 Staff
Business Profile
Central University of Technology, Free State – South Africa
University in South Africa with focus on science, engineering and technology.
Industry
Education
Requirement
A secure, affordable, easy to mange and use Linux-based messaging system that provided a collaborative calendar, support for Outlook and feature rich web client.
Products
Scalix Enterprise Edition
Scalix Community Edition
Overview
Central University of Technology (CUT) is located in Bloemfontein, the heartland of South Africa. CUT is dedicated to quality education and training in science, engineering and technology. Formerly known as the Technikon Free State, the university was established in 1981 with 285 students.
Almost a quarter of a century later, in 2004, the CUT IT Staff began to evaluate their current messaging solution. They were now supporting two campuses that had 1,000 staff members and more than 10,000 students. They were using a combination of Pegasus Mercury Mail, Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise and Novell Netmail. Managing all of these disparate email systems was an administrative nightmare. As a primarily Linux based organization, they were not running Active Directory and the Novell messaging solution was not being embraced by their user base.
Challenge
CUT was faced with a similar problem plaguing many organizations today – running in a mixed environment of open source, Linux and Windows. They needed a solution that could bridge the diverse user communities, that was independent of any specific directory technology.
Being a technical institution, CUT had already identified their requirements but they had not found a solution that met all their needs. That’s when they contacted Conversant Systems (Pty) Ltd, a Scalix Value Added Reseller, to assist with an evaluation of Scalix against other competing solutions. Having a deep technical competency, CUT simply needed guidance initially which Conversant was able to provide via telephone which lead to a two-day onsite visit to implement an evaluation version of Scalix. Choosing an email system that required little to no additional training on behalf of end users or the IT staff was key; after thorough testing CUT quickly knew Scalix was the solution, as it best fit their comprehensive list of requirements. Shortly thereafter, CUT contacted Conversant to assist with the installation.
Based on training and support during the evaluation implementation, CUT was able to completely deploy Scalix on their own, with only phone support from Conversant. Using eShuttle, a third party migration application, CUT was able to seamlessly migrate from their legacy systems to Scalix with no end user disruption in just a weekend, including user passwords. When students and staff returned Monday they had no idea their messaging solution had been upgraded – until they logged in. They now had a solution that was much more robust with a user interface that was much more appealing and user friendly.
In sum, the goal was to find a Linux-based email system that could provide the richer functionalities including calendaring, be web-based, provide an easy interface with Outlook, provide cross-compatibility with Windows and Macintosh systems, ensure a secure environment, and all at an affordable price.
