Despite some problems, the Office of Information Technology is on its way to migrating Pomona College to its new e-mail system and now plans to finalize the changeover at 6:00 pm on Thursday, May 4, one week later that previously scheduled.

As it stands now, incoming e-mail is delivered to the old VMS system; if the addressee has completed the migration procedure, it is then forwarded to the new Microsoft Exchange servers. Otherwise, the e-mail remains on VMS. This setup allows both migrated and un-migrated users to read their e-mail.

To complete the migration, OIT needs to modify e-mail delivery so that incoming messages will be automatically routed directly to the Exchange servers; the VMS server can then be deactivated. However, as of Wednesday, only half of the faculty and a third of the students had completed the migration procedure, so deactivating the VMS server would have rendered the majority of the Pomona community unable to access its e-mail.

Director of Information Technologies Terris Wolff cited several factors for the delay. The main technical problem has involved Synchronicity, the software responsible for synchronizing users’ passwords between the Exchange mailservers and Novell Netware fileservers. When it synchronizes a password, it incorrectly sets the password as expired on the Netware servers. As a result, the user is forced to change his or her password at the next login, which causes the Netware and Exchange passwords to become unsynchronized.

In addition, OIT student consultant Arturo Garcia ’02 mentioned procrastinating students as one of the problems. "All the students wait until the last minute to do stuff...it got really hectic," he said. However, Garcia added,"People have been really patient. If it goes well, it takes five minutes."

Sara Bernstein ’03 agreed, "It’s not that hard if you follow the directions."

The migration has been somewhat difficult for students on study-abroad. Because they do not have access to the local network and cannot access the password-changing software, they have had to fax photo ID to OIT in order to receive a new password via e-mail. For students in third-world countries, this is not a straightforward matter.

Although OIT is optimistic about the new system, many do not share their view. Even once the entire e-mail system is up and running smoothly, as OIT predicts it will be by September, it will still have what some students consider to be flaws.

For example, at present, there is no way for students to automatically forward their Pomona e-mail to another address (i.e., a Hotmail account), although OIT is looking into the issue. In addition, the current version of Webmail, the web-based interface to the new e-mail system, is unable to properly display certain types of attached files.

Problems persist with the new addressing scheme as well. E-mail from Webmail will appear as from the new, cryptic usernames (i.e., DSM01999@excsrv-acd1.pomona.edu), although the full text of the author’s name is included in the form field. The new addresses have also caused seniors some confusion during the migration. In the hopes of simplifying the procedure, seniors were not assigned new login names, and thus seniors who followed the migration worksheets ended up using the wrong login names.

Finally, there are concerns regarding the security of the new system. Microsoft software has a reputation for being insecure and buggy. Nonetheless, Wolff maintains that Exchange is a secure platform, and that a firewall that will be installed over the summer will further protect the system from outside attacks. As of yet, there have been no attacks on the new mailservers.