A. Student outsourced emails accounts will not display corporate advertising. Note that this is different to public free accounts, as we will be part of an Education Edition agreement.
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Q. Would email addresses still be @utoronto.ca?
A. No, although the utoronto.ca domain would remain the same, it will now be used only for Faculty and Staff e-mails. Students will be transitioned to a new domain, @mail.utoronto.ca.
Q. What would the University do with the money it would save by switching to outsourced email service?
A. Money saved by Faculties/Departments/Units would stay in the Faculty/Department/Unit. Central savings for email/webmail would be redeployed. Energy savings from reducing computing infrastructure would result in a lowered power bill, an indirect cost saving to the University.
Q. Would anyone lose their job?
A. The intent is that no one would lose their job. The project would free up people resources (by relieving them of a mundane task) to be redeployed to do other important tasks for their Faculty/Department/Unit.
Q. Are other institutions doing this?
A. Many universities and colleges recognize that email and calendaring are utility services and are getting out of directly supporting these services. Approximately 28% of the post-secondary institutions in the United States now use external services for their email (a rise from 5% just two years ago).
Q. Why is outsource in particular being proposed?
A. Several options were considered, some free and some not free. While outsourcing is not the only option, we consider it the best option overall. Please refer to the reports for more information on this decision.
Q. Why is the University considering this change?
A. University of Toronto would like to move away from providing services that are considered ‘utility’ and reallocate those resources to projects that are more innovative and distinguish our core offering from other Universities. Second, we want to expose our students to a rich set of leading-edge tools and applications that can be used to enhance communication and also provide students with a viable calendaring option, which at this time they do not have access to.
Q. Would outsourced e-mail be the only email option available at the University of Toronto?
A. No. Students will have the option to opt out of the U of T outsourced service and receive U of T domain address with a forwarding service only (more details to come). Faculty and Staff will remain on the U of T’s Microsoft Exchange service and UTORmail respectively.
Q. Where are Outsourced e-mail servers located?
A. Servers hosting the University of Toronto’s student outsourced service would be located worldwide.
Q. Is outsourced e-mail intended for all students, faculty, and staff?
A. No. The Outsourced e-mail service is intended for students only.