Shared E-mail and Messaging Services

E-mail has become a mission critical application for government organizations that depend upon electronic messaging to operate their business. Email systems require an investment in hardware, software, and on-going technical support to provide a reliable, secure, and efficient service.

VITA’s centrally hosted e-mail service allows your organization to avoid administrative overhead, to control costs, and to achieve consistently high service quality. VITA administrators manage the service continuously to ensure dependability, encrypted access, maintenance-free back-up and disaster recovery in the event of emergency outage. There is no requirement for a local server.

Use of a shared platform and a global address book improves employee communication and coordination through calendaring and tasking in the enterprise.

Benefits:

• Resources for hardware, software, administration and technical support for in-house system may be reallocated to core business activities
• State of the art system defenses are maintained to protect e-mail from attacks including worms, viruses, and spam; central e-mail system monitored for malicious activity around the clock.
• Offsite backup protection ensures continuity of operations.
• No need for new hardware; service works with most Web browsers
• Help desk support and password reset available to users 24 X 7 through VITA Customer Care Center
• Shared global address book and calendars facilitate communication and collaboration among employees of other agencies on the central email system
• Shared Blackberry service can be easily added for mobile users

What customers are saying:

"E-mail quickly turned into a mission-critical application at the Department of Forestry (DOF), and our small on-site staff could no longer support it effectively, especially with a new virus or worm around every corner. After reviewing costs and weighing other factors, DOF converted to VITA's shared e-mail service in July 2005. (Click here to read DOF's cost analysis.) Since then, our e-mail has been stable and reliable, with no worries about the latest e-mail attack and much less spam and junk mail to delete. Blackberry devices were implemented with virtually no on-site involvement!"

- Edwina B. Blalock, Programmer/Analyst, Virginia Department of Forestry

Service Details:

Basic Services include:

• Windows/Exchange Client Access Licenses
• 100 MB of storage per user on email server
• Public Folders
• Instant access to mail and calendar from mobile device. E-mail and Blackberry servers have 99% guaranteed uptime
• All email access is encrypted
• Email disaster recovery services
• SPAM and Anti-Virus Filtering
• Professional assistance available for planning to ensure trouble free migration from current email system to central e-mail.
• Global address book
• Calendaring and scheduling

Customer Responsibilities:

• Delete and purge email that is no longer needed
• Compress/zip large attachments before sending them
• Refrain from forwarding large files to multiple users if possible
• Delete attachments prior to storing email
• Creation of personal or local folders to archive/store email
• Each agency's local administrator is responsible for resetting passwords, adding Calendar features, etc.
• Follow best practice guidelines, State policy or established agency policies for acceptable email use
• Manage mailbox size to storage limits
• Use the VCCC for service issues and administration (additions/changes)
• Adequate Internet connectivity
• Internet Explorer (for OWA)
• Outlook 2003/Windows XP Service Pack 2 (for Outlook access)

How Do We Charge?

Charges are assessed based on the following:

• The base rate for email is a per month charge per user
• Email storage over 30 MB is assessed at a set rate per MB per user per month
• Calendaring and scheduling included at no extra charge.
• Outlook Web Access available at no extra charge.
• Mobile device synchronization is included in monthly fee for Blackberry service

These factors have the greatest impact on the charges:

• Number of active user accounts
• Email data storage