Tim McGuire, director of campus infrastructure services, said the work done during the email outage paved the way for Information Technology Services to introduce Microsoft OneDrive, a personal storage service similar to Dropbox, within the next year.
“We’re trying to expand services that we’re offering beyond email,” he said. “This is the first step in a whole slew of plans we have for (Microsoft) Office 365.”
But to make the future update possible, ITS had to change the login information for about 58,000 UNC accounts using Office 365.
The email outage lasted about five hours for active users and eight hours for inactive users. ITS planned the outage for March 8 to avoid interfering with classes or the UNC-Duke basketball game.
“We wanted to pick a day where the impact on student users would be minimal,” said Kate Hash, manager of ITS communications. “The first Sunday of spring break seemed like a smart choice.”
Brent Comstock, head of student government’s technology and web committee, said he and his team consented to the email update.
“There are other universities that use things like Google apps or Gmail, so they don’t really understand why we use HeelMail,” he said. “I think in some instances it’s kind of archaic. But I think the new updates and going toward a more cloud-based system will be really helpful for students.”
Since the update, McGuire said ITS has received 683 calls from students who needed help logging into their email accounts.
