Central Washington University

Success Story

CWU implements BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Novell GroupWise and gives its mobile users a new level of remote e-mail access

Overview

Central Washington University (CWU) is a comprehensive, four-year public university with nearly 9,000 full-time students and 1,400 faculty and staff. The university offers baccalaureate and master's degrees from its main campus in Ellensburg, Wash., located two hours from Seattle, and its six centers located throughout the State.

Challenge

The mobile users at Central Washington University find GroupWise® WebAccess indispensable when accessing e-mail while traveling or working from home using any standard Web browser. Many faculty and staff at CWU travel frequently – whether out of state or to the state capital nearly three hours away – and want to make the most of their travel time while in a car, airport or at one of six satellite campuses.

With the increasing popularity of the RIM BlackBerry*, the IT staff at CWU needed the right solution to provide reliable and secure wireless access to e-mail.

Novell solution

"Traditionally, CWU has been a conservative adopter of technology that is new to the market, but we could not wait to install BlackBerry Enterprise Server for GroupWise and get it out to our users. The quality of the product right out of the box has been exceptional."

Carmen Rahm
Senior Director of IT Services
Central Washington University

A long-time Novell® GroupWise user, CWU worked with a consultant to evaluate a move to Microsoft* Exchange and Outlook*. After a thorough evaluation, the university decided to retain its investment in GroupWise and purchased the RIM BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Novell GroupWise.

"Nothing is broken or out of revision, so it doesn't make sense for us to make the move," said Carmen Rahm, senior director of IT Services at Central Washington University. "We have been running Novell GroupWise for years without any virus attacks or unexpected downtime. Novell also offers a solid directory which fully meets our needs and gives us a road map for our plans to move to open systems."

CWU implemented the BlackBerry Enterprise Server in a few days on a Compaq HP* server. One dedicated server can support up to 500 users and provides wireless synchronization and automatic backup capabilities. Now CWU's BlackBerry users can travel and stay up-to-date with their e-mail and calendars, without the need to carry a laptop.

"Mobility is no longer a luxury," said Rahm. "The ability to provide consistent remote e-mail access is absolutely critical for us to remain efficient in a time of tight budgets. With the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for GroupWise, we didn't have to look elsewhere for mobile support."

Many university organizations, such as the facilities department, have jobs that take them away from their desks. These users can have consistent access to e-mail, as well as attachments, even where campus wireless service is not available.

"I've had my BlackBerry glued to my hand since we installed the BlackBerry Enterprise Server," said Rahm. "Now I can do e-mail while walking across campus or waiting in line for a latte. We're eliminating an enormous amount of wasted time and helping make our staff far more productive. With GroupWise and BlackBerry, you don't have to go looking for your e-mail – it finds you."

CWU currently has a mixed environment that includes NetWare®, UNIX* and Macintosh*. Macintosh users comprise nearly 20 percent of the university's users and were becoming increasingly frustrated when trying to synchronize their PDAs with e-mail. The BlackBerry Enterprise Server gives Macintosh users seamless access to e-mail and calendars.

"The BlackBerry doesn't care what's on your desktop – it just synchronizes with a server," said Roland Tollefson, director of Networks and Operations at Central Washington University. "We are reducing the frustrations of our Macintosh users and expect support calls related to PDAs and e-mail to drop to zero."

CWU also uses Novell ZENworks® for desktop management and has future plans to automate the management of its handheld devices. With most of its mission-critical applications running on UNIX, the university is looking toward open systems and is currently running several Web servers and databases on Linux*.

"We want to be able to pick and choose our own applications and features, without being tied to a certain vendor," said Tollefson. "It's important that our e-mail system give us that flexibility down the road."

In the future, the university also has plans to implement a Novell Security and Identity solution for identity and access management. Using Oracle/PeopleSoft* as its authoritative directory, the university will use Novell Identity Manager to synchronize user information across multiple applications, including Novell eDirectory™ and GroupWise.

Results

By implementing the BlackBerry Enterprise Server for GroupWise, CWU can give its BlackBerry users real-time access to e-mail and calendars from any location – car, airport, home or satellite campus. The university estimates that BlackBerry access to e-mail has easily paid for itself by improving employee productivity several hours each month.

"Traditionally, CWU has been a conservative adopter of technology that is new to the market, but we could not wait to install BlackBerry Enterprise Server for GroupWise and get it out to our users," said Rahm. "The quality of the product right out of the box has been exceptional."