Basic email Storage Capacity for USU Employees to Increase 25 Fold

Utah State University is about to upgrade all USU email accounts to Office 365, a move that will give employees dramatically more email storage space.

Each USU employee will soon have 50 GB of email storage available, according to Eric Hawley, associate vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer. The added space will be enough to store more than 600,000 emails for each employee, based on the average size of a USU email, he said. The move, which is scheduled to begin Feb. 8, will also eliminate any fees departments are now paying for additional email storage space.

“The default now is that each person has 2 GB of storage capacity, so this will be quite an improvement,” Hawley said. “The great thing about this is that in addition to providing more storage space, the move will also save USU money.”

Hawley said that after the migration, email programs for USU employees, such as Microsoft Outlook, will still look and work the same. Each user’s emails will still be organized in their folders just the way they were before the change. Email addresses are not changing. Those who check their email over a web browser, however, will discover it has an updated look and that additional features are now available, he said.

“Most users won’t notice much difference,” Hawley said. “All their folders and emails will be automatically transitioned as part of the migration process.”

Hawley said an email will be sent to each person the week before they are upgraded and again the day before the change, giving them instructions on how to finalize the move the next morning. Groups of 300 to 500 accounts will be moved each night until it is completed. Campus-wide, the process is expected to last about four weeks, he said.

The change has been in the works for months and Hawley said a lot of behind-the-scenes work has gone into making this as easy of a transition as possible for USU email users. More information can be found at 365upgrade.usu.edu. Those with questions may contact their departmental IT support personnel at MyTech.usu.edu or phone the Service Desk at 797-HELP.

Writer: Steve Eaton, IT communications, 797-0059, steve.eaton@usu.edu