Growing enrolments and different mail servers across four campuses were becoming an administrative burden for the IT staff of one Mid North Coast NSW school.

St Philip’s Christian College is based in Newcastle, with further campuses in Port Stephens and Cessnock. The College has over 500 desktop computers and approximately 320 notebook computers, used by students participating in its Student Notebook Program.

New users had to be manually assigned email addresses and rules and policies were applied inconsistently across the school.

Director of ICT Services, David Price, said an assessment of the demands of growing enrolments against the available IT resources showed the existing combination of mail servers wasn’t going to step up to the mark.

With Computelec’s help they identified a solution that involved migrating the mail servers at each school, variously operating on Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 or 2000, to two mail servers running Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

To get the best out of the upgrade, Computelec recommended also updating all 17 file servers to Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Sean McMahon, Senior Systems Engineer with Computelec, was involved in every step from initial planning right through to the implementation.

“In combination, these two products delivered a host of benefits from improved reliability to greater control over security and an improved user experience with Outlook Web Access” , Mr McMahon said.

Computelec engineers upgraded the first few file servers, and helped College staff complete the upgrade.

With the new combination of servers going in less than six months ago, the College has not yet had the opportunity to conduct a full review.

“The real test will come with the new year’s enrolments. However we’ve already seen benefits” , Mr Price said.

Mr Price agreed that Outlook Web Access, which sees users accessing email through a web browser, was more user-friendly and allowed greater portability for staff working across multiple campuses.

The experience for IT staff has also improved with the integration of the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 into the College’s existing active directory.

“Now when a new user is added to the directory, a matching email address is automatically created. This saves our staff from having to manually set up an email address each time a new user is introduced” , Mr Price said.

With email privileges extended to all staff and over 300 students, this has substantially reduced the administrative burden on the College’s five IT staff.

Mr McMahon said the active directory was a particularly useful feature for schools where user directories typically change from year to year.

The College’s email is now streamed through the one email environment, consisting of the two mail servers, providing IT staff with greater control.

“We can now consistently apply one set of rules to all email traffic” , Mr Price said.

The College’s internet usage policy is supported by the filtering rules on the Exchange server, giving the College greater ability to block viruses, spam, and inappropriate content from reaching staff and student inboxes.

The single email environment also means settings or rules updates can be conducted quickly and efficiently.

“The upgrade has meant our IT staff no longer have to work at 130 per cent behind the scenes to ensure the College runs smoothly. This has definitely helped us improve resource allocation in terms of the College’s IT staff” , Mr Price said.

While the College has been working with Computelec for more than eight years, Mr Price said the upgrade was the first network solution they had sought from Computelec.

Computelec’s prior experience and thorough knowledge of the products involved was the deciding factor for St Philip’s Christian College. Computelec is a Microsoft Partner and all engineering staff hold a Microsoft Certified System Engineer qualification.

The College also appreciated the opportunity to work cooperatively on the upgrade, giving College staff a sense of ownership.

“On-site help also meant that if there were any hiccups or questions we had immediate support” , Mr Price said.

“Education is part of Computelec’s ethos, not just IT. It makes it easier for us because we know they’re committed.”