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Lamar University Selects MeritMail for Campus-Wide Email

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October 19, 2009

ANN AROR, Mich. – Merit Network, Inc., a nonprofit serving the education community for over 42 years, announces the addition of Lamar University of Beaumont, Texas to its rapidly growing membership of colleges and universities (EDUs) that have selected MeritMail™ to replace their campus-wide email solutions. The addition of Lamar brings the number of MeritMail accounts added in the past year to more than 250,000.

“In September 2008, Hurricane Ike caused us to shut down email for all our users,” said Michael Dobe, associate vice president/chief information officer at Lamar University. “We decided immediately thereafter to replace our in-house student Sun/iPlanet system and faculty and staff Exchange system with a new campus-wide outsourced email solution that would assure business continuance, should there be a similar incident in the future.”

Lamar University gave thorough consideration of available email alternatives before deciding on MeritMail, an email collaboration suite that provides secure email, calendaring, instant messaging, and document sharing from within a dynamic, Ajax-based web client, and a number of common desktop clients including Outlook.

“We conducted an extensive evaluation of possible alternatives, including some of the popular ‘free’ services. MeritMail won hands down. MeritMail is simply the best system I have ever worked with, and I have been working with email systems as an admin (and power user) since the earliest days of email,” Dobe said.

MeritMail has become a reliable NetSourced email choice for higher education, providing unlimited storage for every account while saving organizations thousands of dollars each year. Central Michigan University, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan Technological University, Wayne State University, and Western Michigan University are among the many that have selected MeritMail to serve their students, staff and faculty.

“There is no question that NetSourcing™ of various IT services is a timely topic among the senior management of many EDUs, largely because of the cost reduction opportunities. MeritMail uniquely accommodates that requirement while delivering a world-class email service”, said Rob Golden, vice president of research and development at Merit Network.

“MeritMail also satisfies the most common concerns related to outsourcing of services, such as data ownership, control, privacy and security; daily back-up; unlimited mailbox storage; 24×7 live support; no ads or data mining; legal and regulatory compliance and E-Discovery support; and complete Outlook compatibility,” Golden added. “MeritMail is a proven Exchange replacement.”

About Merit Network

Merit Network Inc., is a nonprofit corporation owned and governed by Michigan’s public universities. Merit owns and operates America’s longest-running regional research and education network. In 1966, Michigan’s public universities created Merit as a shared resource to help meet their common need for networking assistance. Since its formation, Merit Network has remained at the forefront of research and education networking expertise and services. Merit provides high-performance networking and IT solutions to Michigan’s public universities, colleges, K-12 organizations, libraries, state government, healthcare, and other non-profit organizations. For more information: www.merit.edu

About Lamar University

A member of the Texas State University System, Lamar University offers 63 undergraduate, 47 master’s and nine doctoral degree programs. The university’s 14,000 students are enrolled in five academic colleges. The university is a leader in distance learning with innovative programs statewide at the undergraduate and graduate level, as well as dual credit programs in Texas high schools through stateU.com. More information on Lamar University can be found at lamar.edu, or BeACardinal.com.

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