We’ve surveyed the top 50 U.S. Colleges. Verdict: Exchange still rules academia.

Thesis

Our thesis was simple: we wanted to know what email system/solution the ‘elite’ colleges in the U.S. were running. We were also curious to see to what extent Google’s Apps for Education and Microsoft’ Live@EDU managed to penetrate this market.

Conclusion

To be honest, we were somewhat surprised to learn that the by far most popular email system among the ‘elite’ schools was Microsoft Exchange. Fifteen (15) of the schools surveyed used Microsoft Exchange. However, it should be noted that many schools appears to be running Exchange in parallel with another system. Since we have no data on the distribution of users among the different systems, we simply counted both (or all) systems. The second most popular email server was Cyrus with eight (8) schools, closely followed by Dovecot, Google Apps, Sun Java SMS and Zimbra, all with seven (7) schools each.

It is clear that Google’s Apps for Education has been doing a much better job penetrating this market than Microsoft with its Live@EDU. Among all the schools surveyed, only one school (Washington University in St. Louis) is running Live@EDU exclusively. The only other school using Live@EDU, University of Washington, also offers Google Apps. They simply allow their students to pick which one of the two they prefer.

It should also be known that there was a significant number of email servers (13 to be precise) that we were unable to identify. In a number of these cases we could make an educated guess, but we decided to leave them in the ‘unknown’ category just to be safe.

Methodology

Every year, U.S. News publishes a list of the best U.S. Colleges. We’ve taken that report (Best Colleges 2010) as the basis for our research.

We took the list of colleges and tried to find out as much as possible from their public websites about their email systems. In most cases, we were able to find one IMAP server to connect to. In some cases we found several IMAP servers. We opened a connection to the IMAP server to try to identify what server software it was running. In most cases either the server greeting, or the bye-note revealed the server software.

Observations

Known weaknesses

The biggest known weakness in this survey is the large number of ‘unknowns.’ An unknown is simply a server we weren’t able to identify. In some cases it was a load balancer or proxy, and in other cases, it was a server greeting that we were unable to classify.

University of Washington is moving away from UW-IMAP

One interesting observation was that University of Washington, the home of UW-IMAP, is moving away from its own crown jewel. The entire university is now in transition over to Google Apps and Live@EDU. While Mark Crispin, the founder of UW-IMAP (and also the creator of the IMAP protocol itself), is no longer with University of Washington, the day they gave up on UW-IMAP must have been a sad day for the entire UW-IMAP community.

Exchange versions

Given that Exchange was the most popular server, it could also be worth diving into the various versions used. Since the version is presented in the greeting string, we were able to identify this fairly easily. Out of the fifteen (15) Exchange servers we ran across, nine (9) were 2007, three (3) were 2003, and three (3) were 2010.

No GroupWise or FirstClass

Before starting the survey, we were fairly confident that we would encounter at least a few Novell GroupWise and Open Text FirstClass servers. Without having any data to support this, we were fairly confident that these two email systems were popular in academia. Perhaps they are. Just not among the elite schools.

All servers offered secure IMAP connection

One pleasant surprise was that all the IMAP servers we found and connected to offered secure IMAP connection (ie. SSL on port 993). We actually didn’t expect all servers to offer this, but that’s definitely great. It also seems like most guides we ran across recommended that users configured their email client with an encrypted IMAP connection too.

Additional reading

Do you want to dive into the data? If so, we’ve published the data from our research in this PDF.

Courier-IMAP, Cyrus, Dovecot, Exchange, Google Apps, Harvard, Live@EDU, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Zimbra

BigX

Seems like you totally ignore the existence of Blackboard type systems. You ended up only researching what the administrations use. These administrations have very few differences and many similarities to enterprise corporations. So the conclusion you're trying to draw by looking at “Academia” is lost because the key characteristic that makes a College or University qualify as “Academia” is STUDENTS!

Secondly, one reason the proliferation of Exchange server is the existence of MS Office in the Enterprise. Outlook as the de facto mail client is often one out of simplicity and built-in integration with the mail server.

Many schools have moved the bulk of their email users(STUDENTS!) into closed systems like Blackboard. If you didn't look into any of these systems, then you really don't have much to say on the subject of what Colleges and Universities are using for email, only what the faculty and administration are using for internal enterprise email.
vpetersson

Well, the reason why I ignored Blackboard is because it is not an email server. It is an online learning/collaboration tool, with features like bultin board and file sharing. It's completely separate from the school's email system.