Webmail successor may reap rewards

Penn students may be excited to be upgrading from Webmail, but experts say the companies battling to replace it have just as much to gain.

If students "like what they see, we get the chance to win them over as customers of the future," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "There are a lot of choices for online communications today, and we know we have to continually delight our customers to win their business."

Officials will replace the University's e-mail server with a new host from either Google Inc. or Microsoft Corp. beginning this January. It will cost the University nothing.

Penn Marketing professor Peter Fader said that the hosting will only attract the brand loyalty that Microsoft desires if students are impressed by the service.

"There is no particular evidence that it does give brand loyalty in the future," Fader said. "There are tons of vendors who come to this campus to give away free stuff. It will only work if it is a good product."

Deirdre Woods, Wharton associate dean and the school's chief information officer, said that the companies will work to win loyalty by specifically tailoring their products to Penn students.

And there's another incentive: once it develops the program, a company can market it to other schools as well, she added.

Both the standard Google and Microsoft services offer similar features - including several gigabytes of e-mail storage space, calendars and free use of the service - but Penn officials say they are looking for the company willing to devote the most resources and effort to the Penn-specific project.

"We are negotiating for something beyond the standard package," said Ira Winston, the School of Arts and Sciences information technology chief, in an e-mail.

Penn's version will be highly customized and carry Penn's logo.

"The few universities that have previously outsourced e-mail have not worked as closely with the vendor as we intend to," Woods wrote in an e-mail.

But Penn isn't the first school to consider such a move, as companies are increasingly eager to break into the University market.

Microsoft's Windows Live @edu initiative has already been contracted or implemented in 57 universities worldwide, and this number will likely reach 100 by the end of the year, Microsoft indicated.

Google officials could not be reached for comment.

Already, 40 percent of SAS students are forwarding their e-mails to an outside address, up from 30 percent from last year, Winston said.

Wharton has forwarding rates of 11 percent for undergrads and 1.5 percent for MBA students.

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