Emails to be in the cloud

Emails, calendar entries, contact lists – all these services provided by IT Services (ITS) for our day-to-day work have until now been operated on-premises. E-Mails are stored in ETH‘s own data center.

This is now all set to change as Microsoft is discontinuing the development of Exchange 2016 and with it the provision of support. With the new solution Exchange Online, the data will be processed and stored in the cloud. This has implications for users.

Advantages of migration

The improvements offered by Exchange Online include increased storage space for personal mailboxes. “All employees will have 50 GB rather than the standard 5 GB that has been provided until now,” says Rui Brandao, Head of IT Services. The “Your mailbox is full” message that most long-serving ETH members are familiar with is set to become a thing of the past – or at least to appear less frequently.

Using Outlook on a mobile phone will also appeal to many ETH members. “The look and feel and the functions will be the same for all Outlook users on all end devices – including Mac devices,” explains Brandao. “Another important benefit is that the technical measures for backing up data in the cloud solution are significantly stronger than when they were hosted on site at ETH,” underlines the Head of IT Services. This is particularly since the Microsoft servers are located in Switzerland.

Alongside these benefits, however, migration to the cloud involves a change that could prove less popular among many ETH members. This relates to the retention obligation for emails.

Emails are automatically retained

ETH is obliged as an institution to retain business-relevant information. This includes emails. Both messages sent to and received from an ETH account are thus automatically archived and deleted from the archive after ten years (cf. Internal news of 5 May 2022). This also affects private emails unless they are placed in the “Private do not archive” folder, which was created by IT Services to allow users to exclude private emails from archiving. It has been possible until now for private messages to be moved to this folder within 60 days of dispatch or receipt.

This is now changing as this solution is no longer technically feasible with Exchange Online. All emails will therefore now be archived for ten years immediately after being sent or received – regardless of their content.

Only use the ETH email account for business purposes

“When it comes to the archiving of emails, it will consequently no longer be possible to distinguish between business and private correspondence in future,” explains Brandao. To create a legally sound basis, the Executive Board has therefore decided that the ETH email account may generally only be used for business purposes in future. Users may only continue using an ETH email account for private purposes if they consent to the university’s treatment of private emails like business ones – including their archiving – at www.adressen.ethz.ch (“Personal and Communication Data” => “Communication Data”). “They should use their ETH email account in moderation,” underlines Rui Brandao. “For example, to manage small everyday things such as writing an email to a travel agency, placing an order or arranging to meet someone for lunch.”

Use of the ETH email address for specific benefits for ETH members based on their email address, such as car rental or health insurance offers, is exempted from the consent requirement. Users also don’t need to grant any separate consent when entering private appointments in the business Outlook calendar.

Use email accounts of other providers

However, Brandao recommends the simpler solution of generally separating business and private e-mails. ETH does not block access to the email accounts of private providers – on the contrary: “Many email clients are capable of administering multiple email accounts, which means that private accounts can also be included.”

What will happen to the existing email archive

The existing email archive will be frozen upon migration to Exchange Online. Users will still be able to access it and read their stored emails. However, it will not be possible for any new emails to be archived in it. As before, emails stored in the archive for ten years will be automatically deleted unless users have deactivated this function themselves.

This process will now change with Exchange Online: “All emails in users’ email accounts will now remain stored indefinitely unless deleted by the users themselves and as long as they work at ETH,” explains Rui Brandao. “If, however, a user deletes messages from their email account, these will simply no longer be visible there but will nonetheless be retained for ten years. The emails will then automatically be deleted once this deadline expires. This serves to ensure that all emails are retained for at least ten years.”

Gradual switchover

The email accounts will be gradually migrated over the coming weeks and months. IT Services will write directly to those ETH members affected. The “Private do not archive” folder will be deleted upon migration of the data as long as it is empty at the time of migration. If there are still emails in the folder, it will be renamed “Personal emails”. The emails it contains will also be archived for ten years. “If you do not wish these private emails to be archived, you should therefore delete them from your mailbox before your personal migration date,” underlines Brandao.