If later this spring you notice that your campus email account suddenly seems to work a little better than it was--but that's all you notice about the change--then the planners, programmers and others in Data Center and Client Services who work on the campus email system will be delighted. Your response would show that Cyrus is working behind the scenes as planned.

Cyrus is a new email architecture system that the campus will begin moving to in April, following months of tests and review. Adopting Cyrus should improve email performance and user response time, allow faster access to mailboxes by Web-based email programs, increase mail quotas, and improve the system's storage of archived messages.

UC Davis offers email services to more than 50,000 users and delivers more than 2.5 million email messages daily. The existing architecture is aging, and needs improvements to meet the growing demand on campus.

As with most transitions to new programs, there will be side effects. One is a one-time double-download of stored emails for campus clients with a POP email setup (POP refers to one of the configurations an email program can use to access your account; a newer and better configuration is IMAP). Look for more information as the quarter advances.

The move to Cyrus is one of several improvements the campus is making to its email system this academic year. Other changes include replacing the mail list processing service (listproc), replacing Geckomail, and increasing mailbox quotas.

Carnegie-Mellon University, which developed the Cyrus email system, started using it in 1998. Subsequent users include the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Michigan; Stanford University, and several other leading universities.