Secure messaging firm Mirapoint partnered with education services firm Blackboard Inc. for a hosted e-mail product for schools from kindergarten to university level.
The partnership between Mirapoint, Sunnyvale, CA, and Blackboard, Washington, D.C., lets academic institutions maintain ownership of messages and control data storage.
The Mirapoint-Blackboard hosted e-mail service also offers single sign-on with the Blackboard Academic Suite, which is used by millions of people to access course materials and collaborate with peers and faculty online.
The service also includes a calendar function where students and teachers can book events and meetings within the same system.
It is free of advertising and has a full time customer service help line.
Blackboard’s existing customers like the British universities of Durham, Cambridge,
York, Dundee, Kingston, Derby, Bournemouth and Sheffield Hallam will now be able to host their e-mail in-house on the same platform as their Web sites.
