WIESBADEN, Germany — The Army is implementing a new email system that will increase storage capacity, but users must clean house before the move.
The new Enterprise Email system will give soldiers and civilians one email address for the duration of their career, instead of having addresses that are linked to location or unit. It will also allow a user to look up other users anywhere in the world — not possible with the current system.
Michelle Curtis, 5th Signal Command director of plans and engineering, said email storage will increase to 4 gigabytes with the new system, 40 times the current capacity of 100 megabytes.
Users will no longer scramble to delete old emails because of a “can’t send because you have exceeded your quota” message. But before the move, “lessons learned” have shown that users will need to reduce their inbox to no more than 50 meg, which will greatly speed the changeover, according to a spokesman for the contractor helping with the switch.
Soldiers and Army civilian workers are scheduled to migrate to the new system by the end of the year. Many Army components stateside have already switched. Other service branches also will move to the new email system, but no time frame has been established, according to Department of Defense officials.
Other changes include access from any authorized, Common Access Card-enabled computer and use of Outlook Web Access.
With 1.4 million Army unsecured or NIPRNet mailboxes and 200,000 users of the military’s secure network, known as SIPRNet, to migrate, the changes will be implemented in stages.
Everyone will have an address that ends in @mail.mil. The first part of an email address will also identify whether a person is a civilian, servicemember or contractor.
