OME 2.1 Email Alerts Error

Greetings,

Last week I upgraded our OME server from 2.0.1 to 2.1.  I did an upgrade over top of the old after taking a backup of the database.  Everything appeared to be smooth except we started noticing that email alerts were not being sent out.  After trying to send test emails from the Alerts test function and trying different mail servers (we have an internal mail server and also tried a google server) OME logs show the following error whenever I tried sending a test email:

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * EXCEPTION * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  12/07/2015 09:56:30  Unable to send the email.  System.Net.Mail.SmtpException: Failure sending mail. ---> System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: net_io_connectionclosed.    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ProcessRead(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 read, Boolean readLine)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ReadLines(SmtpReplyReader caller, Boolean oneLine)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ReadLine(SmtpReplyReader caller)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpConnection.GetConnection(ServicePoint servicePoint)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message)    --- End of inner exception stack trace ---    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message)    at sendmail.Program.Main(String[] args)  System.IO.IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection: net_io_connectionclosed.    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ProcessRead(Byte[] buffer, Int32 offset, Int32 read, Boolean readLine)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ReadLines(SmtpReplyReader caller, Boolean oneLine)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpReplyReaderFactory.ReadLine(SmtpReplyReader caller)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpConnection.GetConnection(ServicePoint servicePoint)    at System.Net.Mail.SmtpClient.Send(MailMessage message) ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Anyone have an idea on how to fix this?

Thank you for your help.

Ryan