Scott Mah, Associate Vice President for Technology Services, UW Information Technology

Microsoft Online Services Customer Solution Case Study

University Offers Students, Alumni New Choice in Hosted Email and Collaboration

“Live@edu initiated a collaborative relationship with Microsoft. Their willingness to work with us to deliver more cloud-based services for students and staff is of great value to the university.” Scott Mah, Associate Vice President for Technology Services, UW Information Technology

The University of Washington wanted to provide students and alumni with optional, self-serve access to an alternative email service other than its own and to other web-based email offerings. It chose Microsoft Live@edu hosted collaboration services and deployed a web application that automates account provisioning. Today, the university is offering a new email service that meets the expectations of its technically savvy students and alumni.

Business Needs innovative learning environments. The University of Washington (UW) However, the university’s email provides quality information- services had not kept pace with the technology services to support expectations of its students and

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published June 2010 alumni. The student email service storage, access, and sharing of “We want the best for the students. offered only 300 megabytes of online documents. That’s why we added Live@edu as a storage and provided no collaborative feature-rich, collaborative suite of capabilities. The aging alumnus email The solution still lacked the automated online tools to choose from, alongside service had reached the upper limits of user-account provisioning required by our own email service and other web- its capacity and no longer warranted its the university’s IT staff. Mah contacted based email providers,” says Colleen administration costs. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Planet Butler, Technical Project Manager, Technologies. The firm built a web Program Management Office, UW “The graduating class of 2009 provided application with a portal where alumni Information Technology. the impetus to look for a new email can activate their Live@edu accounts service because the old system was full using the passwords they had as Benefits and we didn’t have room to add this students to access the student portal, With Live@edu, the University of class to the system,” says Scott Mah, called MyUW. Washington provided the graduating Associate Vice President for Technology class of 2009 with an email service for Services, UW Information Technology. Planet Technologies used the life, while reducing administrative “We wanted to reduce IT support and Windows PowerShell command-line overhead. This move enabled the improve features for our alumni, such as interface, a feature of the Windows university to retire its alumnus email an increased mailbox size, but we had Server operating system, to build the service and reallocate IT resources to to act quickly to find another solution functionality of the application to more strategic projects. Now all for June 2009.” check alumni’s passwords against a students and alumni have self-serve database and create Live@edu access to rich communications The university didn’t want to continue accounts for eligible alumni. “All we capabilities, similar to those they might paying for an in-house solution, so it had to do,” says Mah, “was provide a encounter in the workplace. More looked at hosted options. “We also database of eligible alumni from the importantly, the University of were against subjecting our alumni to class of 2009, and we were ready for Washington has solidified a online advertisements,” says Mah. “And the June 2009 graduation.” partnership with Microsoft that we wanted them to keep their old UW facilitates a move toward low-cost email addresses in a university-branded During the summer of 2009, the “cloud computing”—the hosting and interface. Most importantly, we wanted University of Washington made new management of web applications on to automate provisioning of the plans to offer Live@edu to its students the Internet through data centers. accounts and deliver a self-serve and the rest of its alumni. “The approach for alumni to sign up for the momentum for hosted email services Reallocating IT Resources email service whenever they wanted to.” picked up as the economic reality of Today, the University of Washington is budget cuts set in,” says Mah. offering its students and alumni a new Solution option for self-serve access to The University of Washington deployed To replicate the self-serve aspect of Live@edu email and collaboration Microsoft Live@edu, a Microsoft-hosted the solution, the University of services, without ever having to communication and collaboration Washington redesigned the provision accounts for them. solution for educational institutions that application created by Planet “Live@edu gives us one more reason delivers web-based email accounts Technologies to integrate it with the to get out of the email business using Microsoft Outlook Live to university’s NetID authentication altogether,” says Butler. “Now that students or alumni. The accounts are system. Beginning in September 2009, we’re letting Microsoft provide available for life. Other Live@edu students and alumni could use their commodity communication services, services include Windows Live SkyDrive UW network ID to access the MyUW we can focus on IT projects that enrich storage technology and Microsoft portal, where they could sign up for our programs on campus.” Office Live Workspace for online Live@edu. Improving Collaboration on Campus

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published June 2010 At the same time, the university Windows Live SkyDrive. That’s a lot of Live@edu, with enhanced data- recognizes that students have high online space to share documents and protection capabilities. expectations for digital communications collaborate. Our next step is to offer that build connections with faculty and similar services to faculty and staff.” “Live@edu initiated a collaborative peers that may last a lifetime. “Students relationship with Microsoft. Their are migrating from our email service to Building a Strategic Relationship willingness to work with us to deliver the collaboration capabilities in Today, the university is actively more cloud-based services for Live@edu,” says Mah. “They are getting exploring additional Microsoft-hosted students and staff is of great value to 10-gigabyte inboxes instead of the 300 collaboration technologies for faculty the university,” says Mah. “We see it as kilobytes of storage that we offer, plus and staff that would provide similar a foundation for the future, helping us an additional 25 gigabytes with features and functionality as to build a true campus community.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published June 2010