Microsoft Online Services Customer Solution Case Study

School District Saves $2 Million by Switching from Notes to Microsoft Cloud Email

Overview “Switching off Lotus Notes and moving to Exchange Online Country or Region: United States will save us $2 million over five years. That’s a great gift to Industry: Education—K–12 Florida taxpayers.” Customer Profile Florida Virtual School (FLVS) provides Roy Pennell, Chief Information Officer, Florida Virtual School online courses for students seeking a nontraditional learning environment. During the 2009–2010 year, FLVS served Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is a leader in providing virtual 97,182 students in Florida, the United Kindergarten–12 solutions to students throughout Florida, the States, and internationally. United States, and the world. FLVS depends on email messaging Business Situation more than most schools to connect students and teachers FLVS employees wanted more modern communications tools that the school’s because of its virtual environment. However, the school’s aging IBM Lotus Notes email system was not IBM Lotus Notes messaging system provided limited email able to provide. That system was also expensive to maintain and scale. access options, and the IT staff worried about rising costs. To solve these problems, FLVS switched to Microsoft Business Solution FLVS switched to Microsoft Online Productivity Online Standard Suite to gain cloud–based email, Services to gain cloud–based email and a collaboration, instant messaging, and web conferencing. FLVS foundation for delivering online collaboration sites, web conferencing, will save U.S.$2 million over five years and be able to keep pace instant messaging, and other services. with rapid growth at reduced prices. The number of messaging–

Benefits related support calls has dropped 40 percent, freeing the IT staff Savings of U.S.$2 million over five years to focus on better supporting employees, who can now access Cost-effective scalability Help-desk ticket reduction of 40 percent email from smartphones and other devices. New communication possibilities Situation email messaging to its teachers and staff Florida Virtual School (FLVS), based in members; Notes was also the foundation Orlando, Florida, is an established leader in for a dozen business applications. However, developing and providing virtual education Notes was unpredictable and expensive. solutions. Founded in 1997, FLVS was the FLVS had six servers in two locations first statewide, Internet–based public high running Notes, and mail frequently did not school in the United States. Today, it serves replicate properly between servers or did students in grades Kindergarten–12 with a not arrive in a timely fashion. The variety of online offerings that school calendaring function rarely worked districts can use to replace traditional consistently, leaving staffers unsure as to classroom learning or complement whether meetings were correctly classroom–based instruction. Part of the scheduled. The IT staff considered fixing Florida public education system, FLVS these problems, but did not have the served 97,182 students in all 67 Florida resources to proceed. school districts, other U.S. states, and around the world during the 2009–2010 Costs a Concern school year. These students completed a Notes required specialized IT talent, which total of 213,962 half–credit courses. FLVS became increasingly hard to find and quite employs almost 1,000 full– and part–time expensive. FLVS had to update servers and instructors in addition to approximately 300 software every few years to stay current, non–instructional staff. The 1,280-plus staff and also had to routinely add new servers members are based throughout Florida, the and software to keep up with the United States, and the world. organization’s growth rate of 20 to 25 percent a year. “Our email costs were rarely Email Critical congruent with the growth of organization, FLVS staff depends heavily on email meaning, for example, that we had to buy a messaging to communicate and new server just to add 50 new employees,” collaborate. Teachers rely on email to stay Pennell says. in touch with one another and with students, create and share lesson plans, Because FLVS is a government and monitor online courseware. Staff organization, it has to abide by strict email members also rely on email to complete retention policies. To keep storage costs day–to–day responsibilities. Although FLVS down, the IT staff limited employee mailbox does not provide students with email size to 250 megabytes (MB). But because service, students rely on email to employees had to keep messages for communicate with their teachers. If email compliance purposes, they were constantly stops, learning stops. sorting through messages to decide which to save and which to delete, a task that “The reliability and availability of our took time away from students. Recovering systems has to be almost perfect,” says Roy email messages for compliance needs was Pennell, Chief Information Officer for difficult for the IT staff, requiring the Florida Virtual School. The school district retrieval of backup tapes from an off–site had long used IBM Lotus Notes to provide location. FLVS contracted this service to a

26 third party, which was expensive and often hardware, software, and maintenance costs. resulted in delays of days or weeks to fulfill So, FLVS took a close look at emerging e–discovery requests. cloud–based email solutions that ran in third–party data centers and were delivered Poor Fit with Rest of Environment over the Internet. FLVS needed a communications foundation that was less expensive and easier to The small team evaluated Microsoft manage, and on which it could build more Exchange Online, Google Gmail, and the advanced capabilities. It wanted to link Yahoo! email solution. Exchange Online, email and voice mail using the Active part of the Microsoft Business Productivity Directory service from Microsoft to deliver Online Standard Suite, is a hosted, unified communications, but Notes did not enterprise messaging solution based on integrate with Active Directory. Employees Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that had to maintain separate passwords for provides web–based message access, 25 Notes and the predominately Microsoft gigabytes (GB) of mailbox storage per software environment at FLVS. licensed user, and financially backed service level agreements. In addition to Exchange The staff was unable to use smartphones to Online, the Business Productivity Online access email, so they could only access mail Standard Suite includes Microsoft from their desktop or laptop computers. SharePoint Online for collaboration, Additionally, most staff members had used Microsoft Office Communications Online the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging for instant messaging and presence, and and collaboration client at previous Microsoft Office Live Meeting for web employers or at home and they continually conferencing. asked for that software. “We performed an extensive analysis of all Solution these solutions, looking at both Shortly after Pennell joined FLVS in January functionality and pricing,” Pennell says. 2009, he; Jean Gentile, Senior Manager of “After gathering the data, we decided to go Software Development; and Mickey with online email and specifically with the Hudson, Director of IT Services, analyzed Business Productivity Online Standard the future of Notes at FLVS. “We knew that Suite. We decided that we didn’t want to be we either needed to upgrade our Notes in the business of maintaining mailboxes; environment or switch to something else,” we wanted to focus on the business of Hudson says. education.”

Put Email in the Cloud The most compelling vote for the Microsoft Because FLVS had a predominately solution was the projected cost savings: Microsoft environment in its data center U.S.$2 million over five years in hardware, and on user desktops, the IT staff thought software, and maintenance. Also, Exchange about replacing Notes with Microsoft Online offered one critical feature that the Exchange Server. However, that option Google and Yahoo! solutions did not: a would have burdened the school with smooth connection with Microsoft Office

36 Outlook, which FLVS already owned as part Because employees no longer need to wait of Microsoft Office. “Employees knew Office for messages to replicate between servers, Outlook quite well and wanted it,” says email arrives more quickly. Staff can also Mark Schneider, Senior Project Manager at access email from just about any place FLVS. “We also liked the single sign on using practically any device. This feature and the compliance features that convenience enables them to respond to Microsoft provided.” student and business needs without being tied to their office PCs. Users have the full Schneider is referring to Microsoft functionality of Outlook when they use the Exchange Hosted Archive, which provides a Microsoft web–based email client Outlook centralized and easily accessible email and Web App. instant messaging repository to help FLVS manage retention, compliance, e–discovery, Benefits and regulatory requirements. Storage is By switching from Lotus Notes to Exchange unlimited and can be used for retention Online, FLVS will realize significant savings periods up to 10 years. over five years. It can also scale email more Migrate and Train Users smoothly and cost effectively by buying FLVS began migrating its 1,280-plus licenses as needed. Email help–desk tickets employees to Exchange Online in February are down, and FLVS has a foundation on 2010. The staff migrated mailboxes in which it can build many new waves, finishing four months later. FLVS communications capabilities to better meet plans to increase its Business Productivity staff needs. Online Standard Suite licenses to 1,900 in 2011, to keep pace with hiring. Savings of $2 Million Over Five Years FLVS has realized significant savings by The FLVS internal training department moving to Microsoft Online Services. designed training to help employees make “Switching off Lotus Notes and moving to the move to Exchange Online. It created an Exchange Online will save us $2 million “issues” website where employees could over five years. That’s a great gift to Florida log problems and questions, and the IT taxpayers,” Pennell says. That savings staff could quickly resolve them. From this includes all the costs of an on–premises site, Pennell’s staff created a Frequently email environment: the servers and hosting Asked Questions (FAQ) page for fees, Notes software licensing, subsequent user reference to reduce the maintenance, Internet bandwidth to number of help–desk tickets. support access, storage, support staff, and the third–party compliance service. The IT staff removed Notes–based applications that were not being used and Cost–Effective Scalability will gradually move the remainder to FLVS can also scale its email environment SharePoint sites. more easily and accurately predict messaging costs. “Our growth has been a Access Email from Any Device phenomenal 20 to 25 percent a year since our founding,” Pennell says. “The ability to

46 provision additional users without any FLVS teachers are no longer tethered to consideration for the underlying their portable or desktop computers to infrastructure or staffing is extremely communicate with students and one refreshing and amazingly good for another, as they were with Notes. They can business. If management tells me that we’ll access email from their phones, tablet have 3,000 employees in five years, I can computers, or other mobile devices, and estimate to the penny the cost of from any browser. “Our teachers need to be messaging services. Conversely, if we ever able to communicate with students beyond have a downturn, the flexibility works in the 8:00 to 5:00 business hours, especially other direction.” because students are all over the world,” Hudson says. “The portability of email Help Desk Ticket Reduction of 40 across different platforms is an amazing Percent benefit.” Since switching from Notes to Exchange Online, FLVS has seen a decrease in the FLVS plans to deploy the entire Business number of messaging help–desk tickets Productivity Online Standard Suite in 2011 despite a steady growth in number of and upgrade to Microsoft Office 365 when employees. “We reduced our help–desk it is released by Microsoft in late 2011. tickets by about 40 percent, from 250 Office 365 is a comprehensive online tickets for Notes one month to 150 for productivity solution that will include email, Exchange Online,” Hudson says. “We’ve voice mail, instant messaging, web portals, also reassigned two full–time employees extranets, web conference, and Office from email support to user support. desktop applications. It will combine those Because we were understaffed during the programs with Microsoft Lync Online to Notes days, we were unable to offer top provide full–featured instant messaging, service. Now, our staff has the time to presence, and audio and video web provide better service to employees. Our conferencing through its federated Active user base has grown significantly in the Directory domain. “When all that comes to past 12 months, and we haven’t had to fruition, we will move into the next stage of grow our IT staff.” The FAQ website will sophistication in our communications help FLVS steadily reduce its number of environment,” Pennell says. “We will see a email help–desk tickets. real change in the way people work and collaborate. By choosing Microsoft Online The staff also appreciates the larger Services, we have a platform that we can mailbox size, which minimizes the need to grow with and build on into the constantly purge email, and the simplified foreseeable future.” password maintenance. FLVS uses Microsoft Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, included with Exchange Online, for thorough virus–scanning and to help protect against spam and phishing scams.

New Communication Possibilities

56 Microsoft Online Services Microsoft Online Services are business-class communication and collaboration solutions delivered as a subscription service and hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings, customers can cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies and immediately benefit from streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online Services are backed by strong service level agreements and help reduce the burden of performing routine IT management, freeing up time to focus on core business initiatives.

For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/online

66