Microsoft Exchange Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

University Implements Long-Term Plan with Messaging System Upgrade

OverviewCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: Education—Higher education

Customer ProfileIndianapolis, Indiana–based Marian University is a Catholic university that is dedicated to excellent teaching and learning in the Franciscan and liberal arts traditions. It employs approximately 400 people.

Business SituationThe university wanted to replace its aging messaging system to increase reliability, decrease the time spent on IT management, and improve communication among students, faculty, and staff.

SolutionMarian University conducted a smooth upgrade from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 during mid-semester, thereby establishing a basis for future unified communications.

Benefits Superior system reliability Enhanced user experience Easy remote and mobile access Improved productivity Easier IT management

“Uptime is critical today and will only become more so …. We are confident that Exchange Server 2010 will remain dependable for Marian University as we continue to grow.”

Scott Shea, Senior System Administrator, Marian University

Marian University, a Catholic liberal arts institution, needed to replace its aging messaging infrastructure, which could no longer accommodate the university’s explosive growth. Students, faculty, and staff experienced frequent service interruptions, and IT staff spent considerable time managing the business-critical system. The university decided to upgrade from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 to improve reliability and establish a foundation for additional communications solutions. Working with Control-Z Information Technology, the university successfully conducted a phased, mid-semester upgrade with no user downtime. Marian University now has a dependable communications infrastructure with easy remote access and support for a large variety of mobile devices, which heightens user productivity and minimizes IT management, while conserving costs.

SituationSponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis in Oldenburg, Indiana, Marian University serves more than 2,300 full-time and part-time students who are working toward associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees. The university’s vision is to provide an education that profoundly transforms lives, society, and the world.

Marian University has enjoyed significant growth in its student population for the past few years. Enrollment has doubled in the last decade and now includes a significant number of adult students in non-traditional programs, including online. The university also is undergoing accreditation for a new college of osteopathic medicine to be located on the campus. The medical school alone will add approximately 600 students, new faculty and staff members to support it, and significant instructional technology resources.

That level of growth reflects positively on Marian University, but it also presents challenges, especially with regard to the campus’s messaging infrastructure. The university used Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 as its messaging system, which served it well, but the system could no longer keep up with the demands of the expanding user community. It became time-consuming to manage and prevented IT staff from taking on proactive projects to improve the IT environment. For instance, IT staff routinely had to readjust elements of the system to prevent it from running out of storage space. “We spent a substantial amount of time keeping the system running; someone had to come in during the early hours of the morning to jumpstart the system,

rearrange mailbox locations, address random hardware outages, and answer help-desk calls,” says Peter Williams, Chief Information Officer at Marian University.Students, faculty, and staff complained about interruptions in email service, which created barriers to communication and affected educational interactions. To plan for future growth, Marian University proactively decided that it must address the problem before user dissatisfaction grew, with the goal of making communications easier and more convenient for faculty and students, especially. “The students who come here have certain expectations of how they would like to communicate with faculty and how quickly they would like to receive a response, so we wanted to make it easy for all those involved to meet those expectations,” explains Williams.

Marian University determined that it needed to update both its software and its hardware to establish a new communications environment that was enterprise-class, redundant, reliable, and scalable, with higher capacity and performance.

The university also wanted to be able to support a variety of mobile devices, which are especially popular among students. “Most students bring smartphones to campus, which represent one of the easiest ways for faculty to communicate with students, but the phones run on Windows Phones, iPhones, Nokia devices, Android devices, and so on,” says Williams. “We wanted to make it straightforward and appealing for both students and faculty to use portable, convenient devices for email and other communications.” In addition, the university sought to ensure that any

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steps that it took with regard to its messaging system would support future initiatives, such as a planned move toward unified communications.

SolutionMarian University decided to upgrade straight to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. “We did not consider anything other than a Microsoft Exchange Server product,” says Williams. “We briefly looked at Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, but opted to upgrade straight from the 2003 version to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 because we wanted to take advantage of the latest technology advancements.”

The university also looked ahead to its medical school’s requirements and noted that it needed the ability to add security parameters around the medical school’s communications to comply with the United States Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. These requirements were in addition to those that the university already complied with to meet standards for the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 for data storage and sharing. “We identified built-in elements of Exchange Server 2010, such as Microsoft Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange Server and Information Rights Management features, that would enhance protection of and control over email messages and attachments, which would help us in our efforts to set up and maintain a HIPAA-compliant environment,” says Scott Shea, Senior System Administrator at Marian University. The university also appreciated the ability to break up mail stores and place different properties and rules on them.

Planning and DeploymentMarian University sought input on the upgrade project from several potential partners and discussed timing and hardware, operating system–level, and application-level objectives. The university had determined that its existing messaging system’s limitations were such that it should conduct the upgrade halfway through the semester. “Because our old system was unreliable and performed poorly, we needed to act quickly, so I challenged everyone to overhaul the messaging system mid-semester with no downtime,” says Williams.

In November 2010, after reviewing a few different plans from a handful of service providers, the university selected Control-Z Information Technology, a Microsoft Registered Partner, to assist with the Exchange Server 2010 implementation. The university’s IT staff believed that Control-Z had the best plan for upgrading the environment without risking impacts to students, faculty, and staff.

Marian University IT staff began working together with Control-Z technical specialists in December 2010. The joint team carefully planned the upgrade, thinking through the change process and identifying key timing elements. In February 2011, Control-Z set up two new physical server computers and four virtual servers, all running Exchange Server 2010. Two of the virtual servers fill client access and transport roles, while the other two act as mailbox servers along with the two physical mailbox servers. Two of those four mailbox servers use the Database Availability Group feature in Exchange Server 2010 to provide redundancy and automatic database-level

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recovery; any email that resides on one can also be found on the other, which means that one of the servers can go down without affecting a single user. “Our previous system included just a single server, so we really appreciate this infrastructure’s redundancy,” says Williams.

In March 2011, Control-Z moved the university’s more than 7,000 mailboxes from the old environment to the new one. The partner used the deployment tools that come with Exchange Server 2010, along with related documentation from the Microsoft TechNet website. “It’s beneficial to have so much documentation available from Microsoft as well as the greater Microsoft user community,” says Daniel Aw, Lead Engineer at Control-Z Information Technology. “As for specific software tools, none were necessary because everything we needed for an efficient deployment came with Exchange Server 2010.”

The team used a phased deployment for the upgrade. Marian University had divided its mailboxes on the old server by groupings of the last names of all faculty, staff, and students. Over the course of two weeks, Control-Z moved the mailbox groups to the new environment. “One of the things that made it so easy for us to conduct the deployment with confidence was the functionality in Exchange Server 2010 that makes it possible to run in a mixed-mode environment,” says Aw. “Students, faculty, and staff at the university had continuous access to all their email messages and could communicate with each other throughout the deployment, even at points when some mailboxes had been moved to servers running Exchange

Server 2010 and others were still on the old server.”

While Control-Z handled many of the technical aspects of the Exchange Server 2010 deployment, the university’s IT staff members focused on fully preparing and communicating with Marian University students, faculty, staff, and any others who might be affected by the move. “Our team provided thorough, informative communications with plenty of warnings and reminders about the upgrade, as well as notices when the phases were completed for everyone on campus,” says Williams. “Control-Z and our IT staff provided constant and clear communication and met each deadline. The entire university user community responded positively to the smooth upgrade.”Configuration and SupportMarian University and Control-Z used automated settings to help ensure that the transition to the new messaging system would be flawless. For example, users’ settings in the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client were instantly and automatically reconfigured by Exchange Server 2010. Due to the careful planning and smart use of features, the transition caused fewer support calls than expected, both during and following the upgrade. “I thought we would see a large increase in help-desk calls with email-related questions, but we turned out to have a very small number of issues—just a few tablet device and phone users who needed a little assistance,” says Williams. “Control-Z put together clear, helpful user documentation for users, and very little training was necessary for students, faculty, and staff.”

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“Students, faculty, and staff at the university had continuous access to all their email messages and could communicate with each other throughout the deployment.”

Daniel Aw, Lead Engineer, Control-Z Technology

Prior to the upgrade, the university received two or three messaging-related calls each day, but the only calls that it receives now, following the upgrade, occur when a user has not read an email that alerts them to a maintenance outage.

Walle Mafolasire, Chief Executive Officer at Control-Z Information Technology, adds, “Our IT counterparts at the university stood by during the two-week transition period, but the onslaught of help-desk calls never came. We all planned for difficulties, but the whole upgrade project went smoothly, especially considering the timing. All that students, staff, and faculty had to do was turn on their computers and the rest was taken care of.”

The university’s help-desk staff partly attributes the lack of calls to the Autodiscover service and other remote-device setup and management features that are part of Exchange Server 2010. “One of our users went to set up a Remote Web Workplace from home,” says Mary Rieman, Senior Database Administrator at Marian University. “All he had to do was identify the proper server, and the system grabbed all the settings he needed. He was delighted to have everything set up automatically.”

Future PlansMarian University considers its upgrade to Exchange Server 2010 just the first step along the path toward comprehensive unified communications capabilities for students, faculty, and staff. There are plans to adopt Microsoft Lync Server 2010 and Exchange Unified Messaging for expanded communications options, including the ability to access full voice-mail features

from mobile phones, desk phones, Microsoft Outlook 2010, and from other sources. “We aim to give faculty a variety of easy ways to interact with students so that they can select the method that best suits the situation,” says Williams. “Ultimately, we want everyone to be able to use the device of their choice to send email messages, conduct video conferences, use instant messaging, and so on—whether they’re at home, on campus, or at a conference.”

BenefitsBy upgrading to Exchange Server 2010, Marian University is giving its students, faculty, and staff more flexible, reliable communications capabilities, which helps increase productivity and strengthen the overall educational experience. At the same time, the university is refocusing IT time and effort, establishing a solid foundation for future technology projects, and conserving costs. “Even from a storage perspective alone, Marian University is saving on costs by having upgraded to Exchange Server 2010,” says Williams.

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“From my point of view as CIO, the ease of use and ease of connection that our students, faculty, and staff now enjoy with Exchange Server 2010 is supremely important.”Peter Williams, Chief Information Officer,

Marian University

Superior System ReliabilityMarian University has noted the improved reliability of its new messaging system, which is due both to the system architecture that Control-Z designed and the fact that Exchange Server 2010 is better able to scale to meet the university’s growth requirements. “Uptime is critical today and will only become more so as professors become even more capable and comfortable with giving students the fast responses that they would like,” says Shea. “We are confident that Exchange Server 2010 will remain dependable for Marian University as we continue to grow.”

That confidence also stems from the new messaging infrastructure’s disaster preparedness support. Now that multiple mail servers provide redundancy for all email users, the university’s students, faculty, and staff no longer encounter the service interruptions that formerly disrupted them. “With the built-in redundancies in its upgraded Exchange Server 2010 environment, including automatic failover functionality, Marian University is safeguarding against the recurrence of email downtime,” says Mafolasire.

Enhanced User ExperienceMarian University has provided its user community with a better email experience because of its upgrade to Exchange Server 2010. “From my point of view as CIO, the ease of use and ease of connection that our students, faculty, and staff now enjoy with Exchange Server 2010 is supremely important,” says Williams. “We successfully conducted what I’d call a textbook usability upgrade.”

Because the university now has a reliable messaging system with streamlined access from anywhere, students, faculty, and staff have seen a boost in their efficiency. Marian University estimates that it has created user efficiencies of up to 15 minutes per user per day. “Just from the enhanced mobile device support and ease of using Outlook Web App with all web browsers, productivity around the campus has increased to the point where it is like a night-and-day difference since the upgrade to Exchange Server 2010,” says Williams. “We look forward to further productivity boosts once we add Exchange Unified Messaging to the environment.”

“I really appreciate how seamless the transition was from Exchange Server 2003 to the 2010 version. I particularly like the new ‘Conversation’ feature, which makes it much easier to find and track previous messages,” says Johnny Goldfinger, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Director of the Prelaw Studies Program at the university. “The ‘Groups’ option in ‘My Account’ is also a very valuable management tool, and it is intuitive to use. I have not used the ‘Mail Tips’ function, but I am sure it will save my job at some point!”

Easy Remote and Mobile Access Students and remote workers particularly appreciate Microsoft Outlook Web App, the full-featured web client that is part of Exchange Server 2010. “We find it helpful that Outlook Web App closely mirrors the Outlook 2010 client application,” says Shea. “Our faculty, staff, and students also gained the flexibility to choose whichever web browser they wish to use without sacrificing functionality in Outlook Web App, which is important because we want everyone to be

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“We keep discovering aspects of Exchange Server 2010 and all that it can do to help our colleagues and their students work effectively from remote locations.”Peter Williams, Chief Information Officer,

Marian University

able to use whichever browser they are most comfortable using on their computers.”

In the past, Marian University faculty and staff had to deal with cumbersome virtual private network (VPN) connections to use the university’s mail servers while working remotely. They now can connect more directly to the messaging system through the Outlook Anywhere feature in Exchange Server 2010, which makes it possible for users to access Exchange servers across the Internet without using VPNs. “We keep discovering aspects of Exchange Server 2010 and all that it can do to help our colleagues and their students work effectively from remote locations,” says Williams.

In addition, the newer environment supports the proliferation of smartphones and other mobile devices on which the university’s students, staff, and faculty increasingly rely. “Users can quickly and easily get up and running with a new device because the university’s system can automatically synchronize their calendars and contact lists for them,” says Williams.

Increased IT Staff ProductivityThe university’s IT staff members have increased their own productivity as a result of the move to Exchange Server 2010. “We’d outgrown our old environment and had to spend several hours each day on its ‘care and feeding,’” says Shea. “But now we

hardly have to look at the Exchange Server 2010 system.”

Previously, IT staff had to conduct messaging system updates in the middle of the night, and it took three to four hours to update the single server computer. “Plus, applying an update could take down the whole system due to lack of necessary compute capacity,” continues Shea. “We recently updated all four of our new servers in just two hours. Updates not only take less time, but they also no longer pose a risk to uptime thanks to the highly available setup, so we could even run a critical update in the middle of a high-use day if we needed to.”

The university’s relatively small IT staff has a lot of work to do, so its members appreciate that they have newfound time to focus on strategic projects. “Now that we no longer have to baby-sit our messaging environment, we have the time and attention to tackle important projects, including domain, hardware, and database system upgrades, and adopt new technologies such as Microsoft Lync Server 2010,” says Williams. “That’s critically important because, despite all the university’s growth, we’re a lean IT shop with a high student-to-IT staff member ratio. Having the messaging system essentially run itself represents a huge gain for us.”Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Control-Z Information Technology products and services, call (317) 663-3088 or visit the website at:PushcontrolZ.com

For more information about Marian University programs, call (317) 955-6000 or visit the website at:www.marian.edu

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

Document published July 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Microsoft Office− Microsoft Outlook 2010

Hardware HP ProLiant DL370 G6 server computers

Partners Control-Z Information Technology

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can help you achieve better business outcomes while controlling the costs of deployment, administration, and compliance. Exchange Server 2010 delivers the widest range of deployment options, integrated information leakage protection, and advanced compliance capabilities, which combine to form the best messaging and collaboration solution available.

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/exchange

For more information about Microsoft Unified Communications, go to:www.microsoft.com/uc

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