Canada-based Georgian College offers degrees in fields such as business, engineering, and design. Previously, workers on its 11 campuses communicated mainly by e-mail or phone, hampering long-distance collaboration and isolating workers based on outlying campuses. Employees used a third-party conferencing service, but it required IT department assistance and administration. With help from Dell, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Georgian College deployed Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 with voice over IP, instant messaging, presence awareness, and conferencing. Now, communication is more efficient. The college has eliminated its external conferencing service, saving U.S.$4,300 annually in conferencing costs, and it has reduced travel for a savings of $16,600 a year. Georgian College also has the potential to save about $215,000 by avoiding a Nortel voice-mail upgrade.

Humber College serves more than 19,000 full-time and 55,000 part-time students in Ontario, Canada. With 60 computer labs and more than 80 operating system images, the college found it challenging to deploy applications quickly and to manage image size. It used Microsoft® Application Virtualization to virtualize 60 applications. As a result, it reduced its image size, reduced deployment time, anticipates lower licensing costs, and is quick to respond to user needs.

Students and residents at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) offten train at distant rural clinics. They needed to reliably transmit clinical activity data and communicate better with NOSM. Using Windows Mobile® phones, Microsoft® Exchange Server, and mobile access to healthcare applications, NOSM learners communicate better and can transmit data directly from the field, helping NOSM track clinical activity and maintain accreditation.

For educational publishers, moving from print to digital can be expensive because interactive content must be created from scratch. Microsoft worked with Evident Point to offer an editor to add interactivity to files using the XML Paper Specification (XPS) and the Microsoft® Semblio package of educational tools. Publishers can use the tool to simply and inexpensively create platform-independent digital companion products.

With 14,000 computers distributed among 132 schools, the Durham District School Board faced a big IT challenge: supporting a diverse inventory of computers located in classrooms, labs, and offices across the region. IT staff had been driving to individual schools to resolve application issues, delaying help-ticket response times and imposing significant travel costs. Durham sought a more efficient way of supporting users. After researching a variety of options, the school board selected Microsoft® Application Virtualization, part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance. Now applications are delivered to computers virtually from a central server, which has simplified and accelerated computer maintenance tasks, giving technicians the time they need to strategically manage the IT infrastructure and support the educational process.

Cambrian College in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, wanted to enhance its online and distance-learning programs to reach more students in the local community and remote areas. In addition, Cambrian wanted to add more phone lines so that every employee and classroom had a dedicated extension. Instead of expanding its current systems, the college decided to implement voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, unified messaging, and Web conferencing. Rather than use components from multiple vendors, Cambrian College chose to go with Microsoft and built a unified communications solution based on Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. As a result of its new solution, the college saves money, increases communication, enhances safety, and provides greater access to lectures over the Internet. Soon it will be able to support IT services for other institutions.

Vancouver-based Great Northern Way Campus (GNWC) is a digital media technology centre committed to development and commercialization of digital media products in Canada. The facility, home to Canada’s first Masters Degree in Digital Media, needed a high performance computing (HPC) platform to help improve animation rendering performance, streamline server management and deliver tighter integration with its Windows® operating system-based desktop and workstation environment. Working with system integrator Seven Group, GNWC deployed Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS). Leveraging the power of 64-bit parallel computing, the Windows CCS-based solution delivers scalability and performance for digital content rendering, while providing ease of deployment, management and job scheduling through tight integration with Active Directory® directory service for a more flexible HP.

The Toronto District School Board wanted a standardized desktop environment in order to increase service levels and decrease support costs. The district has evolved from a 60/40 percent PC/Mac ratio five years ago to a 90/10 percent PC/Mac ratio today. The board hopes to further increase services and decrease its break fix cost by deploying the Windows Vista® operating system. A business value case study conducted by IDC demonstrated that upgrading company PCs to Windows Vista would provide these benefits. Additionally, the analysis indicates that when the Toronto District School Board upgrades its PCs to Windows Vista, it can anticipate saving U.S.$237 per PC annually in reduced IT support costs and user labor: IT labor is projected to decrease by 10 percent, or $9 per PC, and user labor is expected to decrease by 43 percent, or $192 per PC.

Education has two main goals: to give individuals the opportunity to develop themselves, and to provide society with the skills it needs to evolve in its best interests. Canada's educational system reflects the belief in the importance of education. In December 2000, Saskatchewan Learning formed the Education Technology Consortium (ETC); one of its goals was to boost efficiency across school divisions by finding a common financial management system. At the time, each school division had a different financial management system which barred information sharing, hindered standardized reporting, and slowed processing times. ETC chose to standardize on Open Door Technology’s Education Suite, which is based on Microsoft Dynamics NAV®.

Representing approximately 39,000 educators throughout Alberta, Canada, The Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA) is dedicated to advancing public education and professional standards throughout the province. To improve communications and collaboration with and among its members and to help reduce administration costs, the ATA standardized its infrastructure on the Microsoft® .NET Framework and Microsoft server and desktop software and signed a Microsoft Volume Licensing Enterprise Agreement. Through the Enterprise Agreement, the ATA simplified license management, reduced licensing costs, gained predictable budgeting, maximized value from software expenditures, and is able to more efficiently deploy new technologies. The interoperability and rich functionality of the Microsoft solution stack also helped streamline system administration, improve teamwork, and reduce travel costs.