Sullivan University System

At This University, Unified Messaging Is a “Can’t Live Without It” Service

The Sullivan University System in Kentucky needed to upgrade and standardize its aging telephony system on a voice over IP (VoIP) solution. Sullivan also wanted to extend a highly popular service that was available on one campus—unified messaging—to the faculty and staff throughout the system. With unified messaging, e-mail, voice mail, calendar items, and contacts are available in one place, and users can access their information through a variety of devices. After weighing several offerings from vendors, Sullivan worked with Berbee Information Networks to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 with unified messaging on its existing telephony systems, with plans to upgrade to a new phone system in the near future. Faculty, staff, and receptionists work more efficiently and productively, and the IT department finds the new environment more secure, more stable, and easier to manage.

Situation

If I don’t have any appointments in my Outlook calendar, I don’t have any appointments. I don’t have to log on to a separate system to know what’s on my agenda.  Drew Arnette System Support Administrator Sullivan University System

The Sullivan University System is a privately held, for-profit educational institution with schools throughout the state of Kentucky. The largest, Sullivan University, has campuses in Louisville, Lexington, and Fort Knox. In July 2008, the university will launch a doctoral program in pharmacology and will expand one of its campuses in response to high demand for its medical technology program.

In early 2006, Sullivan began to research the options for upgrading its telephony systems. The university system used Nortel telephony at all of its locations, but the campuses were not networked with one another and the installations were at different revision levels. Also, part-time faculty members did not have their own voice mail boxes and had to check back with their departmental assistants during office hours to get their messages.

Michael Grosse, Chief Technology Officer for the Sullivan University System, says, “We made the decision to look into implementing a voice over IP environment. One of the main drivers for that decision was what we wanted to do with unified messaging. As an educational institution, we try to stay at technology’s leading edge so that we practice what we preach, as it were.”

Sullivan already had unified messaging implemented at one campus, where users responded with enthusiasm. “The person who was in charge of the PBX [private branch exchange] at that location was very astute about the benefits of unified messaging,” says Grosse. “Once he set it up and a few people started using it, word of mouth spread the benefits like wildfire. Suddenly, unified messaging became a service that people couldn’t live without.”

Along with unified messaging, Sullivan wanted to provide users with a level of access to data that called for a migration not just of telephony, but of the university’s entire messaging system. The university wanted its faculty and staff to be able to get their voice mail, calendar, and e-mail wherever they might be—and to have a wide variety of devices to choose from, including personal computers, telephones, and Windows Mobile® powered smartphones. The goal was device-independent access to information.

Solution

Sullivan University worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Berbee Information Networks to migrate its systems to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 with unified messaging. The university system was already using Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, so migrating to the newer version was a natural choice as far as messaging went. But when it came to the unified messaging component, Sullivan wanted to be sure that a Microsoft solution was the right way to go.

After comparing Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging with offerings from third-party vendors, Sullivan determined that Exchange Server 2007 would meet its needs. “What really interested me about Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging as opposed to an independent vendor solution is that unified messaging is totally integrated within Exchange Server 2007,” says Grosse. “For example, one vendor’s product was more of a Microsoft Office Outlook® integration, which limited people to their workstations to synchronize their mobile devices and retrieve their messages.”

I’ve seen people speaking in very thick regional dialects use Outlook Voice Access in Exchange Server 2007, and the speech engine understands them better than I do.  Michael Reiring Microsoft Consultant Berbee Information Networks

Michael Reiring, Microsoft Consultant at Berbee Information Networks, arrived at Sullivan in the fall of 2006 to assess the Sullivan Active Directory® service and Exchange Server 2003 environment and to work with the university’s technicians on the pilot deployment. “We reviewed the existing environment and compared it with what we knew to be Microsoft and Berbee best practices,” says Reiring. “The Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices Analyzer was a big part of that process. We confirmed that there were no barriers to implementing Exchange Server 2007 unified messaging.”

Unlike some organizations that implement unified messaging when they migrate to a new telephony system, Sullivan deployed the solution on its existing Nortel systems in November 2006. “When we decided that Exchange Server 2007 was going to be our platform for e-mail and voice mail, we still hadn’t made the final decision about our telephony hardware,” says Grosse.

Exchange Server 2007 is installed on three Dell PowerEdge 1950 server computers running the Windows Server® 2003 Standard x64 Edition operating system. The information stores reside on an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) storage area network (SAN). The two mailbox servers run Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition. The third server is a Client Access server running Exchange Server 2007 Standard Edition. Mobile access to the system is provided through T-Mobile MDA and Dash smartphones powered by Windows Mobile 5.0 software.

When its new IP-PBX solution is installed, Sullivan will continue migrating its users throughout the university system to Exchange Server 2007. Students will have access to the messaging services provided by Exchange Server, and all 500 faculty and staff members will also enjoy access to unified messaging through Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client, Outlook Web Access 2007, and Outlook Voice Access.

Beginning in 2008, the number of users will increase significantly as the university system grows. In addition to expanding its campus in response to the demand for its medical technology program, Sullivan will put up a new building for its College of Pharmacy, which will lead to the addition of more faculty and support staff and an increase in student enrollment.

Sullivan is also planning to enhance its intranet later this year using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. “We’ve identified a lot of projects for which SharePoint Server would serve as a very good technical platform for development,” says Grosse. “For instance, providing the faculty with standardized templates for creating their own Web pages. That’s just one of the ideas that we’re working on.”

Benefits

Bringing the benefits of unified messaging to faculty and staff throughout the Sullivan University System was the main driver for the Exchange Server 2007 migration project. Because users enjoy anytime, anywhere access to their messages, calendar items, contacts, and voice mail, they work together more efficiently. The new e-mail system is more secure and its IT administrators have new tools that make management easier and faster.

We already knew we wanted unified messaging. The question was, were we going to spend $80,000 on a full Cisco Unity implementation for 500 users, or were we going to go to Exchange Server 2007?  Michael Grosse Chief Technology Officer Sullivan University System

Unified Voice and E-mail

Reiring says that he has seen a lot of enthusiasm at Sullivan about the ability to manipulate mailbox items through natural voice commands in Outlook Voice Access. “Users who travel between their campuses don’t have to look down at a device while they are driving,” he says. “I’ve heard a lot of people say, and I personally feel the same way, that it’s much safer to use voice access while on the road than it is to push buttons on a mobile device.”

Reiring is impressed by the solution’s sophisticated speech engine, which makes this type of interaction possible. “I’ve seen people speaking in very thick regional dialects use Outlook Voice Access in Exchange Server 2007, and the speech engine understands them better than I do,” he says.

Greater Efficiency

Sullivan reports that making voice mail, faxes, and e-mail accessible through Exchange Server 2007 has helped faculty and staff work more efficiently and productively. The university system’s physical telephony didn’t allow for all faculty and staff to have dedicated telephone extensions and voice mail boxes. Unified messaging does, so now part-time instructors, adjunct professors, and online instructors can better stay in touch with their students and colleagues. They can receive voice mail, e-mail, and faxed documents in their mailboxes.

“The ability to access all of our messaging capabilities from a single location is something that everybody has been interested in, but in the past it’s been too cost prohibitive for us to deploy on a large scale,” says Grosse. “We already knew we wanted unified messaging. The question was, were we going to spend $80,000 on a full Cisco Unity implementation for 500 users, or were we going to go to Exchange Server 2007? From a financial standpoint it was an easy choice, but would it actually work? I’m glad to say that it did perform as advertised.”

Like the users at the single campus where unified messaging was previously available, people throughout the Sullivan University System who now have access to unified messaging find it to be an indispensable tool. Drew Arnette, System Support Administrator at Sullivan, says, “One of the users is a receptionist, and she really enjoys not having to write down messages whenever someone calls for a faculty member. Now she can send the voice message straight to that person’s mailbox.”
Speaking about his own experience, Arnette says, “I always tell people that if something’s not in my calendar, I’m not doing it. Now if I don’t have any messages in my Outlook mailbox, I don’t have any messages. If I don’t have any appointments in my Outlook calendar, I don’t have any appointments. I don’t have to log on to a separate system to know what’s on my agenda.”

“If I’m going to be late for a meeting, I don’t have to track down four or five other people to let them know,” Grosse says. “I can call my mailbox and it will send a message to all of the meeting attendees, which they can access wherever they are. It’s a lot easier.”

Other users who benefit from unified messaging are Sullivan admissions counselors who work in other states. Prospective students who call these off-site counselors and the central admissions department at the university encounter different systems for each, which causes some confusion. With a unified system, university staff everywhere can represent Sullivan in a way that gives clients the impression of dealing with a single entity rather than separate organizations.

Stronger Security

The IT administrators at Sullivan appreciate the strong security of Exchange Server 2007—especially in a university environment. “We have a lot of computer science students around here who take what they’ve learned in the classroom and play on our network,” says Grosse. “I feel better knowing that our internal communications are encrypted by default using Transport Layer Security instead of just floating around out there for anyone’s taking.” Sullivan plans to secure its faculty’s mobile devices using the remote device wipe feature in Exchange Server 2007. If a mobile device is lost or stolen, the IT department can protect the user’s information by deleting all of the data on the device.

Easier Administration

The population of the Sullivan University System is always in flux, which creates a significant workload for system administrators. Every quarter, large numbers of new students arrive and depart. Faculty members also come and go depending on which classes are being taught during the quarter. As a result, help desks at each campus create and delete large numbers of accounts four times a year. Given the many variables and directory permissions involved, this creates opportunities for errors that have to be resolved later on by higher-level technicians.

The university’s IT staff is currently creating a standardized and automated account management process using Exchange Management Shell, built on the Windows PowerShell™ command line interface. Soon, a help desk technician will be able to create accounts quickly, easily, and accurately by entering a person’s name in a text field and choosing one or two options from drop-down menus. The Windows PowerShell script will do the rest.

An improved Office Outlook Web Access 2007 will also make administration simpler at Sullivan. In the past, the IT department supported Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) e-mail access for students. With the new, more robust Web-based mail access, the department will do away with POP3 and will have to support only the Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client and Outlook Web Access 2007.

Increased Stability

“One of the things that I have seen—particularly in the last five to seven years—is that the stability of Microsoft operating systems and software has improved tremendously,” says Grosse. “That stability has allowed the people in our department to spend more time learning new technology. We can add to our capabilities in ways that might not be possible on other platforms that lack the broad range and stability that Microsoft technology offers.”

For More Information

For 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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. 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 Berbee Information Networks products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.berbee.com

For more information about Sullivan University products and services, call (800) 844-1354 or visit the Web site at:
www.sullivan.edu

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

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

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

Document published July 2007