University of Kentucky

University Adopts Unified Communications to Improve Education, Streamline Operations

The University of Kentucky is a full-service academic and research institution that serves 27,000 students on the Lexington campus and thousands more in remote locations across the state. To help professors and students communicate seamlessly and make the university’s resources cost-effective for its 44,000 users, the school’s IT staff is implementing Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007 R2. By integrating presence, instant messaging, and audio, video, and Web conferencing into the school’s core educational, medical, and administrative applications, the university will streamline communications across the learning community. Using the innovative solution, the University of Kentucky will reduce travel costs and help its IT staff simplify a mixed communications infrastructure while reducing support costs.

 

Situation

The University of Kentucky (UK) is Kentucky’s primary public institution of higher education, offering more than 200 majors and degree programs in 16 academic and professional colleges. The university serves 27,000 students on its Lexington campus and thousands more through its distance learning and healthcare programs. The school’s staff of 14,000 people includes Lexington-based faculty and administrators but also hundreds of agricultural extension agents, economic development officers, and healthcare professionals in all 120 Kentucky counties.

Cisco would have required additional hardware…. They think ‘hardware’ and that wasn’t good for us. Microsoft has a software-based solution. I think that is the way to go with unified communications. Doyle Friskney Chief Technology Officer, University of Kentucky

Believing that Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) was the best standard for communications, the university’s IT department has been focusing on providing communications services using SIP for many years. SIP enables all communications to be based on the same standards and use the same networks. It has worked with multiple suppliers to implement SIP-based telephony, conferencing, video, and instant messaging.

One of the best features of SIP communications is that users are able to easily switch modes within the same session. This means that users can easily move from an instant messaging session to a voice call to a Web conference within one user interface. However, with the university’s disparate systems, users were not able to take advantage of this feature.

When the time came to replace the university’s 5ESS switch, which was used to provide telephone service to 12,000 users, the IT staff began a search for a SIP-based unified communications system that could provide a complete set of applications to users. It was looking for a system that would simplify the IT environment and open up new communications possibilities for enriching teaching and learning. “My staff was supporting about 10 video-conferencing systems and multiple instant-messaging systems,” says Doyle Friskney, Chief Technology Officer at the University of Kentucky. “It was clear that we needed to establish a standard that would be easier to support, secure, cost-effective, and easy to use.” The IT staff also wanted to extend communications to a variety of portable devices that were proliferating on campus.

The new solution needed to meet another need—teleworking. “Budget cuts will mean people will be working from home and today we don’t have a good work-from-home solution,” explains Friskney. “We’d like home users to feel like they are part of the university community.”

The medical center has some special communications needs such as for its telemedicine department, whereby specialized physicians can transfer knowledge via telephone or video conferencing. The flexibility of an integrated SIP-based communications could help to support these doctors’ need to share voice, video, and data.

At a more strategic level, the University of Kentucky has a goal of becoming a top-20 university in the United States. “Communications are at the very core of everything we do,” says John Tibe, Director of Enterprise Computing and Communications Systems at the University of Kentucky. “We need reliable and affordable communications to help us reach our goals in every department. We realized that we wanted to move to a world where everyone was connected in real time by more than e-mail messaging.”

 

Solution

UK decided to implement Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007, one of the cornerstones of unified communications solutions from Microsoft, which provides presence, multiparty instant messaging, Web-based video conferencing, and voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). UK would be able to access these flexible communications capabilities from Microsoft Office programs and from third-party line-of-business applications. The solution is able to utilize investments in the Active Directory® service, the organizational directory service, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Users can take advantage of the integration with the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client to access presence information in e-mail messages and view calendar information from within Office Communicator 2007, the preferred communications client for Office Communications Server 2007.

We chose Office Communications Server 2007 over IBM, Cisco, and a number of open-source products because of our ability to easily integrate it into our existing applications and our diverse user communities. Rick Phillips Lead Video Engineer, University of Kentucky

“We chose Office Communications Server 2007 over IBM, Cisco, and a number of open-source products because of our ability to easily integrate it into our existing applications and our diverse user communities,” says Rick Phillips, Lead Video Engineer on the IT staff at the University of Kentucky. “It’s familiar to everyone who uses Microsoft Office, and it integrates automatically into Office programs.” Phillips adds that the security features in the Microsoft software family are critical in supporting the United States HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements of its medical center.

UK is using the Web conferencing, presence, and instant messaging capabilities of Office Communications Server 2007. “We have 44,000 user accounts enabled and usage of the system on campus is exploding, really only by word-of-mouth,” says Friskney.

The University of Kentucky plans to use the many additional voice and conferencing capabilities provided in Office Communications Server 2007 R2.

Conferencing

The school already had a robust interactive IP-based video network that it has now integrated with Office Communications Server 2007. The university has also deployed Microsoft RoundTable™ video conferencing devices.

The Microsoft RoundTable communications and archival system delivers an immersive meeting experience to all involved, providing a real-time, 360-degree panoramic video of everyone in a conference room and automatically focusing on the current speaker. Even more, it can record the audio and video of the content, synchronizing it with presentation content, so users can quickly fast-forward or rewind the recording to review the most relevant content.

Client computers on either network can come together by way of video bridges. With these bridges, users of Office Communicator 2007 can access video programming without costly hardware or software, using an interface with which they are already familiar. This familiarity reduces training and deployment expenses and allows the university’s video network to grow at an accelerated rate.

The university will also take advantage of the audio conferencing capabilities to host audio conferencing bridges on the servers. “Every time somebody requests a conferencing service, we have to outsource that to one of our partners. With this product, we will be able to eliminate that partnership and retain those dollars for our own support structure,” says Friskney.

Voice

The university has tested the VoIP capabilities of Office Communications Server and has decided that it will become the primary telephony option for users. “The masses will get Microsoft unified communications as the base telephone service on campus,” says Friskney. “That really plays well into our strategy on campus, and I estimate that we will move many phones on campus to Office Communications Server.”

“The Attendant Console and PSTN [Public Switched Telephone Network] dial-in capabilities will end up driving our deployment more than we initially thought,” explains Friskney. “We have an enormous ACD [Automatic Call Distributor]. It is an expensive service to offer a department and small departments generally can’t afford it. Now, when we bring a department on board, we will offer them the option of having a basic ACD based on the Office Communications Server Attendant Console. It is a low-end key system replacement and we have about 500 key systems on campus.”

Microsoft was chosen over Cisco because of its lower cost, flexibility, and integration. “Cisco would have required additional hardware that we already have with Microsoft. They think ‘hardware’ and that wasn’t good for us,” explains Friskney. “Microsoft has a software-based solution. I think that is the way to go with unified communications. They also don’t have the tight integration that Microsoft has worked on for years.”

The Microsoft solution is also easier to implement than Cisco’s solution. “Whenever I go out to any person's office, there is a 90 percent chance that I will find a Windows® infrastructure to work off of,” explains Friskney. “That's not the case with Cisco. That's how it needs to be with unified communications.”

 

Benefits

With Office Communications Server 2007, the University of Kentucky will extend better communications support to its large user community and improve the interaction that underlies effective teaching and learning. With low-cost PC-based video conferencing, the university’s medical staff will be able to extend its expertise and care to more outlying physicians and patients. The school’s large administrative staff will have an easier way to find colleagues and share data for quick discussions and meetings, which will improve productivity and reduce travel costs.

Enhanced Learning

Initially, UK is using the Application Programming Interface (API) built into Office Communications Server 2007 to add presence and video capability to the Blackboard course management system. Professors use Blackboard to create and post syllabuses, assignments, course materials, and online tests. Faculty can hold interactive chat sessions with students, and students can see when instructors and other students are online for questions and discussions, using the familiar Blackboard interface.

There are no integration steps and no security worries. With Office Communications Server, we’re able to deliver huge new capabilities with a very small learning investment. Doyle Friskney Chief Technology Officer, University of Kentucky

“Students do a lot of studying between 11:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M., when the university doesn’t have a lot of traditional support for them,” Friskney says. “They can get at library resources and Blackboard online, and now they are able to reach classmates online using tools that they already know and use.”

Down the road, the university envisions virtual tutoring, using Web-based conferencing and instant messaging, and even virtual classrooms. “We’re exploring the possibility of putting many or all of the university’s classes online,” Friskney adds. “We will be able to display live or recorded lectures, and provide remote students with an opportunity to interact with professors and other students from wherever they are. The ability to extend the classroom beyond the boundaries of a building in Lexington will strengthen our academic community. With chat, VoIP, and video services, we’ll be able to create a new learning platform that will allow classroom collaboration at any time with participants anywhere in the community.”

Telemedicine Expands Caregiver Collaboration and Training

The Telemedicine Department at UK provides regular continuing-education broadcasts to physicians across the state. By incorporating Office Communications Server 2007 into its video-conferencing infrastructure, the university will be able to expand the reach of these offerings. “Through Web-based conferencing, any physician in Kentucky can be part of this learning opportunity,” Phillips says. “Instead of having to invest in expensive video-conferencing equipment or trek to a special facility, physicians will be able to access continuing education using a PC in their office.” Additionally, by integrating Web conferencing and instant messaging, UK will greatly expand the opportunity to offer medical education and services to rural communities.

Adds Friskney, “Where would you rather have a cardiologist—in the office treating a patient or driving to a tiny town three hours away? It’s almost impossible to put a savings on ‘windshield time,’ but it boils down to higher productivity for your most valuable resources.”

Also, the UK medical school will be able to offer virtual office hours for its 420 medical students. “These busy students won’t have to make a special trip to the campus to meet with their advisors or do administrative work,” Tibe says. “They can stay in the hospital and focus on their medical training while using video conferencing to take care of routine communications and reports.”

Easier, Less-Expensive Communications

Administratively, the University of Kentucky is similar to a bustling business, with thousands of employees in hundreds of departments working from dozens of locations. The university will use Office Communications Server 2007 to facilitate easier communications for its staff of 14,000 people. Real-time communications and information-rich virtual meetings will streamline operations and improve productivity.

“Our pilot rollout included our help desk, e-mail support, wide-area-network group, telemedicine, and distance-learning groups. All groups used presence, instant messaging, and conferencing features to help reduce time-wasting voice mail and e-mail,” Phillips says. “Accurate presence information eliminates the time spent waiting for a phone to be answered, the need to leave a voice mail, or the time spent drafting e-mail messages for simple business questions. These routine steps result in countless hours of lost productivity each day across the organization. We expect that users can save 15 minutes per day due to using Office Communications Server. When all of our employees are able to do this, we will save millions by reducing the need to hire additional employees as we grow.”

Friskney says, “Our aim in implementing Office Communications Server 2007 is to facilitate improved communications, not to save money. However, when you save time, you also save money. Distance has a cost. With employees scattered across 120 counties, there can be considerable expense associated with a simple meeting. Using Office Communications Server 2007 and RoundTable, we’ll be able to reduce the number of meetings that require travel.” The university expects to reduce travel cost by 20 percent.

“From a technical standpoint, Office Communications Server 2007 provides in one place an integrated system that required several products to do previously,” Tibe adds. “By consolidating multiple communications products to one, we get easier use through smooth integration with other Microsoft programs and, ultimately, lower support costs.”

Tibe continues, “Office Communications Server is going to lower the cost of support because I don’t need to hire user technicians to go out and install user phones in the departments. It takes advantage of the money being spent to maintain the Active Directory and Exchange Server.”

Infrastructure with Strengthened Security and Compliance

The university already has strong security measures in place and takes full advantage of Microsoft security technologies. The university can slide Office Communications Server 2007 easily into this environment and implement the same high security levels across new communications channels, such as instant messaging, video, and VoIP.

“Office Communications Server 2007 uses TLS (Transport Layer Security) as the primary connectivity protocol, and thus all communications are more secure,” Phillips says. “This strong security layer helps us maintain HIPAA compliance in our medical environment.”

Also, thanks to the tight integration of Office Communications Server 2007 with Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, users can easily capture instant messaging logs and phone messages, and place them in a security-enhanced Office Outlook folder using a familiar interface.

“That’s the real beauty of implementing a Microsoft infrastructure,” Friskney says. “Every time you add a new capability, you just extend the tools that everyone already knows and uses. There are no integration steps and no security worries. With Office Communications Server, we’re able to deliver huge new capabilities with a very small learning investment.”

 
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