Manteca Unified School District

School District Standardizes IT Environment, Saves More Than $100,000 in Costs

Manteca Unified School District (MUSD) covers a large rural area in Central California. MUSD needed to update its aging, non-standardized IT environment to save costs and help staff and students work more efficiently. MUSD standardized its infrastructure on productivity and IT management technologies found within the Microsoft® School Agreement that saved more than U.S.$1 million dollars in licensing fees. Despite budgetary limitations, MUSD is now able to provide unified communications, a district-wide collaborative infrastructure, and an optimized desktop environment where staff can share ideas and students have better access to educational applications. With centralized IT management tools and Microsoft hosted services, MUSD saves more than $100,000 in telephone and IT administrative costs.

 

Situation

Manteca Unified School District (MUSD) covers several cities in central California, including Lathrop, French Camp, Manteca, and Weston Ranch. The district serves 30 school sites and the needs of more than 25,000 students who attend classes ranging from kindergarten to grade 12.

Like many school districts, Manteca faces the dual challenge of delivering high-quality education services and complying with state budget cuts. From the district’s new office building in Manteca, the IT department oversees a distributed IT infrastructure that includes 4,000 PCs, 1,000 mobile computers, and approximately 500 thin clients. The district has 200 servers based on the Windows® operating system: 70 physical servers and 15 virtual servers housed at the company’s new data center at the district headquarters and 115 servers in locations around the district.

Nonstandardized IT Environment

While MUSD has an IT infrastructure that is primarily based on Microsoft® technologies, the district did not have a standard desktop operating environment. The IT department wasted time and money supporting a variety of older operating systems and various versions of Microsoft Office suites installed at sites around the district. In addition, individual schools applied for software license upgrades at different times, which proved to be an expensive and complicated way to manage licensing costs.

“In the student computer labs, we had issues with different versions of Java applications that didn’t interact well with our curriculum-based software called Classworks,” says Colby Clark, Systems Administrator Supervisor at Manteca Unified School District. The district wanted to keep older versions of student software and learning applications, but did not know how the existing software would interoperate with a planned migration to an updated operating system.

Aging Messaging Solution

When Colby Clark joined MUSD in October 2007, the district had outgrown the limits of its existing Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 e-mail messaging and collaboration software. “The performance of our Exchange 2003 servers was not meeting the expectations of the end users,” he explains. “We wanted to boost our messaging solution to provide better communications among staff members.” 

Our Microsoft School Agreement opened the doors to a suite of business productivity technologies and IT management tools to optimize staff efficiency and maximize the value of our investments. Colby Clark Systems Administrator Supervisor, Manteca Unified School District

Also, MUSD faced an ongoing problem with unsolicited e-mail messages that filled up employees’ inboxes and incurred a drain on IT resources. The IT department used a McAfee solution for blocking unsolicited e-mail messages, but it did not catch everything. “I devoted at least an hour a day to solving spam-related issues and talking with support, but we still had an unacceptable amount of spam,” says Clark. “Also, the solution didn’t allow us to create Blocked Senders or Safe Recipients lists.” 

Meanwhile, many MUSD employees’ personal storage folders (PST) files had reached more than 1 gigabyte. These were housed on Exchange Server–based file servers and the district faced a growing problem managing them. Sometimes, after being assigned a new computer, staff members encountered issues accessing their PST files. Given this scenario, MUSD moved forward with a district-wide e-discovery solution that would make it easier to comply with California public records laws.

During this time, MUSD was also in the midst of a district-wide voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) implementation project.  The district wanted a unified communications solution for all VoIP users, however, this would have required MUSD to purchase Cisco Unity Unified Messaging licenses. 

Reduced Staff Productivity

MUSD staff required better mobile access to data, documents, and e-mail messages. Employees who worked in more than one school, or travelled frequently from the administrative center to outlying sites, had no way to access their data while on the road. School principals, vice-principals, and administrators wanted to work from home, but it was difficult for the IT department to provide this service.

“We used an older Cisco virtual private network [VPN] product,” says Clark. “The VPN appliance required a software client that had to be installed at the staff member’s house. Installing and configuring the VPN software, plus updating our directory service, would take more than two hours, on average. This did not account for any revisits should a user experience further issues.”

If staff members wanted to share information and collaborate on planning or budgets, they had no efficient method to exchange documents or keep track of versions. Instead, they used file folders on the network, made numerous telephone calls, and attached documents to e-mail messages. These workarounds didn’t contribute to overall staff and faculty productivity.

Manual IT Processes

The IT department at MUSD had its own productivity challenges. IT staff members lacked a centralized tool set to manage the distributed infrastructure. Consequently, they wasted many hours driving to school sites to perform routine IT tasks. “Before my arrival at MUSD, technicians had to install applications using compact disks, external hard drives, USB flash drives, or shared network resources,” explains Clark. “MUSD was unable to use Group Policy to install applications due to issues with Domain Name System and Active Directory® Domain Services replication issues. As a result, many individuals in the district got elevated security rights so they could assist with the software installations. This contributed to unnecessary help-desk calls and security risks.”

On the server side, Clark and his team had to manually re-image the 20 servers they used to host Terminal Services when they showed signs of poor performance. 

MUSD wanted an integrated productivity infrastructure that would interoperate with its existing environment, cost less to administer, and help employees deliver a high standard of educational excellence. MUSD started looking for an integrated suite of technologies that would improve district-wide communications, deliver better tools for collaboration, and enable anywhere, anytime access to information. “We are under tight budget constraints and needed a solution that would enable IT to deliver better services to the districts’ employees at a lower cost,” says Clark.

Solution

The Manteca Unified School District chose to standardize its IT infrastructure on Microsoft technologies to deliver better productivity tools and technologies for its staff. Working with its Microsoft account team, MUSD evaluated different ways of acquiring the core technologies that it required to achieve its goals. In January 2006, the district signed a Microsoft School Agreement that included the Enterprise Client Access License Suite and Software Assurance that offers a comprehensive software maintenance program and employee training resources.

“The School Agreement was an affordable package, with built-in maintenance and product upgrades that saved us approximately $255.00 per desktop,” explains Clark. “At 5,000 desktops, this adds up to more than $1 million dollars in licensing fees. Using one, streamlined licensing agreement for the entire district also helps with license management and budgeting. The School Agreement was the first important step in standardizing our IT environment.” The district immediately deployed the Windows XP operating system and Microsoft Office 2003 on all desktops.

Figure 1. Manteca Unified School District chose a Microsoft-based unified messaging and VoIP solution.

Because the School Agreement included an upgrade to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, MUSD could now move forward with plans to deliver a unified messaging solution and install a district-wide voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system. Using the School Agreement Client Access License suite, Clark provided MUSD with a much more cost-effective unified communications solution and retired its Cisco Unity solution (see Figure 1).

With Exchange Server 2007, voice mail and fax messages are centralized and stored on the district’s e-mail servers, where they can be stored, backed up, and managed alongside other messaging and collaboration data. Since implementing Exchange Server 2007, MUSD has converted most of its Cisco Unity users to Exchange unified messaging.

In 2007, Clark and his team worked with a consultant from Microsoft Services to design the infrastructure for Exchange Server 2007. Then MUSD carried out the migration to the new messaging platform. Clark and his team deployed Exchange Server 2007 on five servers running the Windows Server® 2008 operating system. To enable the unified messaging functionality within Exchange Server 2007, IT staff deployed the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client to all employees’ computers. MUSD staff can use Office Outlook 2007 to sort, search, prioritize, and add notes to their voice mail messages.

“So far, we have implemented the unified messaging portion and deployed VoIP phones to the new district office and select schools, including our recently completed Lathrop High School,” says Clark. “The rest of the schools are on a hybrid VoIP arrangement where we use the wireless links between sites to transmit the phone calls instead of the telephone lines. While the VoIP solution is our current priority, we have also implemented Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to enable instant messaging and presence awareness. We expect that service to grow in popularity.”

The district also took advantage of Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering, a hosted service that provides defense against e-mail–borne malicious software and gives Clark and his team an effective way to enforce district policies on e-mail use. “It only took a quick configuration change to our domain name system and firewall to get started, and we can implement our own safe senders list,” says Clark.

Upon recommendation from Microsoft, MUSD partnered with Mimosa Systems to deploy its e-mail archiving solution, thus extending the out-of-the-box capabilities of Exchange Server 2007 to standardize its e-mail retention policies and address its PST file storage problem.  

Next, MUSD used two new Terminal Services features in Windows Server 2008 to replace the Cisco VPN product and better support the district’s terminal services environment. Clark and his team implemented Terminal Services Gateway (TS Gateway) and Terminal Services Web Access (TS Web Access). Using TS Gateway, authorized district administrators can use an encrypted connection over the Internet to access their office computers from home. IT staff do not need to configure a VPN connection. TS Web Access is a service in the Terminal Services role that IT staff can use to make school applications that run on any terminal server desktop available to staff and students from a Web browser. 

To better manage the new Microsoft infrastructure, Clark recently deployed Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. “We have inventoried the District’s servers, personal computers, and desktop software,” he says.  The team plans to use System Center Configuration Manager to deploy the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the Windows Vista® operating system. “We deployed the Microsoft Office 2007 conversion tools to all district computers,” says Clark. “Staff can use these tools to open Office 2007 documents in Office 2003. This will ease the district’s transition to Office 2007 later this school year.”

Another method Clark will be using to ease the transition to the 2007 Office system, is to use the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance, which includes Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (App-V) to virtualize Office 2003 and reinstall it on everyone’s computers to have available in the background. “We also plan to virtualize some of our older student applications to avoid complications when we deploy Windows Vista,” adds Clark.

In 2009, MUSD will deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 so that staff and teachers can share information using a district-wide collaboration infrastructure with real-time interactivity and social networking features, such as blogging and wikis.

Benefits

“In the last 17 months, we’ve made huge steps in standardizing and optimizing our IT infrastructure,” says Clark. “Our Microsoft School Agreement opened the doors to a suite of business productivity technologies and IT management tools to optimize staff efficiency and maximize the value of our investments.”

With a business productivity infrastructure solution from Microsoft, Manteca Unified School District is saving money and strengthening the IT department’s control over the new infrastructure. At the same time, IT can now deliver tools and technologies that fuel user adoption, empowering MUSD staff to provide better education services and its students to work more efficiently.

Saving Money

MUSD built a standardized Microsoft infrastructure and deployed the latest productivity technologies for its staff while saving money. Using the VoIP solution, the district saved the cost of including copper and telephone wires in the new administrative building and Lathrop High School. And once the VoIP solution is rolled out to the entire district, MUSD will save more than U.S.$70,000 in phone line expenses.
“We already had the upgrade rights to Exchange Server 2007 thanks to our School Agreement,” say Clark. “So we were able to upgrade to the latest messaging solution at no extra cost. This saved us from having to spend $42,500 to renew our Cisco Unity licenses and the $7,000 annual support costs we’ve been paying for that solution.”

By using Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services to replace the existing solution for blocking unsolicited e-mail, MUSD saves annual licensing costs of $10,000. “The new solution is working so well that we have had zero support issues,” adds Clark.

Strengthening Control over IT Infrastructure

Today, MUSD IT staff members have much better control over the new business productivity infrastructure, so they can provide the service that the district requires to perform at optimal efficiency.

Using App-V to virtualize older educational applications means that students still have access to the software programs preferred by the district, even after MUSD upgrades to Windows Vista. Now that the district has a standardized desktop environment, it is much easier to manage the district’s computers from one location. Clark and his team can implement Group Policy settings and set up mandatory roaming profiles for some of the campuses, so students will be able to access the same programs and features from any desktop in the school.

“Now that we have strict standards, it’s much easier to support, deploy, and purchase third-party applications because we know what every computer will be running,” says Clark. “Support will be a breeze because everyone is running the same applications and we only have to train our technicians on specific software applications.”

With System Center Configuration Manager 2007, MUSD IT staff can manage the desktop without driving to individual sites to deploy applications to school labs or administrators’ computers. “We are going to simplify the complex task of distributing applications and updates to desktops, laptops, and servers throughout the district,” says Clark “We’ll use Configuration Manager to re-image our terminal servers once a month. We will also take advantage of tools designed to simplify our upgrade to Windows Vista, such as the User State Migration Tool. And because Configuration Manager interoperates with App-V, we can use it to manage our virtual applications as well.”

MUSD benefitted from the Microsoft partner ecosystem through its partnership with Mimosa. Now the IT department has the time to develop a stringent e-mail retention policy that ensures the district is in compliance with state e-discovery requirements. Today, staff members can access their archived e-mail messages reliably over the Web.

Fueling User Adoption

Microsoft technologies are easy to use and easy to integrate into peoples’ everyday work environment, ensuring a rapid uptake and a quick return on investment. Virtualization delivers preferred applications to students on demand; Terminal Services ensures that administrators can work productively from home; and unified communications enables quick access to e-mail messages, instant messaging, and VoIP calls from the familiar interface of Office Outlook 2007—in the office, at home, or on the road.

Microsoft business productivity technologies are popular because they offer plenty of choice to accommodate users’ work styles and preferences. Colby Clark Systems Administrator Supervisor, Manteca Unified School District

“Microsoft business productivity technologies are popular because they offer plenty of choice to accommodate users’ work styles and preferences,” says Clark. “And with Software Assurance, we are taking advantage of the Home Use Program and e-training to help staff members quickly get up to speed on new applications. The Home Use program is a big hit. Staff members can get a copy of Microsoft Office for just the cost of shipping and take it home to try. We expect this will reduce training requirements.”

Empowering Staff and Student Productivity

With Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, MUSD employees are no longer wasting time emptying their inboxes of unsolicited e-mail messages. “We are blocking at least 20 percent more spam than with the previous solution and 10 percent more viruses,” confirms Clark. “In the last two months, the service blocked more than one million messages. For me, the big bonus is that I no longer have to contact support on daily spam-related issues. I have at least five hours a week back for more productive work.”

With centralized and automated infrastructure management tools, Clark and the 20 other members of the IT department are saving an estimated 30 percent of their time by not having to visit school sites and administrators’ houses to deploy software. Faculty and staff are more productive, working at home with security-enhanced access to the data in their office computers. And students enjoy better application performance on thin clients in the student labs. “Windows Server 2008 is so reliable that we haven’t had one issue since we installed it last October [2008],” says Clark. “I recommend Windows Server 2008 to my colleagues every chance I get.”

And when MUSD deploys Office SharePoint Server 2007 in 2009, district administrative staff and teachers will have a common infrastructure to share information and collaborate. “The superintendent is excited about the collaborative possibilities of SharePoint,” confirms Clark. “He has a vision to use social networking technologies to collaborate on district issues and create online forums to share ideas on education innovation. With business productivity technologies from Microsoft, the IT department can turn his vision into reality.”

Microsoft Infrastructure Optimization

With infrastructure optimization, you can build a secure, well-managed, and dynamic core IT infrastructure that can reduce overall IT costs, make better use of resources, and become a strategic asset for the business. The Infrastructure Optimization model—with basic, standardized, rationalized, and dynamic levels—was developed by Microsoft using industry best practices and Microsoft’s own experiences with enterprise customers. The Infrastructure Optimization model provides a maturity framework that is flexible and easily used as a benchmark for technical capability and business value.

For more information about Microsoft infrastructure optimization, go to:
www.microsoft.com/io
 

For More Information

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www.microsoft.com

For more information about Manteca Unified School District products and services, call (209) 825-3200 or visit the Web site at:
www.mantecausd.net