Southern Connecticut State University had an aging student email system that offered very limited functionality. The university selected Microsoft Live@edu to give students powerful communication and collaboration tools—with benefits that include richer functionality, increased convenience and collaboration, and mobile support. Its move to Live@edu also helped the university reduce annual costs by U.S.$80,000 and help-desk calls by 50 percent.

Business Needs
Founded in 1893 as a teachers college, Southern Connecticut State University is one of four universities in the Connecticut State University System. The university offers 116 graduate and undergraduate programs, and it is located less than three miles from downtown New Haven.

We couldn’t be more pleased with our adoption of Live@edu—nobody can deny that it was an excellent decision. Wendy Chang Chief Information Officer, Southern Connecticut State University

In 2009, Southern Connecticut State University set out to replace its aging iPlanet-based email system, which provided basic email services for the university’s 12,000 students. “Student email services were minimal at best,” says Wendy Chang, Chief Information Officer at Southern Connecticut State University. “For example, mailbox sizes were limited to only 10 megabytes—not nearly enough for how students use email today.”

Southern Connecticut State University also wanted to offer improved functionality. “Email was strictly plain-text, without any support for calendaring or collaboration,” says Chang. “And we were receiving complaints on a daily basis about our third-party spam filter. Most importantly, there was no support for mobility. With so many students bringing laptops and smartphones to campus, comprehensive mobile support is a necessity.”

Solution
Southern Connecticut State University deployed Microsoft Live@edu—branded as Owls Mail, after the university’s mascot—which provides email accounts and applications that students, faculty, and alumni can use to communicate and collaborate online. With Live@edu, students now access their email using Microsoft Outlook Live, which provides similar capabilities to what students will encounter when they enter the workforce—including integrated contact management, calendaring, and a 10-gigabyte (GB) inbox.

In addition, each student now has 25 GB of online, password-protected storage. This is provided through Windows Live SkyDrive storage technology, another element of Live@edu, including support for shared folders to enable student collaboration. Windows Live SkyDrive also includes Microsoft Office Web Apps—which students can use to create and edit Microsoft Office files online—and Windows Live Messenger, which students can use to communicate with each other in real time.

Deployment began in March 2010, following the university’s transition of faculty email from iPlanet to an on-premises instance of Microsoft Exchange Server email messaging and collaboration software. By October 2010, all students were using Live@edu. “Migration of students from iPlanet to Live@edu was simple and painless,” says Chang, who notes that the university is also taking advantage of Live@edu to offer lifetime email addresses to alumni.

Benefits
The move to Live@edu at Southern Connecticut State University has been a win-win situation for all parties involved—including both users of the service and the school’s IT staff. Benefits include:

• Richer functionality. Students now have access to advanced email features, such as text formatting, calendars, and contact management. Other advantages include drag-and-drop message organization; conversation views; integration with the school’s main directory for easy access to other students, faculty, and staff; and elimination of frustrations and complaints caused by the school’s third-party spam filter.

• Increased convenience. With 10 GB of email storage, students no longer need to constantly clean out their inboxes so that email from faculty or others won’t be rejected. Similarly, the online storage provided by Windows Live SkyDrive has reduced the need to carry around portable USB drives. With Office Web Apps, students now can create and edit Microsoft Office documents on the web—even when working from a computer that does not have Microsoft Office installed.

• Improved collaboration. By using Windows Live SkyDrive, students can more easily share files and collaborate. With Windows Live Messenger, students can collaborate and enjoy access to powerful features such as group chat, shared photo viewing, and shared folders for documents that are too large to include as email attachments. “This is the first time we’ve been able to offer collaboration tools for students outside of those provided for the classroom,” says Chang.

• Mobile support. Students can access many of the capabilities provided by Live@edu on their mobile phones—including email, calendars, and contacts. “One of the biggest benefits of Live@edu is its rich mobile support,” says Chang. “Students can even back up their calendars and contacts online, and can clear their devices remotely if they’re lost.”

• Lower costs. By eliminating the need for a third-party spam filter, the university will save an estimated U.S.$80,000 a year. “Our iPlanet email system was part of our enterprise resource planning software bundle, so we won’t see any hard cost savings from its retirement,” says Chang. “The real financial advantage of Live@edu is in being able to offer students so much more than before, without incurring any major IT effort or additional costs.”

• Reduced IT effort. Student use of the self-service account management features provided with Live@edu has reduced help-desk calls by 50 percent. “There’s more Help content available online for Live@edu than we could ever have created on our own,” says Nicholas Valsamis, Help Desk Manager at Southern Connecticut State University.

“With Live@edu, we’re able to offer vastly improved services while reducing our costs and IT workload—including many new capabilities that we never could have offered on our own. We couldn’t be more pleased with our adoption of Live@edu—nobody can deny that it was an excellent decision,” concludes Chang.

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