Microsoft conducted a case study for the Office 365 with Georgia State University as the guinea pig. A result, the university saved $1 million.

In 2010, Georgia State University decided to not update its Novell GroupWise software once it reached the end of its supported life cycle. The university concluded an update on the GroupWise product would be expensive and not provide an improved and sufficient functionality. It was decided to opt out of GroupWise.

With a faculty and staff of 6,500 people, Georgia State University wanted to expand mailbox storage capacity while reduce IT infrastructure costs of email-related services.

"We had been looking for a way to migrate away from GroupWise," said Georgia State University's Associate Provost and Chief Information Officer J.L. Albert. "We didn't perceive GroupWise as a product born of extensive research and development, and we wanted to move to something more advanced."

The university decided to utilize Microsoft's properties for its 32,000 students. It has previously used the Microsoft Live@edu since 2009 and found the cloud-based approach as effective in communication and cost-effective. The school then decided to take advantage of a cloud-based service.

By late 2010, Georgia State University evaluated online solutions such as Google Apps for Business and Google Mail, but it wasn't perfect.

"There were several problems with Google Mail," Albert noted. "In addition to functionality limitations, Google Mail had legal issues that could not enable us to restrict and store data within the United States, as policy requires us to. We also wanted support for retention and e-discovery policies that enterprise-class solutions often offer but that Google wasn't even willing to talk to us about."

Georgia State University chose Microsoft Office 365, which offered Microsoft Office applications along with Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online into one connected and online solution. The introduction of Office 365 provided no extra infrastructure costs.

In early 2011, planning and testing with a beta version of Office 365 was underway. Data migration of the university's 6,500 account, which accounted for 1.5 terabytes, was completed by June 2011. Office 365's official start with the university commenced during the July 4 weekend.

"The project went very smoothly. I mean, we completed the final push in just one weekend," said Georgia State University's Director of Technology Engineering Keith Campbell. "I think this went about as effortlessly as any large email migration can go."

"Using Office 365, we're looking at least a 50 percent reduction in the annual cost of operation, compared with our previous on-premises GroupWise solution, without any hardware depreciation," said Georgia State University's Associate Provost and Chief Information Officer J.L. Albert.

"When we look at our total cost of ownership of GroupWise versus Office 365, we estimate we will easily save about $1 million in the first five years," said Director of Technology Engineering Keith Campbell.

The move to Office 365 did, however, result in the equivalent of 2.5 full-time employees to move onto other duties and projects.

The Microsoft case study was published in 2012 with the partnership of B2B Technology.

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