Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Adopt Office 365 for Education from the Aspects of UI Familiarity and Security

OverviewCustomer: Inzai City Education CenterWeb site: http://inzai.ed.jp/center/Customer Size: 400 employeesCountry or Region: JapanIndustry: EducationPartner: INFOSHARE, INFOSIGN

Customer ProfileThe Inzai City Education Center is located in Inzai City of Chiba Prefecture, which pushes forward to support activity to a school developing education correspondence to the new era as a base for education enhancement of Inzai city.

Business SituationThere were several problems such as cost reduction, access from outside of schools, and actions against disasters.

SolutionDevelop web sites and templates suitable for learning, and improve work efficiency through online access

Benefits Increased work productivity of teachers Development of functional

relationships Improved work efficiency with use of

access from outside of schools More active use of ICT in daily school

lives Reduction of operation cost and

actions against disaster

One of the benefits is that the work productivity of teachers is increased. Communication and information sharing are further facilitated as a whole. It results in improvement of the quality of education for children.”

Hiroyuki Matsumoto, Vice-president of Inzai City Uchino Elementary School (previous Counseling Director of Inzai City Education Center)

Recognizing the importance of making use of ICT for education, Inzai City of Chiba Prefecture is taking various approaches on that. To support these approaches, Inzai City Education Center started using Microsoft Office 365 for Education in April, 2012, with prospect of gradual migration to a cloud system. Lync Online is used for principles, vice-principles, nursing teachers, and school staffs to develop their respective functional relationships. SharePoint Online is used by both teachers and children. Using these services, teachers are improving their work productivity. Children become accustomed to make use of ICT in their daily lives by sharing information via blogs for which they prepare photos and articles by themselves. In addition, with advantages of cloud services, cost reduction was achieved and countermeasures against disaster and access from home are now available.

SituationInzai City is located in the north west of Chiba Prefecture. The city incorporated Inbamura and Motomura in March, 2010, and now has a population of around 90,000. About 60% of the citizens lives in the Chiba New Town area, where is on a hill of the west part of the city. The city has Inzai City Education Center for supporting educational activities of elementary and junior high schools. Recognizing the importance of making use of ICT for education, the city is taking various approaches in the four areas: lessons, preparation of educational materials, school business, and communication with guardians and the community. At the end of the fiscal 2009, a center server for school business system was adopted into Inzai City Education Center. Teachers started using it online for their works. After about two years of the adoption, teachers became accustomed to use the system. However, at the same time, some problems come up with obvious. First, that on-premise system required more time for maintenance and operation than ever, therefore might increase the cost. Also, although the center server wasn't damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake in March, 2011, it was recognized that actions should be taken against big earthquakes which may occur in the future. In addition, teachers often prepared educational materials outside of school hours, but their access was limited to from inside of schools. So, they had to take such an inconvenient situation. Hiroyuki Matsumoto, Vice-principal of Inzai City Uchino Elementary School, says, "In the process of selection of the school business system, we noticed that the cloud technology might provide benefits which we expected. However, there were not so many case studies for schools at that time. Anyway, we decided to make gradual transition to the

cloud system, starting from works, such as creation of educational materials and guidance plans, which do not require handling personal information of children. With such a prospect, we selected the center-server-based school system." After hearing that Microsoft would release Office 365 for Education targeted on educational institutions, the city decided to adopt it. There were two reasons why Office 365 for Education was selected. One reason was that Inzai City had used the predecessor of Office 365, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS), at school and appreciates Microsoft's technical support. The other reason was that it was expected that teachers would be able to use Office 365 smoothly because they are familiar with BPOS and other Office products. Together with Office 365 for Education, Exchange Online, Lync Online, and SharePoint Online were introduced. Mr. Matsumoto says, "It is far easier for us to use Exchange Online than operating and managing an own mail system. Also, we appreciated that teachers would freely access to the system even from outside of schools if only they can have Internet connections, while ensuring security."

Inzai City had implemented Office Communicator, the predecessor of Lync Online, on trial basis for school staffs in 2011, and the result was highly successful. At that time, since there was only a single school staff per school, he/she didn't have any person to consult for questions about works. Using Office Communicator, school staffs became able to check the presence of another staff of a different school and easily ask questions by exchanging messages. There were favorable feedbacks from school staffs, expressing that it was helpful to improve their work efficiencies. Based on this successful

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“In the process of selection of the school business system, we noticed that the cloud technology might provide benefits which we expected.”

Hiroyuki Matsumoto, Vice-president of Inzai City Uchino Elementary School

(previous counseling Director of Inzai City Education Center)

result, Inzai City Education Center decided to implement Lync Online so that principals, vice-principals, nursing teachers, and school staffs could develop their respective functional relationships. Also, SharePoint Online will be available for both teachers and children. Matsumoto says, "As for teachers, we planned to enable them to place references and educational material as well as weekly curriculum guidance plans on SharePoint Online sites; they can access these documents as necessary for preparation of lessons. Also, as for children, we hoped that they could get accustomed to make use of ICT in their daily lives. There are children who cannot learn how to use computers unless they go to computer schools. Children have limited chances to use computers in space and time. To eliminate such restrictions, computers were placed in every classroom. Using these computers, children can share information and learn how to access SharePoint sites from home to do supplemental study by their own."

SolutionOffice 365 for Education was successfully implemented. Then, in April, 2012, usage of Exchange began for all teachers and school staffs, Lync Online for principals, vice-principals, nursing teachers and school staffs, and SharePoint Online for all teachers as well as four elementary schools which were selected as targets on the trial operation. The focus during the process of the implementation was to develop SharePoint Online Web sites and templates which would be available for children. Based on the concept of providing environment where children can get accustomed to make use of ICT in their daily lives, it was aimed to enable them to easily collect and publish information. For example, it may be possible that students

take photos of and/or write reports on their school lives and events to publish on SharePoint sites, then receive feedbacks from family members and the community. Interaction will be encouraged among children, family members, and the community. Matsumoto says, "Some schools have blog spaces for students on Web sites so that students post articles about their daily lives. But we plan a different way - children do everything by themselves, to include planning and operation of blog sites. To prepare article to be posted onto sites, children need various types of information. They can use SharePoint Online to store and share drafts and photos. By doing so, they can access these data even from home to edit blog articles while having a talk with their family members." Under this idea, INFOSHARE took charge of designing the whole of the SharePoint Online system and Web sites for teachers and children. Masaki Nishioka, President of INFOSHARE says, "It was an entirely new challenge to use SharePoint Online for education. Therefore, we thought it would be better to gradually increase available functions as users were getting familiar with the system. Also, we made efforts to provide intuitive operation on the sites so that children can easily find their desired files." Also, INFOSIGN developed templates for respective sites. Noriko Hayashi, a Web Marketing Group Designer of INFOSIGN says, "With the concept that teachers and children can use them feeling relaxed, we designed templates which are based on a wood-grain pattern and display grades and class names in a font looking similar to a brand mark. As an operation flow similar to Office software programs was applied, users can smoothly use

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“We thought SharePoint Online would be better to gradually increase available functions as users were getting familiar with the system.”

Masaki Nishioka, President of INFOSHARE

these templates, making use of their experiences." With the cloud technology, development and correction of the templates could be easily done online and therefore time to introduction was reduced. Tomotaka Nagata, a member of CMS Group of INFORSIGN says, "In the case of the previous on-premise system, engineers had to go to the education center to do maintenance works on site even if it was a minor modification. However, using Office 365 for Education, which is a cloud service, we could do these works online. Changes and modifications were made more quickly than ever. It was of great help."

BenefitsIn April, 2012, operation of Office 365 for Education was started at Inzai City Education Center. As restrictions, which existed before the adoption of the new system, were eliminated, now, teachers can do their works at home and the functional relationship among teachers is being grown. When the Great East Japan Earthquake happened, the telephone system was down and principles couldn’t get in touch with those of other schools and the board of education. They had to make a decision by themselves about whether to have students stayed at school or returned to their homes. Now Lync Online became available, they can communicate with other schools through instant messages even when the telephone system doesn’t work. The SharePoint Online site for teachers is used to post and store guidance plans, which consist of educational material and learning programs. Teachers often form guidance plans at home. However, in the past, it was trouble that they couldn’t access to data on groupware from outside of schools. Migration

to SharePoint Online enabled them to work with data stored in the groupware from at home. The SharePoint Online site for children is used for them to publish and share information by uploading reports on their daily lives and events by themselves. Matsumoto says, “The greatest benefit of the introduction of Office 365 Education is that the work productivity of teachers and staffs is increasing. Communication and information sharing are further facilitated as a whole. It results in improvement of the quality of education for children. We are very glad that we could achieve the results as expected, including countermeasures against disasters and cost reduction, by introducing Office 365 for Education with trust in Microsoft’s advice. In the future, we would like to configure SharePoint Online to use of Microsoft OneNote, “virtual paper” into which text, image, video, and voice data can be captured. Also, we hope to work on collaboration with schedule management functions of Microsoft Outlook.” Starting with the implementation this time, Inzai City Education Center plans to make use of more and more cloud services while organizing information, including that in the school business system, under the direction of the city. With the prospect of enabling guardians to view blog sites of their children, we intend to incorporate cloud services into the next system.

Microsoft Office 365Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud versions of our most trusted communications and collaboration products—Microsoft SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with the latest version of our Office

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For More InformationFor 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 in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. 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 Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

For more information about Inzai City Education Center products and services, call 0476 47 0400 / +81 476 47 0400 or visit the website at : inzai.ed.jp/center/

For more information about INFOSHARE products and services, call 042 319 6123 / +81 42 319 6123 or visit the website at: www.infoshare.co.jp

For more information about INFOSIGN products and services, call 03 5802 7531 / +81 3 5802 7531 or visit the website at: www.infosign.co.jp/

This case study is for informational purposes only.

Product Solution Items•Microsoft Office 365 for Education- Microsoft Exchange Online- Microsoft Lync Online- Microsoft SharePoint Online

PartnersINFOSHAREINFOSIGN

desktop suite and companion web applications for businesses of all sizes.

Office 365 helps save time and money, and it frees up valued resources. Simple to use and easy to administer, it is financially backed by a service level agreement guaranteeing 99 percent reliability. Office 365 features robust security, IT-level phone support, geo-redundancy, disaster recovery, and the business-class privacy controls and standards that you expect from a world-class service provider.

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