Western Kentucky University deployed a Microsoft Unified Communications solution including Office Communications Server and Exchange Server to provide students, faculty and staff with instant communication and collaboration capabilities. This allowed the university to improve distance learning programs and ensure students could collaborate from anywhere. Benefits included more instant communication options for students and increased collaboration across campuses.

1. Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
Western Kentucky University Adopts Unified
Communications to Improve Distance
Learning and Collaboration
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Education
Customer Profile
Founded in 1906, Western Kentucky
University strives to engage its
students in acclaimed, technologically
enhanced educational programs. It
serves 21,000 students.
Business Situation
Western Kentucky University wanted to
provide a more integrated,
collaborative environment for faculty,
staff, and students, especially students
who are “place-bound” and rely on
distance learning programs to
complete their university education.
Solution
Western Kentucky University deployed
a Microsoft Unified Communications
solution to provide students with
instant access to communication and
collaboration capabilities.
Benefits
 More instant communication
 Increased collaboration
“Now, when students need a higher level of
communication, they have it at the click of a button.
That is the true power behindMicrosoft Unified
Communications.”
Edwin Craft, Director of Communication Technologies,Western Kentucky University
Founded in 1906, Western Kentucky University (WKU) strives to
engage its students in world-class, technologically enhanced
educational programs. With its main campus located in Bowling
Green, Kentucky, and three regional campuses in surrounding
counties, the university wants to ensure that all of its 21,000
students have access to the programs, professors, and
information they need to complete their degrees. Many of the
school’s students are place-bound—by jobs, extended families,
children, or economic circumstances—so it realized it needed to
break with the traditional model of education and find a way to
bring the classroom to its students. Working with Microsoft Gold
Partner The VIA Group, WKU deployed a Microsoft Unified
Communications solution to help expand its distance learning
programs and to ensure that students and faculty could
collaborate instantly, anytime, anywhere.

2. Situation
Western Kentucky University (WKU) was
founded in 1906 as a state teachers’
college. Excellence in education has
always been a primary concern for the
administration and faculty. WKU provides
students with rigorous academic
programs in education, the liberal arts
and sciences, business, and traditional
and emerging professional programs,
with emphasis at the baccalaureate level,
complemented by relevant associate and
graduate-level programs. In the last
decade, the university has increased its
enrollment 33 percent, from 14,000
students to 21,000 students, making it
the fastest growing university in the
state.
The main WKU campus is located in
Bowling Green, Kentucky, with three
surrounding regional campuses servicing
students in nearby counties. The
university also hosts a number of
international students and sponsors
exchange programs for students and
professors doing research all over the
world. Theschool, whose vision is “A
Leading American University with
International Reach,” recognizes that its
mission continues to evolve in response
to regional, national, and global changes,
as well as the need for lifelong learning.
Many of the university’s students are
place-bound by jobs, elderly parents,
children, or economic circumstances.
WKU recognized that it needed to find a
way to both enhanceeducation for
traditional students on campus, living in
its residence halls or nearby housing, and
to bring the classroom to students who
could not travel easily to campus.
One thing that WKU recognized
immediately was that creating a distance
learning program by itself was not
enough. “It isn’t enough to push out
content,” says Edwin Craft, Director of
Communication Technologies at WKU.
“We needed to develop a method for
students to communicateand
collaborate in real time.” The school
offered some video conferencing
capabilities for distance learning
programs, enabling students to “attend”
class and interact with fellow students
and the professor while class was in
session. For communication outsideof
classes, the school provided email
through CommuniGatePro. It also
supplied chat group support for students
and faculty.
None of these solutions were integrated,
and they did not provide the sort of
instant communication students required
when they needed an immediate answer
to a question about homework or to
discuss an upcoming group presentation
for class. “Our solutions weren’t mobile,
and they weren’t real time,” explains
Craft. “Email was too slow, and with the
chat groups, the students had to be
logged in and at their desks all the time.
The students needed a way to
collaborate when not in a face-to-face
session, but they also need a way to be
mobile and to communicateat
nontraditional hours.”
Craft and his team also needed a way to
support a growing mobile workforce.
With students, faculty, and
administration for the main campus and
regional campuses combined, the
university’s IT team must support
communications forapproximately
42,000 people. “We are here to educate
students, but we are also a business
entity that needs to communicateas a
business as well,” says Craft.
Administrators who traveled as
representatives of the university to raise
funds or interview candidates needed a

3. way to communicatewith the staff at
school. Professors on research
sabbaticals or teaching exchange
programs needed a way to communicate
with students and colleagues in their
department about current projects and
programs.
As part of its continuing commitment to
increase distance learning programs and
increase its international reach, the
university wanted a more integrated
solution for providing real-time
communication. “No matter what the
physical location of the students, we
needed the tools—voice, video, instant
messaging, presence—that were missing
from our current distance learning
programs to enhance the ability for
students’ success,” says Craft.
Solution
In 2009, working with Microsoft Gold
Partner TheVIA Group, WKU decided to
deploy a small proof-of-concept pilot of
Microsoft OfficeCommunications Server
2007 R2 to understand how its presence,
instant messaging, voice, and
conferencing capabilities would work in
the school’s environment. Impressed
with what it found, WKU expanded to a
more aggressive approach, eventually
deciding to deploy the full Microsoft
Unified Communications solution—
including Microsoft Exchange Server
2007 for messaging—to all faculty,
administrative staff, and students across
all campuses.
By September 2010, WKU had deployed
Office Communications Server at its
central data center on the main campus,
and it had enabled capabilities for 33,885
users. To provide voiceover IP (VoIP)
communications, WKUused Direct SIP to
connect its Avaya private-branch
exchange (PBX) telephony system to
Office Communications Server. Direct SIP
uses the session initiation protocol (SIP)
and real-time transport protocol (RTP) to
pass network traffic from Office
Communications Server over an IP
connection to the Avaya PBX.
Because the population of a university is
somewhat fluid—every semester
students graduate or transfer to other
schools, while new students arrive—WKU
relied on The VIA Group to help it find
the right deployment configuration to
help ensure that its networks remained
secure, but accessible. With 21,000
students connecting through personal
computers that are essentially external to
the school’s network, and 3,000 faculty
and staff members connecting through
“internal” computers, it needed to
correctly balance traffic to ensure that
everyone had access. In most cases,
“external” users would connect to Office
Communications Server through the
Edge server, while all “internal” users
connect through the front-end servers.
The VIA Group helped WKU route all
traffic securely through the front-end
server, whileall multiparticipant activities
involving true “external” users, such as
professors from other schools joining for
a chat or a Live Meeting, are routed
through the Edge server. The university
also implemented single sign-on, so that
faculty and students only have to enter
their user IDs and passwords once to
access Office Communications Server
and Exchange Server.
With Office Communications Server,
students, faculty, and staff can view each
other’s presence information and start an
instant messaging session or place a
phone call with the click of a mouse.
They can also use the video or audio
conferencing capabilities to conduct
meetings or discussion groups, and they
“Physical location no
longer matters. Unified
communications offers
students the tools to
collaborate from
anywhere, and that
enhances their ability for
success.”
Edwin Craft, Director of Communication
Technologies,
Western Kentucky University

4. can initiate a desktop sharing session to
complete assignments or share notes. To
access these capabilities, people can use
either the Microsoft Office
Communicator client installed on their
personal computer, or they can use
Microsoft CommunicatorWeb Access—
available through the university portal--
which provides the same functionality as
the Communicatorclient and is
accessible from any browser on a
computer with a network connection.
They can also use the Microsoft
CommunicatorMobile client to view
presence or start an instant messaging
session from their mobile phones.
To enhance its OfficeCommunications
Server deployment, WKU also
automatically provides the VIA Contact
Manager for Microsoft Office
Communications Server as part of the
installation of Office Communicator, or
as part of the service through
CommunicatorWeb Access. Using this
application, WKU students can populate
their contact lists automatically with
other students in their current classes.
This way, they can see other students
who are available to answer a question
about an assignment or project, without
having to search through a student
directory. Students can add their
professors to their contact lists as well, so
they can see when professors are
available outside of office hours to
answer questions or discuss assignments.
The university eventually plans to have
faculty and staff contacts load
automatically through the Contact
Manager as well.
Another capability that WKU has
implemented is federation. Federation
enables the faculty, staff, and students to
communicateand share resources with
other universities and vendors who
provide support for the school. People
can place Communicatorcalls, share a
desktop, start an instant messaging
session, or view presence and calendar
information for any trusted organization
that has also enabled federation.
Currently WKU is also testing Microsoft
Office LiveMeeting in its classroom
environment. In addition to the
interoperability with Office
Communications Server and Exchange
Server, one advantage the university
believes Live Meeting has over its current
solution is its consistent, reliable voice
and video quality.
Going forward, WKU plans to offer
students and faculty additional unified
communications capabilities. When it has
completed the Exchange Server 2007
deployment, users will be able to send
and receive email, view presence
information, and start instant messaging
sessions directly from the Microsoft
Office Outlook messaging and
collaboration client. The university also
plans to implement Exchange Unified
Messaging so that users can receive and
manage both voice mail and email
messages through the Outlook client.
In the future, the university also hopes to
extend Office Communications Server
capabilities to parents, especially for high
school students attending the
university’s Gatton Academy of Math and
Science in Kentucky, where they receive
college credit for courses taken in their
junior and senior years of high school,
and to parents of international students.
Benefits
By deploying a Microsoft Unified
Communications solution, WKU has
provided the tools for its students,
faculty, and staff to communicatewith
“WKU knew it was
absolutelycritical to
develop cross-university
platforms to share
because of budget
restrictions. Office
Communications Server
technologyeffectively
opens the door for
sharingresources and
remote programs to
deliver course content
effectively.”
Babs Summerhill, Regional Account
Manager,
The VIA Group

5. each other instantly. It has bridged the
gap between distance-learning and
traditional students, making them more
of a unit working together toward a
common goal. The university has also
laid the foundation to expand its
distance learning programs and share
resources between campuses and with
other schools, supporting its initiative to
be a leading American university with
international reach.
More Instant Communication
WKU has performed a great deal of
research to understand how to help
students perform at their best, and how
to adapt the university’s tools and
programs to best meet those needs.
With Office Communications Server, the
university can provide the instant
communication that younger
generations have come to expect.
Students’ ability to see presence
information for all of their classmates at
any time of day makes it easier for them
to communicateanytime, using the
method—instant messaging, voice call,
audio conferencing—that makes it
easiest to accomplish their goal. “This
generation on campus now—the
‘millennial generation’—they want to
communicateinstantly, and at
nontraditional hours. They want instant
access to information,” explains Craft.
“Now, when students need a higher level
of communication, they have it at the
click of a button. That is the true power
behind Microsoft Unified
Communications.”
Faculty and staff also benefit from more
instant communication. “Oneof the
university vice presidents was using
Office Communicatoron a plane to
communicatewith his staff at the
university while he was flying. He was
amazed at how easy it was to continue
doing business, even whiletraveling,”
says Craft.
Increased Collaboration
By implementing a unified
communications solution from Microsoft,
WKU has established a more integrated
foundation for distance learning and
collaboration. Students have more
options for the way they communicate
with one another outside of class. They
no longer have to rely on arranging busy
schedules and meeting once or twice
outside of class to complete group
projects or study for an exam.
“With OfficeCommunications Server, we
implemented a framework of
communication tools to bring real-time
collaboration to these classes,” says
Craft. Because students can see who in
their classes is available at any time, they
can work together when they feel most
productive. Students who cannot
physically attend class can more easily
participate and feel that they are part of
the unit because they can, using
conferencing and desktop sharing,
“attend” group sessions and work on
projects as though they were local.
“Physical location no longer matters,”
continues Craft. “Unified
communications offers students the tools
to collaborate from anywhere, and that
enhances their ability for success.”
With Office Communications Server,
faculty and IT staff can more easily
collaborate as well, especially with
people outside of campus. As difficult
economic times continue, schools must
find ways to enhance education that go
beyond the boundaries of campus. “WKU
knew it was absolutely critical to develop
cross-university platforms to share
because of budget restrictions. Office
Communications Server technology

6. effectively opens door for sharing
resources and remote programs to
deliver course content effectively,” says
Babs Summerhill, Regional Account
Manager at The VIA Group.
WKU hopes to serve more students in
the future by expanding its distance
learning programs and continuing to
improve how students and faculty
communicateand collaborate. With a
Unified Communications solution from
Microsoft, it has established a foundation
for continued growth and success.
Microsoft Office System
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Wide Web, go to:
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For more information about The VIA
Group products and services, call (800)
807-8854 or visit the website at:
www.theviagroup.com
For more information about Western
Kentucky University, call (270) 745-
0111 or visit the website at:
www.wku.edu
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2010
Software and Services
 Microsoft Office
− Microsoft OfficeCommunications
Server 2007 R2
 Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2007
Enterprise Edition