“With Microsoft, it costs just $30,000 to get communi-cations into a school, a savings of 92 percent over the way we used to do it. That’s the whole cost.”

Richard Charlesworth, Chief Information Officer, YES Prep Public SchoolsYES Prep Public Schools in Houston, Texas, was a great success story in the education of inner-city youth—and then Hurricane Ike leveled the district’s schools and offices in a day. To rebuild the phone system, the district relied on Microsoft Unified Communications. It was the fastest, cheapest way to restore voice capabilities, and add presence and video conferencing. Costs plunged 92 percent and curriculum quality is enhanced.

Business NeedsWhen Hurricane Ike swept across the Gulf of Mexico and into Texas in September 2008, it left in its wake 117 dead and U.S.$27 billion in damage. In this context, the damage to the YES Prep Public Schools in Houston might not seem like much—but to the 3,500 students of the schools and their parents, the damage was significant enough. YES Prep had been founded as a charter school in 1998, to increase the number of low-income students who graduate from four-year colleges. Over 10 years, it had grown to a seven-school district serving grades 6 through 12, with a decade-long record of sending every one of its graduates to a four-year college.Now, in a day, the district’s buildings had been destroyed. Administrators and faculty were determined to rebuild—and to do so quickly. For Richard Charlesworth, Chief Information Officer at YES Prep, one of the key challenges lay in rebuilding the district’s telephone network. Charlesworth estimated that outfitting the facilities with Cisco hardware and software would take $400,000 and several weeks that the district didn’t have. The IT staff would

have to be trained in deploying and managing the new system, and faculty and administrators would have to be trained in its use.

There had to be another, faster, cheaper way.SolutionInstead of enduring a weeks-long delay for PBX and other telephone hardware to be ordered, shipped, received, deployed, instal-led, and configured, YES Prep considered a software-only approach that would run on the district’s existing computer network and could be downloaded immediately to the district and pushed out to PCs.

Charlesworth and his colleagues quickly tested two software-only solutions, one each from Cisco and Microsoft. The winner: Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. “The Cisco UI [user interface] wasn’t mature, and that had a big impact on our decision,” says Charlesworth. “Office Communications Server was familiar, based on the same Windows software we’d been using for 10 years. The teachers got it immediately.”

Customer: YES Prep Public SchoolsWebsite: www.yesprep.org Customer Size: 360 employeesCountry or Region: United StatesIndustry: EducationPartner: Hitachi Consulting

Customer ProfileYES Prep Public Schools of Houston, Texas, is a highly successful public district that serves 3,500 students across seven campuses and sends all of its graduates to four-year colleges and universities.

Software and Services Microsoft Office

− Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus

− Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007

− Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2

− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007

− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Exchange Server

2010

Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

What Hurricane Ike Destroyed, YES Prep Restored with Unified Communications

YES Prep deployed Office Communications Server in three weeks. In addition to telephony, the district gained other Microsoft Unified Communications services including presence; instant messaging; audio, video, and web conferencing; and a unified message inbox, including voice mail.

Teachers and administrators access the solution through Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 software on their desktop or portable PCs. The PCs have built-in speakers and microphones, making them fully equipped to handle software-based phone calls; the district also buys headsets, at $7.39 per unit, to make the solution even easier to use. It purchased a few Polycom CX200 software-capable handsets, at $139 per unit, to provide phone service independent of PCs.

The district now is working with Hitachi Consulting, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, to upgrade its deployment to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. The two have just completed a project to upgrade the district’s infrastructure with Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

BenefitsBy choosing Office Communications Server, YES Prep restored communications faster and less expensively than it could have done otherwise, continues to save as it opens new schools, and has revamped core processes, such as curriculum development.

Saves 92 Percent on DeploymentYES Prep wanted to avoid the cost inherent in the deployment of a Cisco hardware solution. With Office Communications Server 2007, the district restored its phone service at just 20 percent of the cost of replacing three PBX systems. The district’s savings are magnified by a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement plan, whose Client Access Licenses and Software Assurance reduce the cost of software and eliminate the cost of upgrades

over the life of the agreement. The district’s savings will continue to grow, as YES Prep plans to open one or two campuses—the equivalent of two to four schools—every year for the next few years. Because Office Communications Server is covered by the federal ERATE program, YES Prep receives ERATE grants covering 90 percent of its growing deployment.

“With Microsoft, it costs just $30,000 to get communications into a school, a savings of 92 percent over the way we used to do it,” says Charlesworth. “That’s the whole cost—and 90 percent of that is covered by ERATE. It’s unheard of—astonishing!”

Speeds Installation 200 to 300 PercentThe district also met its deadline with Office Communications Server; Charlesworth estimates it would have taken two to three times as long with Cisco. “We were able to rebuild the voice network for the district before we even rebuilt the buildings,” he says. “We were able to deliver unified communications to all of our teachers and staff even though they were teaching in trailers, gymnasiums, and hastily rented off-site warehouses—Microsoft Unified Communications followed them wherever they were.”

As a result, YES Prep opened its schools a week earlier than any other school district in the Hurricane Ike zone. “Our ability to do this had a very real impact on the lives of our students,” says Charlesworth.

Supports Curriculum QualityCurriculum development has moved from dedicated personnel in the central office to a virtual team of full-time teachers from across the district, who use unified communications plus team collaboration spaces based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Without the technology tools, the full-time teachers would seldom if ever have the time to meet at a central location for this purpose.

“Our teachers hold virtual meetings and independently complete work that they share with others,” says Charlesworth. “They test curriculum in their classrooms and bring the results back to the virtual team. Because they’re full-time teachers, they’re closest to our students and in the best position to understand what they need. The teachers have produced curriculum of astonishing quality, and they couldn’t have done it without unified communications.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published August 2010