Case Study: Drenthe College optimizes campus space, boosts collaboration, and saves €150,000 with Microsoft Azure

Dutch college enhances student and faculty collaboration with Smart Campus solutions

Drenthe College, a multi‑campus vocational school in the Netherlands serving about 11,000 students and 1,000 staff, faced chronic room‑booking problems: a rigid, manual scheduling system left classrooms underused, schedulers overwhelmed, and the school considering costly expansion in a space‑constrained market. The core challenge was lack of real‑time information to optimize existing space and support on‑the‑fly student and faculty collaboration.

Working with partner Winvision, the college deployed Bluetooth room sensors, connected them to Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and Azure Machine Learning, and built a Smart Campus mobile website plus an Office 365 single‑sign‑on portal. The solution—developed by a small team in six months—raised observed room occupancy from about 40–50% to 60–80%, cut infrastructure and maintenance costs by roughly €150,000 in a year, and improved collaboration and satisfaction for students, faculty, and staff.

Drenthe College

Jacco Heikoop

ICT Manager