Case Study: Universiti Sains Malaysia achieves secure, scalable email, enhanced collaboration and major cost savings with Microsoft Azure

Leading Malaysian University transforms IT environment to become a global university

Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) is a Research University with more than 31,000 students and campuses in Malaysia and India. As it aimed to become a globally ranked institution, USM faced mounting IT challenges: fragmented on‑premises email systems that limited staff to 500 MB mailboxes, constrained collaboration, and rising maintenance costs that strained IT resources.

USM implemented a Microsoft solution—Office 365 with Exchange, OneDrive, Azure, and Active Directory/SSO—initially as a hybrid deployment to unify email and secure access. The move delivered 50 GB mailboxes and 1 TB OneDrive per user, full staff adoption within a year, improved security and cross‑platform collaboration, ~RM400,000 annual savings, and a 95% drop in IT service tickets.

Universiti Sains Malaysia

Zulham Bin Hamdan

Director/Chief Information Officer (CIO)