Case Study: Western Washington University achieves seamless cloud collaboration with Microsoft Office 365

University uses a hybrid strategy to roll out cloud services to staff and students

Western Washington University, a public institution serving 15,000 students, wanted to migrate its on-premises Microsoft SharePoint Server environment to the cloud using Microsoft Office 365. The challenge was to accomplish this migration without disrupting the productivity of its diverse community of faculty, staff, and students, all while ensuring the protection of the university's intellectual property.

Microsoft implemented a hybrid SharePoint solution that connected the existing on-premises environment with the new SharePoint Online service. This allowed users to seamlessly search both systems as one. The results included uninterrupted collaboration, enhanced security compliance with standards like FERPA and HIPAA, and more flexible tools for staff and students. The Microsoft solution also simplified IT support and reduced costs by moving the university out of a constant upgrade cycle.

Western Washington University

Jon Junell

Assistant Director, Communications and Technology