Case Study: Northern Illinois University achieves modernized campus communications and multimillion‑dollar savings with Office 365

Northern Illinois University offers a lesson in campus communications with Office 365

Northern Illinois University (NIU), a public university with about 19,000 students and 3,300 staff, set out to modernize campus productivity and give students a consistent, mobile-ready toolset. The university faced fragmented productivity apps across schools and the challenge of moving students from Google G Suite for Education to the same Office 365 platform already used by faculty, while reducing infrastructure and licensing costs.

NIU migrated faculty and students to Office 365, backed by Microsoft support and a broad campus change-management campaign, making Office apps, OneDrive, SharePoint, Skype for Business and Project Online available campus-wide. The rollout improved faculty–student communication, mobile workflows and international collaboration, simplified business processes, and generated strong student adoption — while avoiding $2.25M in upgrade costs, saving roughly $850K annually and delivering millions in total infrastructure and licensing savings.

Northern Illinois University

Brett Coryell

Chief Information Officer