Case Study: Tulane University achieves HIPAA-compliant, disaster-tolerant email infrastructure with Office 365

Tulane University Gains HIPAA-Compliant, Disaster-Tolerant Email Infrastructure

Tulane University, a major research and teaching institution in New Orleans, needed to modernize an aging Exchange 2003 email system while ensuring messaging continuity after Hurricane Katrina. The IT team required a cloud solution that supported ubiquitous access and disaster tolerance but also met HIPAA requirements for its medical school and hospital—constraints that made a traditional on-premises upgrade (licenses, hardware, and a duplicated remote site) prohibitively expensive.

Tulane migrated first to Live@edu and then fully to Microsoft Office 365 for Education once Microsoft offered a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement. The move delivered a HIPAA-compliant, geo-redundant email platform with 25 GB mailboxes, minimal user disruption, and faster access to new features, while avoiding more than $1 million in capital expenditures, saving about $250,000 annually, and freeing IT staff to focus on strategic projects.

Tulane University

Leo Tran

Technology Services, Assistant Vice President for IT Infrastructure