Customer Solution Case Study
/ itslearninguses Live@edu to offer full email solution, without hosting or R&D costs
Overview
Country:Norway
Industry:Education(primary, secondary & higher)
Business Situation
itslearning is an enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) learning platform delivered through standard web browsers (including mobile). It incorporates all the tools necessary to create, deliver and manage engaging learning experiences in the classroom and online.
Solution
itslearning needed a large-scale, web-based email solution integrated into the learning platform it supplies to educational institutions. Microsoft’s Live@edu (Live Mail) made this possible, without increasing hosting or development costs.
Partner Benefits
- Lower development costs
- Easy set-up & admin for customers
- Zero hosting or storage costs
- Future-focused product
Arne Bergby. CEO, itslearning
itslearning needed to integrate a large-scale, web-based email solution into its learning platform. By using Microsoft Outlook® Live Mail (part of Live@edu), itslearning was able to integrate the email solution quickly while concentrating development resources on other product improvements.
In addition, itslearning could offer Live Mail to customers without hosting or storage costs – an important consideration in the education sector.
Offered as an out-of-the-box solution and fully integrated into the itslearning platform, Live Mail enables itslearning users (students, teachers, admin staff and sometimes parents) to keep in touch without thinking about the technology.Ultimately, this means itslearning customers can focus on what they do best: teaching and learning.
Situation
As one of Europe’s leading learning platform providers, itslearning is at the cutting edge of educational software. After ten years in a young market, the company needed to expand its platform to include cloud-based email.
The email solution had to be quick to develop – so itslearning could focus its development resources on other areas –and intuitive enough for education admin staff, teachers and students to manage without any training.
Solution
The itslearningplatform is used in all levels of education, from primary schools to universities, and for most customers, it provides the backbone of their institutions IT solution. It is used in and outside the classroom to enhance teaching and learning, and helps educators and students(and sometimes parents) share resources and communicate with each other.
Accessed through any internet-enabled computer or mobile device, it gives users:
·A robust online learning environment with course planner, multimedia tools, assessment tools, grade book, ePortfolio and a complete set of administrative tools.
·Easy-to-use collaboration tools to create communities that share and co-author courses, peer-to-peer projects, discussions, documents and media across classes, departments and even countries.
·Integrated communication tools for personal and institutional email, video conferencing and multimedia.
·24/7 access to the curriculumvia web-enabled mobile devices, so students can extend and personalize their study.
·Pedagogical toolsand digital teaching contentto help make learning more engaging and valuable for students.
itslearning also includes its own internal mail system. But more and more customers were calling for an integrated email system that combined the convenience and ease of use of consumer systems such as Hotmail, with the control and filtering features required in education.
The answer was Live Mail, the email solution included in Live@edu, Microsoft’s cloud-based offering for education.
Benefits
Fast to set up and use
The itslearning platform now comes with Live Mail out-of-the-box. Using Single Sign-On, users are automatically logged into Live Mail when they log into itslearning, and they get notifications of new email within the virtual learning environment.
This makes Live Mail extremely easy for customers to administer and use, and means students, teachers and (in some cases) parents can get up and running quickly.
Short development cycle
By using Live Mail, itslearning was able to bring its email solution to customers faster than if it had developed a new solution in house.
This enabled itslearning to focus its development resources on additional functionality.
Why reinvent the wheel? We got a highly-used, familiar mail service without having to invent the UI or code the functionality ourselves. Even more, the integration was easy and we spent very little time working on the actual integration steps.”
Arne Bergby, itslearning CEO
Lower costs for customers
In a large educational institution, such as the University of Copenhagen which has more than 37,000 students, hosting costs for email storage can be enormous. With 10 GB of free storage per user, Live Mail enabled itslearning to offer these customers enough email storage space – at no extra cost.
A more attractive product
Microsoft’s Live@edu offering is very attractive to most educational institutions. It gives them proven enterprise-class software and offers the control required in education (Live Mail, for example, is advertising free and includes profanity filtering and campus only settings).
“Microsoft’s Live@edu is very attractive to our potential customers. Integrating it into our platform has really strengthened our offering.”
Arne Bergby, itslearning CEO
Microsoft is also a standard that most students will use in their future careers. Using Live@edu in education enables students to develop valuable 21st century skills.
By integrating Live Mail into the learning platform, itslearning is able to pass these benefits directly into customers.
Ready for the future
As a cloud-based learning platform, itslearning gives customers an easily managed, up-to-date technology that delivers what all levels of education, from primary schools to universities, are seeking: affordable, capable and familiar tools.
“We hope to expand our footprint beyond the millions of educators, students, admin staff and parents around the world already using our product, and we plan to do so with Microsoft.”
Arne Bergby, itslearning CEO
This will be enhanced further with the adoption of Office 365 for education, the next generation of earning’s customers will be ready.
Microsoft Education
For more information on how Microsoft and its partners are helping to support higher education institutions worldwide, please visit: