Microsoft Office SystemCustomer Solution Case Study

Leading Indian Education Company Drops OO.org, Improves Productivity, Lowers TCO

OverviewCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Education

Customer ProfileEveronn Education Limited, a leader in the Indian education system for more than two decades, has been in the forefront of enabling education through technology.

Business SituationAs the company grew in size and its file sharing requirements went up, it started to face compatibility issues on its mixed OpenOffice.org and Microsoft platform. Employee productivity dipped, while communication was hampered.

SolutionEveronn decided to replace its open source products with a complete Microsoft solution, including Office 2007, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, System Center Servers, and Windows.

Benefits Industry Standard Improved Productivity Scalable, Unified Platform Compatibility Issues Resolved Lower TCO

“OpenOffice.org is less open compared to Microsoft Office, which supports the most open standards and allows more functionality.”

Susha John, Director, Everonn Education Limited

Everonn has been a leading presence in the Indian education industry for over two decades and is listed on both the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and National Stock Exchange of India (NSE). As India’s first education and training company to offer satellite-enabled learning, Everonn is a pioneer in facilitating education using breakthrough technologies. With “K-Life” as its mantra, Everonn offers a wide range of educational products and solutions that caters to the needs of kindergarten to university students. With its highly interactive virtual classrooms and technology-enabled education, Everonn has enhanced the lives of more than 3 million students. To maintain its reputation and improve collaboration and communication, the company moved from OpenOffice.org to a full Microsoft solution including Microsoft Office 2007, Exchange Server, SharePoint Server, and Windows.

SituationIntegration Woes

Leading education company Everonn Education Limited in Chennai, India, was facing integration woes.

“Microsoft Office is the industry standard when it comes to desktop publishing. As Everonn is growing at a very fast pace and is expanding internationally, our file sharing requirements were becoming higher and the need to migrate to a standard platform was inevitable.”

Susha John, Director,Everonn Education Limited

About half of Everonn’s desktops were running Linux and OpenOffice.org, while the rest was running on Windows.

The multiple applications on multiple platforms were turning out to be problematic as the company scaled up.

Productivity was taking a hit, especially for a company reliant on strong communication and collaboration to be a successful education provider.

Employees encountered compatibility issues when using open source to communicate with customers and partners such as educational institutions. Formatting problems were all too common when sending documents externally, said Susha, the Director of Everonn Education Limited.

“In our endeavor to provide a perfect

document to others, even formatting perfection plays a key role,” she said.

“We felt that checking whether our document looks the same in Microsoft Office was an additional ‘quality control’ task. Hence, we decided to migrate to the industry standard, Microsoft Office.”

As Everonn grew, it decided to resolve its compatibility problems once and for all.

It took a hard look at its OpenOffice.org use in an internal review in June 2009.

“Microsoft Office is the industry standard when it comes to desktop publishing. As Everonn is growing at a very fast pace and is expanding internationally, our file sharing requirements were becoming higher and the need to migrate to a standard platform was inevitable,” she said.

“This led to the decision to assess alternate options to OpenOffice.org and the result was movement to Microsoft solutions. Applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are de facto standards in the business today.”

Lapsys Infotech, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Chennai, helped advise Everonn on its migration options.

Managing partner Prasad P.V.S. said, “We played the role as trusted advisor, helping to identify their business model, which is education

and taking it to different parts of India. So communication and collaboration is important.

“If Everonn had continued with their current system, productivity would go down, and impact their reputation.”

OpenOffice.org Not “Open” Nor “Free”Director Susha of Everonn said, “OpenOffice.org is less open compared to Microsoft Office, which supports the most open standards and allows more functionality.”

In addition, the unified platform which includes an email client allowed for more collaborative functions compared to OpenOffice.org, she said.

“All applications are tightly integrated,” added Susha. “This provides an easy environment for the team at Everonn for porting data across applications based on business needs.”

In addition, Everonn found that open source was not “free.” There were costs associated with training the users and maintaining the upgrades, according to Susha.

SolutionEveronn signed the Enterprise Agreement in June 2009, and Lapsys Infotech started deployment soon after, in July that same year, said Lapsys’ managing partner Prasad.

So far, migration has occurred with no downtime on the Everonn system, he said.

Everonn is deploying Microsoft technologies in three phases and plans to complete the move by August 2010, according to Susha.

The company has already completed its migration to Microsoft Office, which was deployed on about 300 computers. The organization is currently running Microsoft Outlook 2007 as its default mail client.

Everonn has also begun implementing SharePoint and plans to complete the migration in two to three months. Exchange is also being implemented simultaneously with SharePoint.

BenefitsLower TCOA clear benefit of switching to Microsoft from OpenOffice.org is a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

“Even though certain versions of open source come free, there are costs of training the users and for maintenance and upgrades,” said Susha.

“We also find it difficult to find talent for training and maintaining in open source whereas with Microsoft technologies, people come with prior knowledge and it is easy to find the talent for maintenance and training.”

According to her, better manageability with less maintenance cost and ease of use with less trainings mean Microsoft Office has a lower TCO when compared with OpenOffice.org.

Improved ProductivitySince 300 computers have been deployed with Microsoft Office, the impact on employees has been quite positive due to the “tight

“Even though certain versions of open source come free, there are costs of training the users and for maintenance and upgrades. We also find it difficult to find talent for training and maintaining in open source whereas with Microsoft technologies, people come with prior knowledge and it is easy to find the talent for maintenance and training.”

Susha John, Director,Everonn Education Limited

integration of the applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, SharePoint,” said Susha.

“Cross application portability and tighter integration of Office applications with Microsoft Outlook client improved the productivity substantially.”

Lapsys Infotech’s Prasad said: “The management is happy in the way things are deployed. It is very ‘clean.’

“Everonn used to have different solutions, but we gave them one suite of solutions and one point of contact for all solutions, so they’ve seen a lot of productivity increase.”

Industry StandardDeployment is still ongoing, but Everonn also expects to benefit from implementing an industry standard platform, said Director Susha.

Other expected benefits include working on a scalable and well-integrated platform, support provided by Microsoft in implementing best practices in Everonn, and most of all, “association with a global leader,” said Susha.

She concluded: “Microsoft is not just an organization that provides the application to Everonn. It acts as a partner in providing support, by giving training programs, to the team at Everonn for implementing the solutions to meet our business needs. We are sure that Microsoft will continue to provide this support in the future as well.”

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Lapsys Infotech products and services, call +91-44-42125881 or visit the Web site at:www.lapsysit.com

For more information about Everonn Education Limited products and services, call 91-44-23718202 or visit the Web site at:www. everonn .com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2010

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