Microsoft Office 365
Customer Solution Case Study
Outdoor Apparel Leader Improves
Communications with Hosted Solution
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Apparel manufacturing
Customer Profile
Patagonia is a global, leading provider of
clothing and gear for outdoor activities.
Headquartered in Ventura, California, it
has 1,500 employees worldwide.
Business Situation
Patagonia wanted to update its aging
messaging solution and add unified
communications to help employees
around the world work better together.
Solution
It decided to pilot test Microsoft Office
365, the next-generation online services
from Microsoft, which includes the latest
version of the Microsoft Office
Professional Plus desktop suite.
Benefits
 Drives real-time communications and
decisions
 Supports “Drive-Less” program to
reduce carbon footprint
 Reduces IT administration and costs
 Provides enterprise-class reliability
 Enables predictable and flexible
licensing
“If you look at the Office 365 price point, we could not
provide this same level of IT service, at the same cost,
ourselves.”
Casey Stoops, Network Operations Manager, Patagonia
Patagonia, a global provider of outdoor apparel and gear
wanted a new solution for unified communications to help
employees around the world work better together. The IT staff
also needed to upgrade its aging messaging solution. When the
company heard about the next-generation online services from
Microsoft, it decided to evaluate Microsoft Office 365, which
includes the latest version of the Microsoft Office Professional
Plus desktop suite. Based on a pilot test of Office 365, Patagonia
expects employees to communicate more effectively and make
better design decisions. Patagonia also believes Office 365 will
help it reduce IT costs, improve business continuity, and support
its environmental initiatives.
Situation
Founded in 1972 to succeed a small
company that provided climbing tools,
Patagonia has grown into a globally
recognized brand. The company designs,
produces, and distributes clothing and gear
for such pursuits as trail running, skiing,
mountain climbing, surfing, and
snowboarding. Headquartered in Ventura,
California, Patagonia has a strong presence
across the Americas, in Europe, and in
Japan. The company serves its markets
through multiple channels, including
international distributors, wholesalers, retail
stores, catalog sales, and e-commerce.
For Patagonia, putting its brand and
resources to work on behalf of the
environment is as important as providing
the best possible outdoor products. The
company engages on important
environmental issues and offers insight and
ideas of value to environmentalists.
Customers can track the environmental
impact of individual Patagonia products
throughout their life cycle in an online
resource. Patagonia also strives to practice
optimal sustainability throughout its
business activities.
For communications, employees relied
primarily on email and traditional phones,
and occasionally used a third-party video
conferencing tool located in select
conference rooms, but use was not
widespread. Without access to unified
communications capabilities such as
presence, instant messaging, and online
meetings, employees experienced delays
communicating with each other and with
outside vendors and suppliers.
For example, design work for Patagonia
begins at headquarters; however, people in
offices around the world must also
participate in the design process. Designers
need to show images to other parties
during the design process. Michael Busch,
Director of Technology at Patagonia, is
responsible for Patagonia’s global IT team
and strategy. Busch says, “By sending
pictures back and forth, people cannot
always provide the best visual
representation, and unread emails can lead
to delays. We need a solution that
employees can easily use to collaborate on
designs in real time. Just as important, we
want a communication solution that all
employees can easily access and that
provides video conferencing options for
everyone.”
The IT staff also wanted a communications
solution to support the company’s
environmental initiative called the “DriveLess” program. The worldwide program
calls for employees to reduce their carbon
footprint by using alternative
transportation, such as a bike or a bus, to
get to work. As part of this initiative, the
company is also giving employees the
opportunity to work from home more
often.
The company was also faced with the
challenge of upgrading some of its aging
solutions. The IT staff sought to upgrade
Microsoft Office 2003 with the latest
capabilities in Microsoft Office 2010 on the
desktop to help boost employee
productivity. To improve reliability in its
messaging solution, the IT staff wanted to
upgrade its aging server hardware and its
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 messaging
solution to Microsoft Exchange Server
2010. Casey Stoops is the Network
Operations Manager for Patagonia and is
responsible for infrastructure services.
Stoops says, “We knew it was time for us to
upgrade our current versions of Exchange
and Office, but with our small IT staff and
aging servers, we were concerned with the
amount of time and costs required to get
there.”
“We believe Office 365
capabilities, like video
conferencing, will help
our employees drive
real-time decisions,
which will help us reduce
problem resolution time
and potentially
accelerate our products
to market.”
Casey Stoops, Network Operations
Manager, Patagonia
To address its aging technology and its
growing communications and collaboration
needs, Patagonia considered both onpremises and cloud-based Microsoft
technologies. The IT staff wanted a solution
that would reduce the burden of upgrades
and ongoing administration for such things
as server maintenance, security updates,
and antivirus and anti-spam technologies.
They also wanted a solution that offered
enterprise-class support and reliability for
business continuity.
Solution
When Microsoft announced the next
generation of cloud-based services,
Patagonia reached out to its partner
DynTek Services, a Microsoft Gold Certified
Partner, to learn more about Microsoft
Office 365. Office 365 brings together
cloud-based versions of Microsoft
Exchange Online, Microsoft Lync Online,
and Microsoft SharePoint Online with the
latest version of the Microsoft Office
Professional Plus desktop suite. Stoops
says, “When Office 365 became an option,
we jumped on it right away because we
knew the cloud is where we wanted to go.”
To get started, DynTek helped Patagonia
join the Office 365 Rapid Deployment
Program to run a pilot program and
evaluate a transition strategy for the
organization. Pilot participants were able to
immediately download the Office
Professional Plus desktop suite from the
Office 365 portal to take advantage of the
latest Microsoft Office 2010 applications.
Since the company is upgrading from
Office 2003, the IT staff believes Office
Professional Plus will be a significant step
forward and a productivity driver for
employees.
Stoops says, “The pilot participants have
already expressed their excitement about
the new and improved email and calendar
management capabilities in Microsoft
Outlook 2010. The Finance team also noted
that they can immediately take advantage
of the expanded rows and columns and
improved conditional formatting tools in
Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheets.”
Because the Microsoft OneNote notetaking program was not part of the Office
2003 desktop suite, the pilot participants
are also exploring how OneNote 2010
notebooks can help them with note-taking
and team collaboration. Busch adds, “We
are especially impressed with how OneNote
2010 is integrated with other Office
applications, like Outlook.”
To test the online services in Office 365,
DynTek and the Patagonia IT staff
configured Lync Online and Exchange
Online through the Office 365
administrative web portal. Pilot participants
could immediately communicate in realtime with their colleagues through the
capabilities in Lync Online, including instant
messaging, PC-to-PC calls, and audio and
video conferencing. Employees can access
these capabilities through presence
indicators and contact cards that appear in
most Office applications and on SharePoint
sites.
“The traditional style of communication
through email messages and phone calls is
not enough anymore. Employees want the
ability to chat and work together instantly
from their PCs, and they want do this from
virtually anywhere,” says Busch. “Lync
Online is the first unified communications
solution for the company, and we believe
the real-time communications is a huge win
for our business.” For example, now that
product designers have instant access to
video conferencing through Lync Online,
they can escalate an instant message chat
to a video conference in one click to share
a clear visual representation of the product
with other design participants. Stoops adds,
“When you look at the
capabilities, the price per
user, and the
opportunity costs of
supporting on-premises
servers internally, we are
confident Office 365 is
the right decision for our
business.”
Casey Stoops, Network Operations
Manager, Patagonia
“With Lync Online, our employees can
quickly reach out to others in the global
organization to make business and product
decisions in real time, and instantly escalate
a quick chat to a group conference, with
video if needed, speeding up the decision
making process.”
In addition, as more employees elect to
work at home as part of the “Drive-Less”
program, they can take advantage of these
communication capabilities within Office
applications and SharePoint Online to find
and communicate instantly with other
available coworkers.
With Exchange Online, employees can use
enhanced capabilities in Outlook 2010,
such as Conversation View, MailTips, and
Calendar Preview, to manage their inboxes.
To help with heavy email volumes,
employees will enjoy a 25 times larger
mailbox size—from the current 500 to 1000
megabyte (MB) average limit set in
Exchange Server 2003 to 25 gigabyte (GB)
in Exchange Online, an Office 365 default.
Because Microsoft SharePoint Online is a
new solution for Patagonia, the IT staff is
working with DynTek to develop a strategy
for how it will work best for employees. The
goal is to introduce SharePoint Online to
employees for document sharing and team
collaboration, so that employees no longer
need to send documents as email
attachments. When employees have no
Internet connection, they can use Microsoft
SharePoint Workspace 2010, available in
Office Professional Plus, for offline access
to SharePoint Online files and document
libraries. Stoops says, “We foresee lots of
business process opportunities with the
collaboration capabilities in SharePoint
Online and Office Professional Plus.”
DynTek will help the IT staff at Patagonia
evaluate the experience of this pilot group
to determine next steps and timing. DynTek
will also offer training to Patagonia
employees so that they can learn more
about the new capabilities in Office
Professional Plus and how its capabilities
seamlessly connect with the online services
in Office 365. Patagonia feels the training
will help speed adoption. Stoops says, “Our
end goal is to completely eliminate our onpremises Exchange infrastructure and
migrate our email to the cloud. Patagonia is
strongly considering Office 365 to achieve
this goal.”
Benefits
Patagonia looks forward to the transition to
Office 365. The company anticipates its
employees will improve communication
and collaboration, which will help them
make faster decisions about designs and
support their efforts to reduce their carbon
footprint. The IT staff expects to reduce
administration and costs, while improving
business continuity and enabling
predictable licensing. Stoops says, “When
you look at the capabilities, the price per
user, and the opportunity costs of
supporting on-premises servers internally,
we are confident Office 365 is the right
decision for our business.”
Drives Real-Time Communications and
Decisions
Because Lync Online is easy to work with
and employees can access it from their own
PCs, the company expects that employees
can reduce delays caused by limited video
conferencing facilities and unread email
messages. Stoops says, “We believe Office
365 capabilities, like video conferencing,
will help our employees drive real-time
decisions, which will help us reduce
problem resolution time and potentially
accelerate our products to market.”
Supports “Drive-Less” Program to
Reduce Carbon Footprint
The “Drive-Less” program is another
example of how Patagonia and its
employees continue to pursue projects that
take responsibility for how they impact the
environment. With the communication and
collaboration capabilities in Office 365 and
Office Professional Plus, the company can
provide the flexibility for more employees
to work from home, so they can reduce
their carbon footprint by driving less. Busch
says, “We need to support flexible work
options for our employees to work at home
or outside the office. We believe
capabilities in Office 365, including Office
Professional Plus, will be critical to this
effort.”
Reduces IT Administration and Costs
With Office 365, the company will avoid
future costs for new server hardware. The IT
staff can hand most IT functions for
messaging and communications to
Microsoft, which has specialized resources
and data centers to support these
solutions. Stoops says, “We believe for us
to spend our own time on updates, daily
server maintenance, and antivirus updates
is not a good use of our IT resources, so
handing off these tasks to Microsoft is a
very attractive proposition for us.”
The IT staff can also worry less about effort
and costs associated with future upgrades
to Office, Exchange, Lync and SharePoint
software. With Office 365, Patagonia can
run up-to-date versions of these
technologies so it can deliver the latest
productivity solutions to its employees.
“We were always looking ahead to when we
were going to have to upgrade,” says
Busch. “With Office 365, we can take
advantage of the extensive experience
Microsoft has with its own products to help
us help maintain our environment and keep
us current. For the most part, we can now
just be consumers of the service.”
Patagonia estimates cost savings to exceed
U.S.$300,000 for future upgrades to
associated infrastructure and software.
The IT staff also expects to eliminate costs
by approximately U.S.$15,000 a year for
some third-party software and services,
such as anti-spam and antivirus
applications and back-up services related
to their servers running Exchange Server
2003.
These time and costs savings will help the
small IT staff at Patagonia to align itself
with IT projects related to business
initiatives, as opposed to maintaining
messaging and communication services.
Stoops says, “By pushing administration to
the Microsoft data centers, we can focus
more of our attention on critical business
projects, like retail applications and
compliance with new governance and
regulatory processes.”
Provides Enterprise-Class Reliability for
Business Continuity
With Office 365, Patagonia takes advantage
of premium anti-spam and antivirus
protection, geo-redundant data centers,
twenty-four-hours-a-day, seven-days-aweek IT-level phone support, and a
financially backed, 99.9 percent uptime
service level agreement. Stoops says, “We
are confident that Microsoft has the
infrastructure to protect our data in the
cloud and provide us with more robust
security and reliability for business
continuity. If you look at the Office 365
price point, we could not provide this same
level of IT service, at the same cost,
ourselves.”
Enables Predictable and
Flexible Licensing
The monthly, per user Office 365
subscription-based service plans offer
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. 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 DynTek
Services, Inc. products and services, call
(877) 297-3723 or visit the website at:
www.dyntek.com
Microsoft Office 365
Patagonia predictable and scalable licenses
so it can match the needs of the business.
Office Professional Plus is also part of this
Office 365 monthly subscription, which
eliminates the need for the IT staff to
manage a separate agreement for
Microsoft Office. Busch says, “We think
Office as part of the subscription is a nice
benefit of Office 365. This helps us stay
current with the Office version, without
having to worry about volume license
agreements and updates.”
Microsoft Office 365 brings together cloud
versions of our most trusted
communications and collaboration
products—Microsoft SharePoint Online,
Exchange Online, and Lync Online—with
the latest version of our Office desktop
suite and companion web applications for
businesses of all sizes.
Office 365 helps save time and money, and
it frees up valued resources. Simple to use
and easy to administer, it is financially
backed by a service level agreement that
guarantees 99 percent reliability. Office 365
features robust security, IT-level phone
support, geo-redundancy, disaster
recovery, and the business-class privacy
controls and standards that you expect
from a world-class service provider.
Stoops concludes, “We anticipate the
capabilities we gain from Office
Professional Plus and the online services in
Office 365 will be real productivity drivers
for us moving forward.”
For more information about Microsoft
Office 365, go to:
www.office365.com
For more information about Patagonia
products and services, call (800) 6386464 or visit the website at:
www.patagonia.com
Software and Services

This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published June 2011
Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Lync 2010
− Microsoft OneNote 2010
− Microsoft Outlook 2010
− Microsoft SharePoint Workspace
2010

Microsoft Office 365
− Microsoft Exchange Online
− Microsoft Lync Online
− Microsoft Office Professional Plus
− Microsoft SharePoint Online