Microsoft Office 365
Customer Solution Case Study
Nonprofit Organization Chooses Microsoft
Office 365, Gains Global Productivity
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Nonprofit
Customer Profile
Headquartered in Durham, North
Carolina, and operating in more than 60
countries, FHI 360 is dedicated to
improving lives through integrated,
locally driven solutions. It employs 4,300
people.
Business Situation
Half of the employees at FHI 360 used
Google Docs and Gmail, and half used
on-premises Microsoft communication
and collaboration solutions. FHI 360
wanted to standardize on a single, cloudbased service.
Solution
FHI 360 chose Microsoft Office 365, a
suite of hosted online messaging and
collaboration services because it best
met the needs of its global enterprise.
Benefits
 Improves information exchange across
the globe
 Increases agility, with easy setup of
new employees
 Reduces IT costs

“Using Microsoft Office 365, we are a more cohesive,
efficient organization. Empowered with tools that work
the way we work, FHI 360 can achieve a greater impact
on human development around the world.”
Michael Mazza, Head of Information Solutions and Services, FHI 360
FHI 360 is a nonprofit human development organization working
to improve lives in lasting ways by advancing integrated, locally
driven solutions. Following an acquisition, half of its employees
used Google Apps and the other half used on-premises
Microsoft messaging and collaboration solutions. FHI 360
wanted a single, cloud-based suite of business productivity
services. It chose Microsoft Office 365 and used Microsoft Cloud
Vantage Services and Microsoft Services Consulting to help the
organization transition to the cloud. Employees can easily
communicate and collaborate with colleagues, boosting
productivity in the field and in the office. IT staff at headquarters
gain better tools to manage the cloud environment.
Multinational project group members collaborate to share best
practices, increasing the impact FHI 360 can bring to its projects
around the world.
“Our challenge was to
standardize on a
communication and
collaboration platform to
maximize employee
productivity, simplify IT
administration, and
reduce costs.”
Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT
Infrastructure, FHI 360
Situation
FHI 360 believes that one of the keys to
improving lives is in generating, sharing,
and applying knowledge. Its staff includes
experts in health, education, economic
development, civil society, environment,
gender, and youth. The nonprofit
organization takes a “360-degree
perspective” to addressing complex, human
development needs, partnering with
governments, the private sector, and
communities in more than 60 countries to
deliver thoughtful, tailored responses to
global human development needs.
In June 2011, the Academy for Educational
Development (AED) and FHI came together
to form FHI 360 with a combined staff of
4,300. While the organizations had similar
mandates, their IT infrastructures were very
different. AED employees used Google
Docs, Gmail, and the WebEx web
conferencing solution from Cisco.
Employees at FHI used various versions of
on-premises Microsoft Exchange Server
messaging and collaboration software and
Microsoft Office business productivity
applications. FHI had also developed an
intranet using Microsoft Office SharePoint
Server 2007 technologies for workflows and
document collaboration. AED had a
decentralized IT infrastructure with each
office connected directly to the Internet.
FHI used wide-area network (WAN)
connections for most of its offices.
Following the acquisition, the 80-member
corporate IT department faced a significant
challenge. “We had two communication
and collaboration platforms that split
employees into roughly equal Google and
Microsoft user groups,” says Douglas
Wilkins, Director of IT Infrastructure at FHI
360. “Our challenge was to standardize on
a communication and collaboration
platform to maximize employee
productivity, simplify IT administration, and
reduce costs.”
FHI 360 IT leadership decided early on that
the new business productivity solution
would be cloud based. Moving
communication and collaboration
technologies to the cloud would simplify
the work required to manage divergent IT
infrastructures and connectivity options
found in more than 150 global offices.
Subscribing employees to a standard,
cloud-based solution would be the most
expedient way to ensure that everyone had
the same IT tools to work equally
productively.
FHI 360 narrowed its options down to
Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, an
online service that unites familiar Microsoft
Office applications with the power of
Microsoft Exchange Online, SharePoint
Online, and Lync Online unified
communications into one connected
solution. Office 365 also comes with
upgrade rights to the latest versions of
Microsoft Office programs, another goal for
the company.
FHI 360 took this opportunity to define
exactly what it required from its business
productivity tools, so it could make the
right decision for the long term. “We were
investing in a solution that would empower
our employees in their mission to support
individuals, families, and communities
around the world,” says Michael Mazza,
Head of Information Solutions and Services
at FHI 360. “It was critically important to
choose the one that best answered our
needs.”
Solution
To begin its evaluation, FHI 360 facilitated
employee focus groups and generated
more than 150 requirements for email,
instant messaging (IM), web conferencing,
“Office 365 had privacy
features that were in line
with our requirements.”
Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT
Infrastructure, FHI 360
and document collaboration. Then the
company began an in-depth comparative
analysis of Google Apps and WebEx on the
one hand and Microsoft Office 365 on the
other to evaluate how each solution would
meet those requirements.
FHI 360 approached Microsoft Services
Consulting to learn more about Office 365.
“Microsoft Services Consulting was
interested in understanding our goals right
from the start, helping us define how Office
365 would fit our needs,” says Wilkins. “FHI
360 also benefitted from early discussions
with Microsoft Cloud Vantage Services to
learn how we could transition to Office 365
smoothly and benefit from cloud
investments and evergreen IT, whereby we
are automatically upgraded to the latest
version of Office 365.” Microsoft Cloud
Vantage Services helps enterprise
customers smoothly transition to the cloud
and realize business value from their Office
365 investment by providing deep cloud
expertise, a Cloud Delivery Executive, who
acts as a single point of accountability, and
ongoing collaboration across the full
lifecycle.
In November 2011, FHI 360 attended a
two-day architectural design session at the
Microsoft Technology Center in
Washington, D.C., to run through the
details of migrating Exchange and Gmail
users to Exchange Online. “Microsoft also
invited us to join the Technology Adoption
Program for the newest release of Office
365, which gave us invaluable insight into
the product’s evolution,” adds Wilkins. “We
liked the new features, such as more
support for unified e-discovery across
messaging and documents.”
Decision Factors
In June 2012, FHI 360 made the decision to
standardize on Office 365 and purchased
4,300 licenses. “Eventually, it came down to
a fairly simple set of factors,” says Agustin
Fiorito, Project Manager, Business
Solutions, at FHI 360. “Office 365 best met
our needs, and we were impressed by the
superior capabilities of the Microsoft
Services Consulting team and Cloud
Vantage Services.”
“Microsoft offered us a more appropriate
level of support for an enterprise of our
size,” adds Wilkins. “The company brought
many resources to the table, including a
Cloud Vantage Services Cloud Delivery
Executive who helped with internal
communication strategies to prepare our
users for the migration.”
Additionally, FHI 360 contracted with
Intellinet [a member of the Microsoft
Partner Network] to provide extra resources
for the actual migration. “Microsoft and
Intellinet made sure we had the right tools
to do the migrations, and their technical
and project experience was invaluable,”
says Wilkins.
Other key factors in the decision to migrate
to Office 365 hinged on the solution’s
ability to meet top FHI 360 requirements.
First, the company looked at how Office
365 and Google Apps would improve
employee productivity through the
following capabilities: These include:

Ability to work offline. With limited
Internet access and power supplies in
some international FHI 360 offices, the
company needed a solution that
employees could use offline. “People
need to read email, compose replies, and
work on documents while there is no
connection, and then be able to
seamlessly reconnect with the rest of the
world, with no negative effect on their
productivity,” says Fiorito. “Office 365
gives us that ability.”
Support for mobile users. “Employees
want their email and documents to sync
between their mobile devices and their
computers,” says Wilkins. “Unlike Google,
Office 365 has native support for the
Exchange ActiveSync technology that
works on the different mobile devices we
have in the organization. Employees can
be as productive outside the office as
they are at their desk.”


Robust calendaring. For a global
organization, the ability to easily share
calendars and arrange meetings is
important.

Seamless communications. FHI 360 did
not want to inconvenience its donors and
partners with file format issues that
would have occurred if the organization
standardized on Google Apps. “We
received requests from outside parties for
documentation in Microsoft Word and
the last thing we wanted was to force
donors and partners to spend time on
formatting issues,” says Wilkins.

Multilingual support. With locations
around the world, FHI 360 found that
Office 365 offered more comprehensive
multilingual support and capabilities than
Google Apps did.
The IT department at FHI 360 had its own
set of criteria. IT staff wanted to migrate to
a solution that would satisfy the company’s
IT policies including:

Appropriate privacy policies. FHI 360
works on public health and education
issues and performs clinical trials so it has
to comply with US Code of Federal
Regulations Title 22 (22 CFR) Part 11
regulations regarding electronic records
and signatures. “We also have to comply
with privacy regulations related to
contracts with the US federal
government,” says Wilkins. “Office 365
had privacy features that were in line with
our requirements.”

High level of data security and control.
It is important for FHI 360 to have control
over where its data is located so that it is
not subject to regulations in countries
where the organization does not have a
presence. “With Office 365 we know
where our data is stored, and we can set
roles-based security models for our IT
administrators,” says Wilkins. “This was
not possible with Google.”

Potential for hybrid deployments. FHI
360 took advantage of Office 365 support
for hybrid deployments and installed onpremises Exchange Server infrastructures
in countries where Exchange Online is not
available.
FHI 360 also needed to solve its email
storage issues. “By the time of the merger,
our email storage had ballooned,” says
Fiorito. “Google Apps offers 25 gigabytes of
storage; however Exchange Online offers 25
gigabytes of mailbox storage, plus
unlimited storage for employees’ personal
archives.”
Another reason for choosing Office 365 was
that it shares the same underlying
technology as the Windows-based backend systems at FHI 360. This meant the
organization could take advantage of
existing IT expertise and avoid the
deployment delays.
FHI 360 also chose Office 365 because it
offered the organization a cost-effective,
straightforward method of standardizing
on Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus. “With a
subscription instead of licenses, we have
more control over how we introduce Office
versions to employees across diverse
“The Office 365
Technology Adoption
Program revealed new
features and
functionality that we
can’t wait to take
advantage of.”
Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT
Infrastructure, FHI 360
environments, from Nigeria to Thailand to
the United States,” says Wilkins.
incurring service outages of up to eight
hours.”
Choosing a cloud-based suite of business
tools was an important strategic decision
for the future of FHI 360. “The Office 365
Technology Adoption Program revealed
new features and functionality that we can’t
wait to take advantage of,” says Wilkins.
To facilitate training and help employees
realize productivity gains through Office
365, Microsoft suggested BrainStorm, a
Microsoft Office 365 Marketplace partner.
Brainstorm provided FHI 360 with best
practices as the company developed a
global training plan. BrainStorm instructorled training was delivered both on-site and
virtually. “BrainStorm trainers were
knowledgeable and interactive,” says
Fiorito. “We liked that BrainStorm’s
approach to training end users was all
about driving employee’s proficiency with
the product in daily use—and having fun.”
Global Deployment
FHI 360 worked with Microsoft and
Intellinet to migrate everyone to Exchange
Online. The teams had to plan a migration
schedule for users in 64 countries. Also, the
teams had to move more than 5 terabytes
of email data from Gmail and Exchange
Server mailboxes to Exchange Online, and
ensure a seamless coexistence of
environments during the process.
“We had excellent support from our Cloud
Delivery Executive who was our point of
contact for the Microsoft team,” says
Fiorito. “The principal consultant from
Intellinet was fantastic: he managed the
practical aspects of the deployment and
worked out a compacted migration
schedule that overlapped time zones,
countries, and local bandwidth scenarios to
maximize throughput. To migrate 4,300
users around the world from two diverse
platforms to an Office 365 environment in
less than 22 weeks would not have been
possible without the support of Microsoft
and Intellinet.”
FHI 360 first migrated the Google users to
Exchange Online, followed by the Exchange
Server on-premises users. The teams used a
two-stage process to migrate the Exchange
mailboxes. “One of the attractions of the
Office 365 environment was that we could
stream data, achieving 95 percent of the
migration without affecting the user,” says
Wilkins. “Google would have forced us to
migrate the entire mailbox at once,
The Exchange Online migration was
completed by November 2012. By that
time, FHI 360 enabled My Sites—personal
document storage and social networking
sites available in SharePoint Online—to
former Google Docs users and will extend
My Sites to the rest of its employees in the
second quarter of 2013. “We are looking
forward to migrating our workflows and
project management capabilities from
SharePoint Server to SharePoint Online
when the next version is released,” says
Wilkins. “We have also enabled Lync Online,
and a lot of our users have utilized the selfservice capabilities to download the
Microsoft Lync client themselves to take
advantage of IM and presence
information.”
Benefits
By choosing Office 365, FHI 360 gained a
feature-rich suite of productivity-enhancing
tools that offer the cost savings of a cloudbased solution. “Using Microsoft Office 365,
we are a more cohesive, efficient
organization,” says Mazza. “Empowered
with tools that work the way we work, FHI
360 can achieve a greater impact on human
development around the world.”
“With Office 365, we can
scale knowledge transfer
from an office-bound
environment to an
international
environment, a great
advantage. Lessons
learned in Nigeria can be
transferred to a project
in Vietnam. Everyone will
benefit.”
Douglas Wilkins, Director of IT
Infrastructure, FHI 360
Improves Information Exchange
FHI 360 employees are already using IM
and presence awareness capabilities in Lync
Online to find each other and collaborate
across the globe. People are beginning to
populate My Sites with their documents
and personal profiles. “Now it’s easy to find
a colleague with the right expertise to help
with a new project or just answer a
question,” says Wilkins. “IM is a huge hit:
many of our projects are multinational in
nature. We have real-time communications
to erase the geographical distances that we
have to work with.”
Now that information exchange is less of a
challenge, FHI 360 employees can easily
share best practices and improve services
across the globe. “With Office 365, we can
scale knowledge transfer from an officebound environment to an international
environment, a great advantage,” says
Wilkins. “Lessons learned in Nigeria can be
transferred to a project in Vietnam.
Everyone will benefit.”
Increases Agility
Because Office 365 is a subscription-based
service, FHI 360 can provision new
employees quickly, boosting agility and
responsiveness when setting up projects in
the field. “The faster we can get healthstrengthening projects up and running, the
better,” says Wilkins. “Right now we have a
project with 170 new employees. Before it
would have taken from two to eight weeks,
depending on the location, to provision
servers and deploy software, but with
Office 365 it’s a matter of a couple of
hours. A side benefit is that now IT staff can
spend more time working on strategic
projects.”
Reduces IT Costs
FHI 360 plans to retire third-party solutions
and decommission aging servers to simplify
IT management and reduce costs. With web
conferencing functionality included in Lync
Online, the organization no longer requires
WebEx and expects to save approximately
US$20,000 annually in web conferencing
costs. With its storage area network (SAN)
solution reaching capacity, FHI 360 can
avoid the costs of upgrading its SAN
environment thanks to the generous email
storage available with Office 365.
“In the last month, we have
decommissioned 16 Exchange servers and
we are on track to decommission 16 more
in the next two weeks,” says Wilkins. “The
licensing costs are minimal because we run
our Exchange solution in a virtual
environment, but we have simplified our IT
environment substantially and that saves IT
labor costs.”
Now FHI 360 can put an exact number to
the cost of supporting an employee. This is
a great benefit for a nonprofit organization
that relies on funders and grants because it
enables more predictable costs. “With
Office 365, we don’t require large outlays of
capital for physical infrastructure,” says
Wilkins. “We can also plan and estimate our
project costs more accurately. Choosing
Office 365 for our cloud-based business
productivity services was the right decision
for FHI 360.”
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
Microsoft Office 365
The new Office provides anywhere access
to your familiar Office applications—plus
email, calendar, video conferencing, and
your most current documents—on almost
any device, from PCs to smartphones to
tablets.
For more information about Microsoft
Office 365, go to:
www.office365.com
For more information about Intellinet
products and services, call (404) 4428000 or visit the website at:
www.intellinet.com
For more information about BrainStorm
products and services, call (801) 8773900 or visit the website at:
www.brainstorminc.com
For more information about FHI 360
products and services, call (919) 5447040 or visit the website at:
www.fhi360.org
Software and Services

Microsoft Office 365
− Microsoft Exchange Online
− Microsoft Lync Online
− Microsoft SharePoint Online
− Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus

Partners


This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published April 2013
Microsoft Services
− Microsoft Cloud Vantage Services
− Microsoft Services Consulting
Intellinet
BrainStorm