Changing Course—and Messaging—during a Communications Systems Update at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee(UWM) serves as the only urban public doctoral R1 institution in the University of Wisconsin System (UWS), which comprises thirteen four-year institutions and thirteen two-year colleges. The two-year colleges have been divided among seven of the four-year institutions in a system-wide restructuring effort. As part of this, UWM was gifted with two of the UWS colleges. These campuses are both approximately 45 minutes from UWM. Additionally, for the past two years, UWM and UWS have been exploring, planning, and implementing shared services models, with UWM—as a research university—allowed to opt into the UWS shared services offerings. With the addition of the two colleges and a change to UWM's communications system plan, the timing of the new system rollout is allowing UWM to provide a comprehensive communications solution.

Identifying the Problem and the Initial Solution

To meet current and future student, faculty, administration, and staff needs and expectations, UWM had to modernize its communications systems. The university's existing voice-only service—AT&T's Centrex—has not seen changes in decades and is approaching end of life; further, the cost of the service has increased. Finally, as a voice-only product, Centrex cannot integrate with modern communication technologies (such as email, texting, or video) or other education- and operation-critical services.

After reviewing several unified communications platforms and conducting phone and/or on-site conversations with three higher education institutions that have successfully deployed Microsoft's Skype for Business Server (Marquette University, the University of Illinois, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison), UWM chose that platform to unify its communications.

Skype for Business Server is part of Microsoft's Office 365 collaboration product line and is integrated with the product's other components, including email and social networking services, through versions of Skype for Business Server, Exchange Server, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint, and Office Online.

Meeting the Vendor, Reconsidering the Plan

The communications update project was nearly complete in August of 2018 when we deployed a Skype for Business Server test environment in the UWM data center. At that time, we invited a Microsoft engineer to the UWM campus to evaluate the work to date. Following his evaluation, he offered three observations:

• The university was deploying an on-premise infrastructure that exceeded its needs.
• Microsoft telephony offerings (and unified communications in general) were moving to the cloud.
• UWM should instead consider deploying Microsoft Teams Phone System, the cloud-hosted telephony component of the Microsoft Teams communication and collaboration platform.

At the 2018 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, we consulted with a Microsoft Teams program manager and discussed a possible collaboration with Microsoft as it continued to architect and develop its Teams platform. During that discussion, the manager reaffirmed that the Microsoft roadmap was moving away from Skype for Business and toward the Teams product and cloud environment and that more advancements in the Teams product features could occur in Q2 2019. We thus recognized that UWM could be one of the first large higher education institutions to implement Teams as its replacement for Centrex.

Reassessing and Changing Course

Given this discussion, we decided to suspend work on the Skype for Business Server deployment, exercise our due diligence, and reassess our technology options by initiating an evaluation of the Teams Phone System.

Before committing to a change in direction, we had to determine if Teams Phone System met the UWM telephony requirements and other strategic considerations. We also had to contend with messaging issues. Up to this point, campus communications were messaged for the Skype for Business platform and delivered to the entire university community; assuming a decision to shift was made, that change would have to be made clear across the UWM community.

Having determined that the new system would meet our requirements, we provided a business case to the campus IT governance council, along with a demonstration of the then-proposed Teams platform, for approval. A reworked costing comparison of Centrex versus Teams was also requested and provided. With an approval to move forward, we readjusted our project timeline, reassessed our new technology needs, and reevaluated the deployment plan.

Lessons Learned

Several key factors helped us recognize an opportunity to reboot and create a more inclusive collaborative communications environment for the campus.

Changing Directions—and Messaging

When we decided to propose a change of direction in the chosen platform, we had an opportunity to message a better alignment of the university's mission with the chosen platform's offerings.

As noted, we had already started priming the campus community for delivery of Skype for Business. Changing the platform and its offerings required major changes within both enterprise IT and our messaging—moving from the message of a "swapping out" phones to decommissioning a locally hosted server environment in favor of a cloud/VoIP integrated collaborative communications solution.

Although Skype for Business was not a mandatory application, many people were already using it; changing course meant users had to make a major change to a new enterprise IT service. So, basically, we were moving from a recognized, previously used platform to a newer, more integrated platform that includes VoIP. Given this, our communications to the campus community had to change to adapt to the services that the new platform offered.

Further, we had to recognize the many different communities on campus and think about delivering these services to various areas—ranging from facilities staff to academic advisors—that had very different needs. Among our concerns were training and how to prioritize thetraining efforts and onboarding of a new communications system, given the many other campus priorities. Also, we would be the first UWS campus to adopt the Microsoft Teams technology in the context of a changing UWS service delivery and support model, which includes an alternate VoIP-only solution.

By altering our plans for the originally proposed Skye solution in favor of the Teams platform's broader integrated services and support expectations, we expanded what a communications service could provide beyond simply voice.For the campus community to embrace the transition and adopt the Teams platform—which may not be required by their job—they had to be both aware of the change and ready for it. Achieving this requires executing a communication program to foster awareness across the university and ensuring that resources are in place to help facilitate a smooth transition to the new service.

Understanding the Project Scope

When we changed the scope of integrated services in the VoIP solution, we also had to refresh our project plan. We had experience in moving to a technology with integrated platforms; we had previously moved to Office 365—with our primary scope being email and calendaring—which helped us understand the additional support that providing more services would require. Having the proper scope for these services, their dependencies, and the support models is of the utmost importance to plan for proper deployment as an enterprise system.

Adjusting the Staffing Model

We prioritized staffing decisions based on the services available within the new platform. Now, however, we better understand what a change from the locally hosted platform to the cloud platform entails for infrastructure, maintenance, and support, and we must adjust roles and responsibilities for staffing accordingly. For example, our staff had previously focused on the locally hosted server infrastructure and needed training on the administration of the cloud-hosted solution. We also had to look at the billing and support models for campus—where, for instance, staff members who provided telephony support were now engaged in the project plan to actively shift their focus to support for the new Teams solution.

Partnering with the Vendor

Partnering with the vendor allowed us to reassess our direction. In retrospect, it might have been more advantageous for us to have a tighter vendor engagement at the outset; this would have given us more proactive information about the vendor's roadmap, which had been published for some time before we made our decision to change our direction.

Beth Schaefer is Chief Operating Officer, University Information Technology Services, at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.