A Unified Communications Project
for YES Prep Public Schools

YES Prep wanted a solution to improve and enhance their teachers’ communications and collaboration capabilities between campus locations

Background
Founded in 1998, YES Prep is a free, open-enrollment public school system that prepares low-income students for college graduation. YES’s comprehensive 6th-12th grade academic model includes longer school days, Saturday school, and summer school programs. In addition, the YES charter mandates that students must be accepted to a four-year college in order to receive their high school diploma. There are currently five YES campuses in the greater Houston area that serve more than 2,600 low-income students.

YES Prep had grown rapidly. Their telephony solution was disjointed and had not kept pace. Their IT team was investigating Unified Communications (UC) solutions as a low cost and highly effective way to enhance communications and collaboration between campus locations. They were completing the evaluation process at the beginning of the 2008-2009 school year when Hurricane IKE hit the Houston area with devastating consequences. Several of the YES Prep campus locations suffered a great deal of damage, including the complete loss of the existing PBX at two locations. Implementing the UC solution was now a very high priority.

YES Prep chose Microsoft’s UC solution and selected Insource to help them with the design and implementation of the project. The Microsoft solution consists of Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging (UM) and Office Communications Server (OCS). YES Prep was very excited about the benefits of the Microsoft solution and felt that the features provided were in line with their educational goals. Insource implemented the UC solution including voice connectivity to the Publicly Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), to be hosted at their newly relocated data center. For PSTN calls, the UC solution implementation included an AudioCodes Mediant 1000 gateway with the ability to have redundant Primary Rate Interface (PRI) connectivity.

Insource Approach
Insource, working with the participation of Microsoft Corporation and AudioCodes, developed a two-phased approach to the project. This included the analysis and design of the UM and OCS solutions as Phase I and implementation and integration of the approved design implementation as Phase II.

Insource, worked in close collaboration with YES Prep’s IT management to:

• Perform a detailed analysis of YES Prep’s business needs in relation to UC
• Complete a thorough analysis of the campus locations’ telephony needs and dialing habits
• Assess and analyzed the business and technical requirements, including the IT environment, in terms of its readiness for Exchange 2007 UM and OCS
• Develop overall requirements for the Exchange 2007 UM and OCS environments as well as for OWA, Outlook Anywhere, Smartphones, etc.
• Implement Phase II, which included the provisioning, configuration, testing, and rollout of the project

UC Benefits For YES Prep

The YES Prep/Insource team has completed the deployment of the UC solution to all teachers and employees at their home office administrative location as well as the five campus locations. As YES Prep continues to grow, it will continue to realize a number of benefits including significant cost savings through VoIP based telephony, video conferencing, and the collaboration components of the UC system.

Teacher Collaboration and Mentoring
YES Prep has developed an extensive mentoring program created to aid and guide first year teachers through the YES Prep curriculum. With the real-time communication and collaboration tools offered as part of the Microsoft OCS package, teachers are able to more quickly and effectively work with their peers and mentors. Teachers no longer have to wait until their scheduled weekly meetings to obtain guidance on classroom activities, and when needed, mentors can remotely observe classes without disrupting the students. This enhanced interaction will save time, unneeded travel between locations, and allow teachers to unify across campus boundaries.

Realization of Exceptional Growth
This year alone, YES Prep will add two campus locations and approximately 80 new employees to their system. Through UC, YES Prep is now able to rollout VoIP to new campus locations with less investment and complexity and more functionality at a faster pace than was previously possible. With the centralized management of the Microsoft OCS environment and the AudioCodes voice gateway, the IT staff no longer has to maintain a disparate communications environment unique to each campus.
For more information contact Steve Miller at 281.774.4002 or steve.miller@insource.com