Orange Unified School District enables 28,000 students to learn securely anywhere with Microsoft 365 A5

Orange Unified School District (OUSD) is a dynamic public school system with a diverse population of students from kindergarten to grade 12. OUSD serves five cities in Orange Country, California and educates approximately 24,500 students across 40 sites. Committed to providing a rigorous and engaging education, OUSD wanted to enable students to learn from anywhere including their homes. To meet that goal, the school district would need to rapidly transform its technolgy environment before the start of the next school year.
 

The search for a new solution led to Microsoft 365 Education A5 and Dynabook Windows devices. 
 

In addition to improving flexibility for students, the school district saw the transition as an opportunity to benefit from the solution’s comprehensive security tools. Tam Nguyen, Chief Technology Officer at Orange Unified School District, observed that cybercriminals were increasingly targeting other school districts. He wanted robust protection against the rising tide of ransomware and credential theft to shield the school district from potential compromise. “It’s not just an IP address, a product, or a service that’s affected. You’re literally talking about the operation of an entire community,” says Tam. “We’re trying to protect students, the community, and the fiscal solvency of the school district.”
 

To successfully manage thousands of devices and students across diverse locations, OUSD also required simpler management. Tam says, “We needed ease-of-deployment, logins that worked everwhere, files that could be accessed anywhere, and one-touch or no-touch deployments.”
 

Investing in commitment

OUSD was looking for a secure, comprehensive and student-centric solution, and technology wasn’t the only factor in the decision. “Microsoft wants to make an impact in K12,” Tam explains. “It’s not that we weren’t agnostic. We worked with different platforms to see which would be best for us. But Microsoft did pour in the most commitment to the education space.”

He adds, “We also believe in the PC. We believe it’s a much more robust device that provides more value, and in the end, will provide students with a better opportunity for a positive outcome after they graduate.” 
 

Trailblazing deployment

The decision had been made, and it was a bold one. “I couldn’t find any other reference in the country for such a large deployment,” says Tam. “So we ordered US$7 million worth of devices, crossed our fingers, and experienced an overwhelmingly successful rollout and a huge success story.” 
 

OUSD had just a few months to complete the rollout before the school year started in September. The school district used Windows Autopilot to ultimately deploy approximately 30,000 Dynabook laptops without a hitch. “To deploy just 20 devices back in the day with all the different management tools you needed to use, and the applications you had to install, was daunting,” says Tam. “But with the same IT department, we rolled out 20,000 devices at a time with Microsoft 365, which is nothing short of a miracle.” 
 

The school district uses School Data Synch (SDS) to integrate with its student information system, and takes advantage of Microsoft Entra ID for secure single sign on across more than 70 school applications plus Microsoft OneDrive and Microsoft Teams. Using Microsoft Edge on their new devices, students and staff can sign into their personalized dashboards from anywhere. 
 

Building a robust security posture  

OUSD began the school year with a transformed learning environment and more robust, streamlined security management. For example, the school district replaced its standalone spam filter with the Advanced Threat Protection available with its Microsoft 365 solution, Microsoft Defender for Endpoint and Microsoft Defender for Cloud apps.
 

Microsoft Intune for Education, Microsoft Entra ID and security features seamlessly work with productivity applications such as OneDrive and Microsoft Exchange for email, providing OUSD more visibility, simplicity, and control. 
 

“Microsoft 365 not only protects against current threats, it also strengthens our security posture by enabling us to enforce conditional access from anywhere,” says Tam. “All of the systems inform each other so there is a better assessment of security risk. For example, if you’re signing on from a risky location while traveling, you’ll be prompted for multifactor authentication.” 
 

Improving insights and security compliance

David Lane, Assistant Director of Client Services at Orange Unified school District, appreciates the visibility the solution provides across diverse technologies, devices, and locations. His team uses Microsoft Purview to identify potential risks and close gaps before a breach occurs. “It’s amazing to see the topology of your IT environment, make changes, and see how that affects devices in near real-time,’ he says. “It’s important to me that Microsoft wants to help organizations improve security management.  There’s so much risk out there and it’s constantly changing. The dashboard brings potential vulnerabilities to our attention so that we can constantly improve our environment.” 
 

By using Microsoft Purview to improve visibility across its assets and security solutions, OUSD is also better equipped to meet changing regulatory requirements. “Our insurance carriers now require cybersecurity as a condition of coverage,” says Tam. “That requirement happened within a year, and it’s one of the biggest feathers in our cap that we had those safeguards in place.”   
 

Streamlining IT management and deployment

It’s easier to make improvements when management processes are more streamlined and efficient. The school district has exponentially scaled the number of devices it can provison with a small IT team.   
 

“We had 18 people managing 5,000 devices with the old system,” says David. “With Microsoft 365, we’re managing 30,000 devices and raised our headcount by two. However you do the math, it’s impressive.” 
 

Capabilities like zero-touch deployment not only help the OUSD IT team do more with less, but they also improve satisfaction for employees, students, and their parents. “Because devices are ready to go when students sign on, a librarian or someone without a tech background can issue a laptop to a student immediately.” 
 

Out-of-the-box deployment also makes employee onboarding easier, a competitive advantage in today’s tight job market. The Microsoft 365 platform integrates with the school district HR process, so that new hires get a device that’s ready to go when they sign their contract. 
 

Empowering students through digital access

OUSD replaced most of its existing devices with PCs, now mostly upgraded to Windows 11. The devices are enabling exciting new opportunities for students. David notes, “Our middle schools and higher grades have been leveraging a really interesting robotics, science, and math program that has tools for augmented reality, and we couldn’t do that with our previous device.” 
 

Tam agrees, “I honestly believe we’re helping kids better prepare for their careers after high school by moving to Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 PCs. “Because to be competitive in the real world, you need to be able to work with the same technologies that business use.”  
 

By transforming its technology environment, OUSD can improve digital access while safeguarding data and privacy. As a result, the school district has enriched the learning environment for a growing population of students. David concludes, “The fact that we can deliver families a device and provide access to learning tools from anywhere is game-changing. It’s just amazing that our district can do this for every student.”