The project is being driven by the college's objective to enhance its learning environment and make the user interface for the staff and students much more intuitive, whilst allowing better collaboration internally.

"A single vendor estate based around Microsoft technologies simplifies the IT systems and enables better integration with third party vendors. Providing a common infrastructure also enables us to share ideas and collaborate with our colleagues from other institutions and different vendors," said Steve Williams, IT manager, West Lothian College.

"We chose to work with Salford Software due to its experience within the education sector and proven project management skills of larger projects, including migrations. This is just the beginning of the project – we plan to introduce Microsoft Live@edu and Identity Management once we have the infrastructure in place to do so."

All the desktop computers in the college along with 300 staff profiles will be migrated to Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange Server with all the associated management tools allowing the college to reduce the cost of managing the IT estate and focus on delivering a quality IT provision for the college.

"Salford Software has long been the consultancy of choice for institutions of higher and further education. Our expertise in education is unrivalled, and we are able to help colleges such as West Lothian achieve the best from its IT infrastructure," said James Doggart, managing director, Salford Software.

The project is scheduled to be finished by mid August in time for the beginning of the new academic year.