Why does the Office 365 GCC High tenant exist?

Currently, all faculty, staff and students have access to Office 365 (email, Teams, One Drive, Office apps, etc).  This set of tools is also called the O365 commercial/academic tenant for short.  This tenant can’t be used by researchers who have ITAR data or other higher compliance requirements like EAR, CMMC, or NIST 800-171-v2.  Microsoft sells other tenants to support these higher compliance requirements. 

The University of Iowa has purchased a GCC O365 tenant that initially has been configured to support researchers needing ITAR compliance. 

What are the advantages to this offering?   

The GCC O365 tenant is managed by Microsoft in the US with personnel that are verified US Citizens, with background checks and other requirements that are necessary in order to work with ITAR data.

How do I signup?  

Contact your ETS consultant to verify eligibility and start the workflow process to have an account provisioned. 

Is there a cost?   

Yes.  Around ~$1k per user per year. 

Will I lose access to the academic O365 tenant?   

No.  You’ll continue to have your existing access and your hawkid@uiowa.edu will continue to deliver email into the academic tenant. 

What are some key differences between the academic O365 environment I'm used to working in? 

• Microsoft has to follow a strict process to have applications certified to run in the GCCH tenant.  There can be significant lag for new applications being certified to run in the GC tenant (if they can be certified at all).  This will mean there won’t be feature parity between the academic and GCC O365 tenant.  See MS feature comparisons. 
• The Skype for Business client does not exist in the GCCH tenant.  Use Teams calls instead. 
• Very few to no third-party integrations in the GCCH tenant. 
• Creating new Teams within Microsoft Teams must be requested through the proper ITS channel. 
• OneDrive in GCCH tenant is compliant for storage of sensitive, government documents. 
• You will now have two email accounts.  Your regular academic email of hawkid@uiowa.edu and a new GCC O365 email called hawkid_gov@gov.uiowa.edu 
• You will also have two calendars, one in each tenant.  There is the ability to see “free/busy” between the commercial/education tenant and the GCC tenant.