IBM is bringing our leadership technology and services to help institutions manage transformation in education.. To help create the learning environment of the future we leverage our core software and services with those of several partners to enable learning inside and outside the classroom. Cognos Business Intelligence and analytics provides insights to student assessment and achievement for teachers to identify the at risk and struggling students early in their academic careers. We work closely with open and community-source learning management system providers, such as Sakai and Moodle, to provide project planning and implementation services to enable schools and colleges to migrate from proprietary licensed software. New learning communities are supported with IBM’s Lotus collaboration tools, which are now available as a cloud service through our LotusLive offering. Finally, we help schools transition from traditional expenditures in PC’s to thin clients and hosted desktops through our Desktop Cloud services. To improve the operational efficiencies of institutions, Cognos performance management provides quick start dashboards and templates to accelerate the implementation of business intelligence systems. We bring the value of Services Oriented Architecture and interoperability standards to education through our implementation services and middleware software integrated with open source administrative application providers, such as Kuali. To help improve the value of technology investments for education, we enable shared services data centers and clouds to bring economies of scale to coalitions of multiple institutions. Finally, our continued leadership in High Performance Computing provides world class computational engines, storage environments, and systems management services to researchers on university campuses. We help regions leverage this investment in academic research to bring about economic development - through strategic planning and project implementation services to define unique capabilities, encourage start up businesses through incubators and create jobs for skilled employees.
Looking at the big picture, there are several forces that further complicate PC management: Desktop managers are forced to deal with issues such as: The exploding number of PC configurations and system images The rising costs of maintaining PCs Providing access to an increasingly distributed workforce Limited control of employee home PCs, as well as partner, and contractor-owned PCs NOTE: Ask your client: How do you ensure all employee PCs are appropriately patched? How many people in your enterprise need safe access to corporate resources? Where are they located? How do telecommuters and partners access corporate resources? Do you have to provision computing environments to outsourced or offshore resources? How many different PC (desktop and laptop) configurations does your IT team manage? How do you enforce compliance with privacy regulations? How do you protect sensitive corporate data on employee PCs?
In today’s economy, many businesses are faced with the challenge of “taking cost out” of their infrastructure while continuing to deliver new , innovative business services - basically they need to “do more with less” There are two primary levers to achieve cost optimization – operating expense and capital expense, and for many businesses its not just a question of lowering costs its also important to strike the right balance between Operational expense and Capital expense Virtualization of Hardware: Drives lower capital requirements. At scale, virtualized environments benefit from economies of scale. Energy Efficiency: Standardization of Workloads: More complexity = less automation possible = people needed Automation and Self Servicet: Take repeatable tasks and automate. Clients who can “serve themselves” require less support and get services Agility: Business and IT Alignment: Service Flexibility: Industry Standards: The more standardization you are able to achieve within your infrastructure, the greater the economies of your operating expenses become. Similarly, the more you leverage virtualization within your IT infrastructure, the greater the economies of your capital expenditures will be. So addressing both standardization and virtualization is key to reduce infrastructure costs, while still meeting the dynamic needs of the business. The need to achieving cost optimization has also provided fertile ground for Cloud Computing. The cloud paradigm is an attempt to improve service delivery by applying engineering discipline and economies of scale in an Internet inspired architecture. Cloud computing can be an important new option in helping businesses optimize the IT expense equation while maintaining fast, high quality service delivery. NOTE: If asked to discuss public vs. private clouds: - A private cloud drives efficiency, while retaining control and greater customization. - Public clouds today are for processes deemed more easily standardized and a lower security risk. There some functions that already exhibit a high degree of standardization, that are more easily moved to a public cloud – things like search, e-commerce, and discreet business processes like sales force management.
What does the Smarter Classroom look like? It starts with a focus on Students, Teachers, Faculty and Administrators. We then leverage 21st century technology to help improve quality, increase access to educational resources and lower costs. It’s built on moving resources and tools into the clouds. The first element is a device-agnostic model that leverages mobile devices and thin clients from a variety of manufacturers. We can leverage these thin devices, using virtualized desktop services. These devices provide all the services and function needed, while all operations and management occur at a centralized location – in a cloud, in a hosted environment. We next create a portal for the teachers and faculty to allow them access to tools like business intelligence to track individual student performance. We have a set of open source e-learning tools and content that teachers can tap into and students can access at a very low-cost, and more importantly – to allow them a more personalized learning experience. The underlying infrastructure of the Smarter Classroom puts the majority of the resources in a centralized, efficiently managed cloud. The cloud allows the school, college or university to utilize thin clients, and via a broadband network, access everything they need. All other functions, costs and resources move out of the local environment, into a well-managed, efficient, virtualized central server location.
Results of a 2009 study by Forrester Research on the total cost of ownership impact of virtual desktops versus traditional classroom lab PC’s. Upgrades & Refreshes Ease of upgrading HW and SW at a lower cost Migrations of legacy applications Software publishing instead of software distribution Reduced Support Costs Reduces installation and configuration issues Speeds time for moves, adds, and changes for users Reduces need for help desk and desk-side support Security & Resiliency Alleviates issues with critical data theft and data back-ups Reduces virus threats Eases compliance eg. HIPPA, Sarbanes-Oxley Resiliency to pandemics Resource Utilization Share hardware resources across multiple users - >75% utilization for virtual Repurpose hardware for ‘Client by day, Enterprise by night’ Reduced downtime, higher availability and higher end user productivity Power savings; 75W for desktop versus 15W for a thin client Manageability Eases hardware & software asset management Easier to standardize infrastructure and services Feasible to provide computing as a ‘chargeable’ service
Goal Significantly increase utilization of valuable computing resources for academic services More effective integration of technology into learning Broaden adoption of virtualization through open source Challenge Demand for academic computing resources were skyrocketing Costs of maintaining growing infrastructure Benefits Projected savings in software licensing costs of up to 75 percent 150 percent increase in students served per application license Higher student satisfaction through more convenient access Improved access to most recent software releases for instructors Increased flexibility to shift computing capacity between instructional, research and administrative needs Ability to meet significant growth in enrollment without building additional computer labs Overall improvement in server utilization levels
We wanted to showcase how key business Objectives drive Business Requirements leads to technology Enablers.
Just want to show key services that are offered or consumed by Students Marketing and Outreach Admissions It and other support functions Academic services Alumni Career Advancement Services
Very important that we must indentify all building blocks that enables various features/services and their co-relation with other IT infrastructure. Also, very important to indentify the External and Internal services
05/25/12 ITS GSR Proposed Layout 4Q
So to start with-it’s probably a good idea to talk a little bit about many of the challenges that K-12 institutions face today when it comes to managing their desktop environments. With the attempt to move towards one to one computing, many schools have a range of notebooks or desktops on hand for students and faculty and managing these can be a real headache for IT departments. IT budgets are tight, but IT is still mandated to deliver the best education and facilities possible to students. And they are being asked to reduce their carbon footprint. K-12 also poses it’s own unique set of challenges with the number of applications that are used and need to be supported. And on physical PCs, this can mean lots of hours of installing and maintaining those apps. Securing data is critical, but increasingly challenging especially with the broad range of devices including mobile devices that are in play and that can very easily be dropped, lost or walk away. OS patches and updates on physical PCs need to be done but can be disruptive and very time consuming, And finally, IT is being asked to provide students with the best possible user experience, but refreshing labs and ensuring students don’t lose their data when their systems crash is not an easy task. And providing support to the range of devices students want to use on campus and off can be a nightmare.
