Westbrook High School Virtualize their Desktops

Westbrook High School needed to reduce the day-to-day challenges of their workforce

One year ago, Westbrook High School, a public high school in the state of Maine, wanted to find a better way to implement and support the technology needs of their vocational students. As a school that believes in hands-on, task-oriented instruction for the development of real-world skills and knowledge, their students need to be able to work with the latest versions of software programs. The challenge however is being able to update all computers in their environment without neglecting their entire IT infrastructure to do so.

Today, with the help of CBE Technologies, a platinum citrix (Ardence) partner, they have reduced the time it takes to deploy images within their labs – accelerating program deployment and patch time from a full week per program to 30 minutes. And, at the same time, they have eliminated the need to touch every computer to make these updates.

Business Challenge – image deployment issues, trying to keep up with lab space growth

In 2007 Westbrook High School was deploying all images with single deployment for each computer. With only two labs for their vocational school and additional computers in various locations, this was extremely time consuming but manageable. Their main challenge came when they made the choice to grow their vocational lab locations from two to four expanding the “hands-on” experience of their students.

Most schools need to tackle patch updates for programs such as windows, adobe, web browsers, os updates, etc. When you add the extra element of a vocational learning environment, you need to be sure you have the latest version of those programs as well as more specific programs such as automotive engineering design programs. If students aren’t using the most up-to-date programs of these programs, the vocational element fails because you are not preparing them for the current business environment.

In addition to the vocational lab growth, the school put forth an initiative to provide 4 computers for every classroom over the next two years.

As the school considered their impending growth and the need for a supporting technology strategy, it became clear that they would need to find a better way for program updates and deployments within their environment.

Virtualization Solution – Virtualize their desktops.

Westbrook turned to their long-term IT services partner CBE Technologies to help find a scalable IT solution for their needs. CBE Technologies began by assessing Westbrook’s current information technology processes and requirements, taking a look at various solutions for their impending growth.

Together, CBE and Westbrook created a technology plan that allowed for future growth by simplifying their IT environment while at the same time providing more agility. Using Citrix provided both their school and their vocational center with a better environment for the students educational needs.

Key components of the new technology environment include:

• Servers, allowing quick updates to software packages with limited hands on requirements
• Microsoft SQL Server for state-of-the-art data and application requirements
• Citrix Access Suite with Presentation Server that provides the delivery of core and office automation applications from the datacenter to the client computing devices across the organization
• Citrix Password Manager that provides password security and managed access to applications
• HP server and storage infrastructure for reliability, failover and business continuity, backup and redundancies with scalability for growth
• PCs and Thin Clients in the branch offices with no local drives or storage thus eliminating the potential of distributed sensitive data while allowing the IT staff to perform more efficient and cost-effective end-user support
• Design, implementation and ongoing support services from IT partner CBE Technologies

“Our labs are now better suited for Adult Education Programs as well as our student population” said Tyler Dunphy, Director of Technnology for Westbook High Schools “As we add more labs, applications and users, our Ardence Platform gives us complete control for easy rollout and updates.”

Business Results – elimination of week-long rollouts, reduced IT support costs, the same IT staff and CBE Technologies

Over the last year, Westbrook has gained a number of benefits from this solution that have enabled it to enhance its quality of service and offerings to the students. These benefits include:

• Westbrook’s IT staff is now able to deploy new program updates and patches in minutes for all labs compared to the previous time requirement of at least a day for each deployment. The staff can make changes on the Ardence server, allowing a roll out on all machines from a single location saving time and money.
• Ease of deployment method allows the IT staff to focus on the schools technology needs rather than trying to keep up the constant program deployments.
• Ability to maintain the same levels of IT staffing even as they have grown from 2 labs to 4
• Reliable, secure and scalable computing infrastructure poised for continuity, growth and disaster recovery

Tyler Dunphy, Director of Technnology states, “We were looking for a way to simplify our IT Management load, while maintaining the same head count. CBE gave us the ability to take less time with deployments and focus on our core infrastructure”