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Case Study: Cloud PC Deployment in Education

Did you know that millions of students all over the world went back to school this fall, without their PCs? Not only is it true – they did it happily, because educational institutions are learning how to benefit from the cloud revolution. These organizations are benefitting from a lower total cost of ownership that improves and simplifies security and management while giving them improved reliability over their old PC environment.

Some schools have implemented a new cloud model based on the data center that replaces the old traditional dispersed and fragmented PC model. This provides a centralized and unified repository that makes use of today’s powerful cloud-based software. Core to the new system is the virtualized server which, when integrated with cloud-based software in networked learning centers, computer labs and libraries, creates a safe and virus-free quality learning environment.

Virtualization and Cost Savings

A case in point is Sullivan University System. It is Kentucky’s largest post-secondary institution with a range of offerings from certificates to diplomas and advanced degrees in a wide variety of disciplines. With over 8,500 students and six campuses, the IT department is more than busy ensuring that applications and computing resources for both students and teachers in all of the labs and classrooms are meeting their needs. In addition, IT must make sure that the school administration has all the application support it requires to keep the school running efficiently.

A decision was recently made to extend virtualization to the desktop across the campuses deploying 300 devices that centrally manage 80 applications. With this ability to use the cloud for desktop deployment, the school could teach in a safe and secure student-proof environment where desktop controls and icons can be locked down to introduce everything from new accounting principles to culinary demonstrations.

Sullivan’s CTO Mike Grosse explains, “IT is central to the mission of the school. But like so many universities, we’re feeling the economic crunch. We’re constantly being challenged to provide state-of-the-art resources at bargain-basement prices. I didn’t want to have to think about the endpoint device at all. (This) was the missing piece that enabled us to move wholly to the virtual desktop model. And the results have been everything I’d hoped for.”

The Energy-Efficient Cloud

Nebraska’s Mammel Hall is the lone gold LEED-certified academic building in the state. It sits on the Omaha campus of the University of Nebraska as part of the new College of Business Administration (CBA) facility. The hall is a center for the CBA’s 2,500 students, 2,100 of which are there as undergrads. Back in 2008, energy-efficiency and the LEED certification were high on the list of qualifications when they started the process for design.

Part of that plan became the state-of-the-art energy efficient dual-screen thin clients that come complete with cloud-based VMware on the back end. Because of the minimal upkeep that these devices require, the university was able to deploy more than the original plan called for, bringing today’s total to 230 that are fully accessible by students and staff alike.

“I honestly believe that a full transition to thin clients is the only way to go, especially for organizations that want to cut costs, save energy and human resources, and increase productivity all at the same time,” stated David Nielsen, Director of Technology and Budget and Building Manager, College of Business Administration at University of Nebraska at Omaha. “(Our) thin clients enabled us to meet all these requirements — and provide a valuable lesson for our students that you don’t have to compromise performance for sustainability. In fact, the opposite — …we’ve shown that the best choice for sustainability can be the best choice — period.”

The Cloud Brings Flexibility

Sometimes the scenario a school presents is not in requirements for a new building, but accommodating unexpected growth. That was the situation for Oswego Community Unit School District when it saw an increase in headcount by 54%. They were planning on doubling their current structures from 11 to 22 by building 11 new school buildings. However, they also had to plan for the fact that their IT department had just been reduced at a time when they needed to handle more students. Add to the situation that the students, ranging in age from 5 years old to 11, had to share computers, and chaos could easily have erupted.

Instead Oswego saw this as an opportunity to transform its computing infrastructure and, as a result, has been seen as a model for both the business and education community. The biggest change came from the IT team’s decision to move all twenty-two of the buildings to be serviced through a cloud computing system that includes both a cloud server and desktop virtualization. This allows the users to gain remote access, bring their own devices and creates a truly sustainable computing infrastructure for the entire district.

Allen Clasen, the Director of Information Systems at Oswego Community Unit School District, was more than pleased with the end result. Clasen explained the benefits with clarity, “We have virtualized our entire educational infrastructure by replacing PCs with thin and zero clients; expanding them into the classroom where computers did not previously exist. The end result is a massive expansion of learning time for students. Gone are the long boot and login times. Now, 95% of the time a student spends in the computer lab is productively focused on learning activities. All this, even while maintaining an IT to end user ratio of 1,000 to 1.”

The school district was able to avoid millions of dollars in PC replacement costs, and enhance staff skill sets by moving to a cloud environment combining servers and EMC storage and VMWare with thin and zero client devices.

The Future of Education is the Cloud

The cloud evolution has moved into the educational arena with ease and speed that even many in the world of virtualization were not prepared for five years ago. As more of these opportunities arise, we are going to see the cloud emerge as a solution for crowded schools, a way to help keep the costs of education in line and at the same time providing our students with state of the art and readily accessible tools that will teach them anything they want to learn.

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Preparation is Key for Businesses Moving to the Cloud

It probably feels like everyone is talking about the move to the cloud today. It is considered one of the biggest game-changers to come along since the development of the web. And while it is true that cloud topics are top-of-mind, it doesn’t mean that the benefits and challenges for an organization are always well understood. Companies who are considering moving some of their business to the cloud need to take the time to plan and train anyone involved in the venture. A specific plan for how the implementation will proceed is critical for a successful launch. A company needs to have a very clear vision on business strategy and what gains they hope to achieve with a move to the cloud.

It all begins with a look at what the drivers for change are within your organization’s business plan and how a move to the cloud fits with these needs. With the current business climate, many enterprises are looking closely at new ways to prioritize business revenue while reducing operating costs. Of course, both of these cannot help if you are not finding ways to win over new customers.

What is Cloud Computing for You?

At its most basic, it is important for your business to understand that cloud computing is not actually a technology; it is a delivery system of services. When you pool various resources such as compute power, storage capacity and applications and have them delivered as a service, you share these resources amongst users and organizations through a cloud service provider. This gives you economy of scale and is the most common form of cloud computing, often referred to as a multi-tenancy model of cloud computing.

Your cloud service provider has built massive data centers to house this multi-tenancy cloud service and it is that massive scaling ability that makes cloud computing so cost efficient for many. It is very much like the difference between buying a bus to go to work each day versus paying your fare to use the bus to get to work. The capacity for more is there and the cost is shared by those who use it, only when they use it.

Because you only pay for what you use, cloud computing can be much more effective at controlling costs than if you were to outsource the same service. With a cloud, an enterprise uses the IT resources it needs as it needs them, pays for them based on actual usage and not a flat fee, and doesn’t pay for services it doesn’t need at the time. If you aren’t traveling on that bus one week because you are on vacation (to continue to use the bus analogy), then you don’t pay your fare that week and your monthly costs are less. In the same way, if you only need specific computation power for that end of the month analysis, you only pay for what you use. Resources that aren’t used are returned to the pool for others to use.

The Questions on Security

While the cloud can be highly cost effective, some organizations have greater concerns because of security needs. The model shown above is for what is commonly called a “public cloud” where there are multiple clients that share servers. For those that have security issues, a “private cloud” that is still accessed as needed but not shared with other enterprises can be a good alternative. A large organization with multiple locations could have a private cloud that shares resources across their own cloud, but with that cloud inside a protected premise that is more secure. Using the bus analogy, it is like having a company bus that only picks up those within the organization. Cost is shared but there are no concerns with strangers on the bus. Whether that is a true security concern or not everyone feels safer.

Some Self-Service Concerns

For a company whose IT department is often overloaded with business department requests, the “self-service” element of the cloud is very appealing. With the elimination of having to go to the IT department every time a new service is needed, smart business departments gain time to market and service transparency by simply browsing their IT department “service catalog”, configuring and adding department needs to their “shopping cart”. The monthly fee is charged back to that department and the service is implemented in a timely manner. Success in this type of service deployment is contingent on implementing proper access controls.

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Five Security Questions to Ask When Moving to the Cloud

As game changing as the cloud is for business, it is important to remember that it is still in an early stage of development. Due to little standardization in cloud structure, it is vital that any CIO considering moving to the cloud consider a variety of security issues. NetIQ’s Patrick Eijkenboom suggests five security questions be part of a careful and studied approach before making the jump to cloud.

We already know that the cloud is a disruptive influence that will push many organizations to examine how to evolve to fit into the world of cloud computing. Cloud First initiatives in both government and media are being encouraged and the emergence of cloud technology is already presenting some significant challenges for security standards and practices. Most of these challenges are due to security variables from vendor to vendor and a lack of basic standard practices across the board. None of this is new, but the cloud tends to amplify the issues by its very nature.

This is not to say that moving to the cloud is unsafe, but to point out that some enterprise applications require deeper consideration when crafting a cloud strategy. It is understandable for CIOs to get anxious about moving as much as possible to the cloud. But there are a few specific questions, centered on security, that every CIO should consider when outlining a migration plan.

1. What is the size of your organization? It should be obvious that size does matter when it comes to security and the cloud. A smaller business can actually find it more secure to operate all systems in a common framework, while many medium to larger companies may use a mix of private cloud adaptations for most of their operations with public cloud outside of key systems.
2. What are your cloud environment needs? It is important to realize that the cloud environment you will adopt will be driven by the differing opportunities between private, public and hybrid clouds. While a private cloud may offer greater protection of the enterprise’s IP and create the ability for SLAs to be protected and maintained, the public cloud services offered with a public cloud may be more appropriate for your organization. A hybrid may offer greater capabilities for your business, but it is always a priority to explore the security capabilities to both sides of the cloud in any scenario.
3. Can you fulfill security regulations and requirements for your industry in the cloud? This is a vital question for just about any organization. There could be gaps between your industry regulations and the parameters that are available on the cloud. Can you define the regulations that your businesses is required to work within? What about the sensitivity of customer and company data? International regulation and standards requirements will need to be supported by the cloud for it to be effective. Can you apply your current encryption requirements to the cloud environment you are considering and can you manage that access? These are all vital security questions that must be part of the consideration process.
4. Does your cloud strategy include risk evaluation?It is vital that a risk-based assessment of your cloud migration be a part of your approach. The sensitivity level of all applications and information needs to be considered and provider controls as well as specific virtualization controls need to be part of the decision process. Here are a few elements to consider:
   • Cloud providers’ transparency is very important to create trust. Whether in public clouds where visibility is low or in private clouds, clear parameters of responsibility of services will be vital.
   • How your data is handled, being protected, backed up and fully deleted when required will be important not only for your own protection but also in regards to regulatory requirements. Know what happens to your data in the cloud.
   • What is your governance model? Does it go beyond policies to include user access management and incident response? Look into the flow between cloud provider and your organization to ensure clear communication.
   • Can resources, data and access be tracked across the asset management system, including data classification? Does the data classification run separately or with the application?
   • Can you access and audit security data logging to ensure an ability to limit damage by always knowing who is doing what and when. Do you know the security protocols for how changes are logged and audited?
5. Which best practices are you adopting? Even with the relative newness of the cloud, there are places to go for guidance and best practice tools. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a good place to look for this information or any cloud providers who are members of CSA.

It is important as you continue to build more of your enterprise in the cloud that compliance questions posed both internally and externally are answerable before the questions are even asked. As you begin to build the instruments that will allow you to address risk management questions the best way to start is by asking those questions yourself. Due diligence and intelligent considerations of cloud computing security standards will make the move to the cloud a safer and smarter choice.

Our newsletters and blogs are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. We invite you to engage in our online community by following us on Twitter @GMOCloud and ‘Liking’ us on Facebook.

GMO Cloud iPad 2 Giveaway Sweepstakes

iPad 2 Sweepstakes

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To Enter: Just “Like” our Facebook page and Complete the Entry Form for a chance to win! Good Luck!

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The Cloud Takes on Baseball with the Tampa Bay Rays

This week we are going to look at how a Major League Baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays, uses a private cloud and plenty of virtual muscle to get it through one of the longest seasons in professional sports. What started as a need to solve a problem (IT was told they needed to bring down their electricity costs and they were running out of space at their on-site data center) grew to be a game changer that in the end revolutionized their approach to team IT support.

In 2007 the operations department told the Director of IT Juan Ramirez that the main data center in Saint Petersburg, Florida was consuming too much electricity and Ramirez knew that they were running out of room. They needed to find a way to expand to a new data center that would last the organization at least 5-10 years, use less electricity and they couldn’t ask for more space. That was when they decided to go virtual.

The original goal was to put 50% of the operation onto a private cloud. They began with four hosts and soon found that they only needed half the physical space they were using in Saint Petersburg and could expand when needed until today they are on ten hosts with 95% of the IT operations in the cloud.

They needed to support 300 users that cover 162 games a year, and during the season the support needs to be 24×7. This support also includes the spring training camp at Port Charlotte, whose data center was folded into the cloud at the same time. The applications run the gamut from a homegrown SQL to a Windows application front-end and web-based Great Plains finance software. New applications need to be added in a matter of hours – not days and the Customer Relationship Management system runs on a proprietary application from Ticketmaster. With close to thirty different applications being run on a daily basis, it is a fast enterprise that needs a fast moving IT Department to keep it running smoothly.

At this point, every new application that is introduced resides in the cloud; nothing sits on a physical server at either of the two locations. With the migration from 250 laptops for remote users to tablets, all users are now on the same system and every machine is always up-to-date. Agents, managers, scouts and anyone out in the field now has a tablet and can sign in from anywhere for all of their needs.

Over the years the organization had been having problems with lost or stolen laptops, resulting in proprietary information going astray and sensitive information that could get into the wrong hands. With the cloud holding all the information, any missing tablet can be shut down immediately. This has made insurance much easier to deal with for the organization.

Even more importantly, the ROI has been tremendous. Ramirez did some research recently to discover the actual return on the initial investment for the two data centers and was surprised to find the return was 24 months, far faster than originally planned. So hurricane or not, long playing season or short, with a totally automated system in the cloud, it is going to be a good season for the Tamp Bay Rays IT Department, every season.

Our newsletters and blogs are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. We invite you to engage in our online community by following us on Twitter @GMOCloud and ‘Liking’ us on Facebook.