Das McHenry County College unterstützt jetzt seine Studenten und seine Fakultät mit schnellerem Zugriff, höherer Sicherheit und verbesserten Sicherungs- und Notfall-Wiederherstellungsfunktionen.
SonicWall verfügte über den für uns erforderlichen Malware-Schutz und war wirtschaftlich in der Anschaffung.
Operating on a limited budget with few IT personnel in place to manage complex or disparate systems for the college, Dr. Butler and his team had their work cut out for them. MCC, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, serves 11,500 students annually. With the support of the community college’s administration and its Board of Trustees, Dr. Butler and his team invited vendors to bid on MCC’s technology overhaul, which incorporated improvements in its desktop virtualization, ERP and disaster recovery. Dell and integration partner Avalon Technologies were the clear winners.
MCC had already been using Dell hardware in its PC environment for more than a decade, leasing Dell laptops and servers. “McHenry County College was satisfied with Dell’s services, products and abilities,” says Butler. “And we felt we could do more together.” The college also had previous experience with Avalon Technologies, a Dell Premier Partner whose expertise in data center design and migration services generates efficiencies in performance and cost.
Dr. Butler and Geary Smith, MCC’s director of Technology Support Services, decided that rather than simply swap out the 680 desktop computers the school was leasing for newer models, they would start incorporating desktop virtualization. That is, they would replace outmoded “fat clients” with thin clients and thus also support the school’s increasing move toward a bring-yourown-device (BYOD) policy. To meet these goals, they deployed Dell Wyse thin clients.
Smith says, “There has been increased growth in the need for more devices. But with the virtualization on the client side by using Dell Wyse thin clients, we are getting that growth but not having to turn around 1,000 PCs in a year. And with virtualization in place, we can be more flexible and meet needs much more quickly, especially at our offcampus business training center.”
The deployment process went well and the college has realized significant savings. Dr. Butler says, “By working with Dell and Avalon to compare options, we were able to find the right solution at the right price. An internal assessment showed that MCC will save about $400,000 over five years as a direct result of deploying the Dell Wyse thin clients.”
