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U.S. School Districts Transform Education for the Digital Age with VMware View

 

U.S. School Districts Transform Education for the Digital Age with VMware View

Desktop Virtualization with VMware View reduces IT maintenance cost and complexity while providing schools with the tools needed for teaching critical 21st century skills and improving students’ learning experience

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Oct. 27, 2010 –Helping transform education for the digital age, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced growing momentum for desktop virtualization in the classroom with VMware View™.

Using desktop virtualization with VMware View, kindergarten through 12th grade students and teachers gain access to enhanced learning resources and digital content on school networks or remotely via the Internet. Additionally, VMware View enables the growing trend of students bringing their own laptop or connected devices to school by providing a secure virtual desktop that is managed and controlled by the school’s IT department. As a result, VMware helps blend technology into school life, from lesson plans to homework, increasing time spent learning 21st century skills versus managing technology.

For school IT administrators, VMware View provides the ability to reduce cost and complexity by enabling them to manage virtual desktops centrally in the datacenter. Applications are installed, upgraded and patched once, then securely delivered over the network to any device, including PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets and thin clients. At the same time, the school’s IT team can eliminate the time previously required to manage and support individual desktop computers, and instead apply precious personnel and budget resources to other important projects.

Center Grove Community School Corporation, Indiana:

Located 20 minutes south of downtown Indianapolis, Center Grove Community School Corporation, the public school district that serves the White River Township, recognized that 21st century students have unique and changing educational needs which often require cutting-edge teaching methods and tools.  Center Grove’s Early College program features a 1-to-1 laptop program that leverages VMware View desktop virtualization technology to deliver mobile computing resources to students and teachers.

The Early College virtualization project was so successful; Center Grove’s IT team began to look for ways to expand the program.  In addition to purchasing new Dell laptops the district repurposed 460 old desktops as virtual clients, saving the school district $325,000 in additional hardware costs.  The desktop lifecycle which used to be four to five years has been extended to as long as seven to eight years with desktop virtualization. As a result of the school’s early success, the district plans to roll out more than 2,400 virtual desktops based on VMware View.

School District of Somerset, Wisconsin:

In its efforts to achieve a 1-to-1 computer-to-student ratio for its 1,650 students and 225 faculty members, the School District of Somerset adopted VMware View to extend the life of its existing desktops and let students safely use their own computers to access school content and applications. In addition, the solution helps the district contain ongoing operational costs and lets students and school administrators stay productive by enabling anytime access to school assignments and applications from any device. They simply launch VMware View and their “school desktop” is delivered to their machine.

Ontario Montclair School District, California:

Located in Southern California, Ontario Montclair School District (OMSD) provides kindergarten through eighth grade education for about 23,000 students. Looking for a more flexible and cost effective way to get computers into the hands of its students, OMSD turned to VMware for a virtual desktop solution with HP mobile thin clients. Using VMware View and VMware ThinApp, OMSD now provides students with district-wide access to applications, such as Rossetta Stone language arts courseware, while allowing the district’s small IT team to retain control and management of more than 2,000 mobile thin clients.

Supporting Quotes:

 “VMware technology removes obstacles.  And ultimately, it’s the teachers and students who benefit the most.  The technology is never in the way of the academic experiences.  Everyone can access the software they need from a robust machine that works the way it’s supposed to every time.  That is what really speaks to the beauty of VMware View™ in my opinion.”
— Julie Bohnenkamp, director of technology, Center Grove

“As long as they can connect to it from an eligible client — whether that is a PC, a Mac, an iPad or similar device — we can still give our students and faculty the same look and feel for the applications that they need for their learning environment at school.”
— Ryan Sicard, IT director, School District of Somerset

“VMware View™ allows us to get more laptops into hands of more children. By deploying virtual desktops, we give our educators the tools they need to prepare students as they enter high school and beyond.  VMware View provides teachers with a more dependable, consistent technology that links back to the districts datacenter, so they don’t have to worry about updates and can focus their time and effort on helping students.  We believe that it's going to help our department meet the expectations for supporting those teachers and students, in a cost effective way.”
— Jeremy Wood; technology planning coordinator, Ontario Montclair School District

VMware’s End User Computing Vision

More than ever, organizations are dealing with two fundamental client computing pain points – providing secure data access to an increasing number of mobile users, and managing the burgeoning diversity of data, applications and client devices needed for their organizations to thrive. Establishing a new end user computing model to address these pain points is a fundamental component of VMware’s IT as a Service vision.

VMware’s IT as a Service strategy seeks to free users and IT from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing and deliver a more consumer-focused cloud experience for the enterprise. IT as a Service is the transformation of IT to a more business-centric approach, focusing on outcomes such as operational efficiency, competitiveness and rapid response. This means IT shifts from producing IT services to optimizing production and consumption of those services in ways consistent with business requirements. This changes the role of IT from a cost center to a center of strategic value.

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About VMware:

VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform – VMware vSphere™ – customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2009 revenues of $2.9 billion, more than 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com

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VMware,and VMware View, are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.