Do your customers ask you how to do more with less?
Netech, a Cisco Gold Certified and Master Unified Communications Specialized Partner headquartered in Michigan, helped Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), the largest school district in Indiana, to do just that.
When IPS faced the challenge of providing their students and staff with access to technology, they needed to make their IT infrastructure more efficient and manageable-with limited funds. They looked to Netech for help.
In the end, Netech helped IPS virtualize their data center, reduce their physical servers from 300 to 17, and save a million dollars in hardware costs and services.
So how did they achieve these impressive results with their limited budget? I chatted with Ann Garcia, Netech Account Executive for IPS, and Scott DeShong, Netech Senior Systems Engineer, to get the details.
Ann said, “IPS pushes Netech as a partner, and Cisco’s technology, in ways that most customers don’t do. If we can decrease the cost of deploying a desktop from $9 to $8.50, that’s 50 cents more per desktop they can use to spend on education.” It’s because of this unique perspective that Netech was able to push the technology to the very limits of what it can sustain.
Question: What was Netech’s role in IPS’ decision to virtualize its servers and desktops?
Netech: We initially started assisting IPS with the network issues within their data center. We noticed they had an overly complicated configuration involving a multitude of equipment manufacturers and it was starting to sprawl out beyond what they could control. IPS needed a way to make their environment more manageable.
We started talking with IPS about the Cisco Data Center solution. We covered networking, core, distribution, storage, and eventually, compute. We offered an end-to-end data center solution, which reduced the number of their managed network connection points by approximately 70 percent and their physical servers from 300 to 17. Now, we’re implementing virtual desktops. IPS has become one of the largest K-12 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environments and the blade platform is built on Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).
Question: What were some of the benefits of IPS virtualizing its servers?
Netech: First of all, manageability. Virtualizing their servers has allowed IPS to be more responsive to the educational needs of their students.
Then there’s flexibility. Schools are typically limited to the cycle of not touching or changing anything in their environment for nine months during the school year and then making all of their changes during a two to three month window in the summer. Because of their virtualized data center, IPS can take a three-hour window to completely alter their 5,000 desktops. They have the ability to deploy new applications, textbooks, or even standardized testing as necessary. And they’re able to reallocate their resources as necessary for any kind of workload they have. It’s given them complete flexibility over an otherwise stagnant environment.
They also have a huge vision around VDI from a home-user perspective and increasing interaction with parents.
Question: What challenges did you encounter and how did you help IPS overcome them?
Netech: We had quite a few technical challenges. Integrating with different vendors and manufacturers of equipment is one example. At the end of the day, I can’t say enough about Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC). When you really need them, they’re there for you. Other companies typically keep pointing fingers.
Having our engineer be lead on this project was also key in overcoming political challenges. We went in with the idea that, “Okay, we’re a part of IPS’ team. We’ve got to get integrated with them so that we can deliver what they need, when they need it. And make sure that the project gets delivered on time and on budget.”
Having IPS view us in that role and having a wonderful support mechanism in Cisco TAC helped bring everything together.
