When people hear “back-to-school” they’re likely thinking about new school supplies, not managing data systems or data recovery, but for Zycom Technology Inc. it’s about the latter.
The Toronto-based company is an IT solution provider that helped Limestone District School Board in the Kingston area update its student information system (SIS).
For Limestone DSB its SIS provides key information about its students from enrollment to graduation, helping to keep track of 19,000 students. With such a large number of students, keeping that much data secure isn’t easy. That’s where Zycom comes in.
“[We] helped the school board develop a cloud strategy that ensures educators can continue to manage data, maximize student success and communicate with families in the event of a data centre disaster,” said Mike Lucas, vice-president of operations at Zycom.
The SIS was in need of more robust data recovery and disaster recovery capabilities, claimed Lucas. To address this Zycom created a system that backs-up the school board’s data from its on-premises virtual machines, using Veeam and replicates that data to the private cloud with its hosting partner HostedBizz.
A disaster recovery system then allows Limestone DSB to recover any data on its virtual machines that’s been uploaded to the cloud, helping keep the students’ data more secure in the case of a disaster, said Lucas.
These solutions helped reduced the school board’s IT costs by 70 per cent, saving $70,000 each year, which, said Lucas, Limestone DSB plans to use to improve technology across the school board and possibly enhance the classroom experience.
“Zycom, HostedBizz and Veeam help us protect the information that drives instructional decision-making in our district, engages families in the learning process and fuels business operations. We know our SIS is available nonstop,” said Mike Legros, systems integrator at Limestone DSB.