Pembina Trails
Pembina Trails School Division gives top marks to its consolidated Microsoft platform
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Company Overview
Pembina Trails School Division was created in July 2002, from the amalgamation of two Winnipeg school divisions – Assiniboine South and Fort Garry. It consists of 33 schools with a Kindergarten-Secondary student population of just under 14,000.
Business Challenge
Following the merger, Pembina Trails’ IT department had to contend with a mixture of operating systems (including Macintosh, Linux, Unix and Windows NT®4.0 operating system), and aging clone hardware. The organization needed to consolidate its IT systems on a consistent platform to deliver comprehensive services for teachers, administration staff and students, and also improve security.
“We basically had two systems which we felt were unreliable, and we had to get them in working shape before we could roll out the new software,” says Don Reece, director of IT, Pembina Trails. “The goal we sold to our Board trustees was a four-year cyclic replacement where every machine needing to be replaced would be, and at that point we would install the most current version of Microsoft® Windows® operating system and Microsoft Office on the new hardware.”
With an objective to replace older, high-maintenance equipment with newer, fully supported devices that enable remote management and automated operations, Pembina Trails arranged for Microsoft Canada Co. to conduct a Gartner Total Cost of Ownership analysis midway through its four-year cyclic hardware replacement schedule.
The TCO report found that the organization would save over $2 million per year in operating costs by moving to a unified Microsoft software-based platform with Active Directory® directory service
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Solution
Pembina Trails began deploying Windows Server™ 2003 operating system with Active Directory, Office 2003 and Windows XP Professional Edition in tandem with its cyclical hardware upgrades, scheduled to be complete in 2006.
“We’re in year two of our replacement schedule, and feel that after four years we’ll be saving a substantial amount by having new hardware,” says Reece. “A standardized platform will allow our teachers to have a consistent plug-and-play experience as they move from building to building, with far less demand on the IT help desk. Issues can be solved more easily using Active Directory.”
Maintaining connectivity was a major goal for Pembina Trails’ IT department, because it allows technicians to service work orders online. With Active Directory, solutions to problems are scripted so if they re-occur, technicians have the right fix at their fingertips. The result is less network downtime.
“Now, our network guys can virtually visit machines to repair things, and having the fixes scripted means fewer technicians can do more jobs,” says Reece. “And we don’t end up having to do service calls because someone can’t read a PDF, or they don’t have the current version of our proprietary software. Now, we can push what they need from the servers using Active Directory to their machine.”
As well, the mixed environment Pembina Trails was running was expensive to maintain. Much of the network’s upkeep was outsourced to third parties, which was costly and inefficient. “One of our targets was to eliminate outsourcing,” says Reece. “Now, we don’t outsource anything. It’s all internal, and I can guarantee that the downtime is substantially less.”
Microsoft worked with Pembina Trails to facilitate the four-year rollout plan. And while a budget-conscious organization, Pembina Trails was more concerned with getting the best solution than worrying about price.
“We don’t want to do what most school divisions do, and that is be driven by price. We researched our needs for six months before beginning our upgrade program, so we knew what solution we needed and wouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel,” says Reece. “We felt that Novell was actually less expensive for us to buy, but in our view we’d pay for it in the training, downtime, functionality and maintenance. I felt that the Windows-based interface was more intuitive, and that I could move the network techs from Linux and Novell to Windows more quickly and efficiently than I could move the Windows and Novell techs to Linux.”
Pembina Trails had investigated a Linux solution prior to consolidating on the Microsoft-based platform. After pricing out Linux training and hardware costs, plus the learning curve for users, Reece says they believed the Microsoft option proved to be a better deal.
“We took a real hard look at Star Office, and ran a one-year pilot with that technology in one of our schools. But for a variety of reasons, including support costs, we chose to go with a Windows-based system,” says Reece.
Business Benefits
With an IT staff of 40 people performing a 100-person workload (as estimated by the Gartner TCO study), Pembina Trails’ resources were stretched to the max. Deploying Active Directory® has helped the IT department become even more efficient in performing routine maintenance tasks, freeing them up to work on more complex projects within the organization.
“We’re definitely seeing some savings in terms of technician time,” says Reece. “We have four fewer staff members than last year, and with the rollout underway we’ve got more machines to deal with. We’ve done about a third more service calls, but with Active Directory, we’re able to do more work with less people. The majority of the service calls relating to Active Directory are completed remotely using Terminal Services online.”
As well, the cyclic replacements have brought about cost savings and decreased repairs on the hardware side, because Pembina Trails’ IT department has been reducing the number of local servers from five to two with each upgrade. Once the four-year cyclic upgrade program is complete, Pembina Trails is confident it can realize the $2 million in annual savings forecasted by the Gartner TCO study. “We’ve already saved $180,000 in the initial phase of the Microsoft-based rollout -- $120,000 in IT costs, and $60,000 in salary costs from the reduction of one full-time equivalent position,” says Reece.
Consolidating on the Microsoft-based platform with Active Directory has also reduced network downtime, and has helped Pembina Trails make its network more secure and more functional. This has translated into a better experience for teachers, administration staff and students.
Previously, there was no consistency in desktop software across the organization. With machines running everything from Windows 95 and Windows 2000 to Windows NT (not to mention the Assiniboine South division, which was running a Macintosh-based environment), it was crucial to move everything to the same platform to ensure a uniform user experience. Migrating the school division’s desktops to Windows XP has gone a long way toward solving this problem.
With Windows XP, Pembina Trails was able to create a more stable desktop system, decreasing the burden on the IT department and providing users with a more reliable PC environment. In addition, by moving users to Office 2003, teachers and staff are able to better collaborate and share information with each other and students – increasing productivity across the organization.
“Teachers were having trouble sharing documents – someone running Windows 95 and Office 97 couldn’t open a document from someone running Windows XP Pro and Office 2003. Setting things up to make everyone compatible with the older programs meant we weren’t getting the optimal use out of our new software,” says Reece. “We’ve got a lot of building-to-building mobility in our school division, and now, midway through the rollout, people are seeing more consistent technology with a familiar interface that’s easy to use.
“We don’t use Windows because we’re fans of Windows. We use it because it’s the best product, and it helps solve our current and future challenges.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server System™ is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Pembina Trails School Division products and services, call 204-488-1767 or visit the Web site at: www.pembinatrails.ca
1 Based on Gartner's TCO methodology. The methodology based results and their use should not be deemed as an endorsement of any product or service, data or sales technique. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, of the fitness of results for a particular purpose. Methodology results should not be deemed as an industry average and may vary from published Gartner research.
