Thames Valley District School Board
Thames Valley District School Board looks to Microsoft for a smart IT infrastructure solution
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Company Overview
When four school boards in the London area amalgamated in 1998 to form the Thames Valley District School Board, everyone knew exactly how many students, teachers, and buildings were involved in the amalgamation. The newly formed Thames Valley District School Board became one of the largest public boards in Ontario, serving an area that spans over 7,000 square kilometres. However, amalgamating a mélange of disparate IT systems was not so simple. The geographic dispersion of the schools was a major obstacle for the IT team.
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Business Challenge
For Carolyn Linsdell, manager, Information Technology Services at Thames Valley, taking stock of the organization's IT systems – everything from Microsoft NT to Novell – is an ongoing process, even six years after the amalgamation. With 185 schools in the school board and a limited IT budget, Linsdell and her team of IT professionals have found it time consuming to manage and maintain the system, and almost impossible to take inventory of all of its parts.
"The amalgamation brought together a hodgepodge of different back-end systems, front-end applications, and hardware. Trying to connect the disparate pieces into a unified infrastructure resulted in an unstable environment," says Linsdell. "Although we had a good understanding of what we were dealing with on the back-end, we were in the dark about what hardware and applications existed. I think we run approximately 20,000 computers, but I can't tell you exactly how many are out there."
Linsdell and her team struggled to maintain the system as best they could. With the school board covering a wide geographical area, the IT team found themselves traveling 1,500 kilometres a month to perform simple updates and maintenance.
"Whenever a school encountered an IT problem, we were forced to send a technician to investigate. A lot of the time, the problems had something to do with incorrectly installed software," says Linsdell. "I knew with the right IT system, we could remotely identify and address software problems, instead of putting a technician in a car to drive 55 kilometres."
The Thames Valley IT team wanted a unified system with centralized management capabilities, which would allow for remote maintenance, software installations and inventory management.
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Solution
After evaluating the capabilities of several different systems, Linsdell and her team decided that Microsoft Windows Server System provided the needed functionality and stability at an affordable cost. They began working with Promethean Systems Consultants, a Microsoft Gold-certified partner, to design a solution.
"We knew that Microsoft Windows Server System could provide Thames Valley with a stable environment that they could manage much more efficiently," says Douglas Li, vice president, Professional Services, Promethean Systems Consultants Inc. "The existing system was far too complex and outdated for the IT team to properly manage."
Thames Valley and Promethean decided to first test the Microsoft solution at Evelyn Harrison Public School, with the goal of rolling the complete solution out to all Thames Valley schools over the next three years.
Stable Environment
To solve instability issues, Thames Valley and Promethean built the new solution on the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, which is designed to improve reliability and enable IT professionals to work more efficiently.
"Our team is very excited about the positive impact that Microsoft Windows Server 2003 will have on their individual productivity levels," says Linsdell. "We also expect the solution to directly improve the experience for students across Thames Valley by providing more reliable access to valuable learning tools."
Management Tools
To help centralize IT management, Thames Valley and Promethean also deployed several critical management tools from the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 product family, including Active Directory® directory service, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005, and Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS).
A central component of the Windows 2003 platform, the Active Directory service provides the means to manage the identities and relationships that make up network environments. At Thames Valley, the goal of Active Directory is to manage staff and student user identities from a single directory.
"Before implementing Active Directory, we had five or six different sets of user names and passwords to manage for students and teachers across the school district," says Linsdell. "Active Directory has helped us recognize that we can deploy a common directory service that will allow us to manage authentication much more efficiently."
MOM 2005 and SMS were deployed to provide a more efficient way to monitor, track and update each part of the Thames Valley system. MOM 2005 allows Thames Valley to monitor hardware for memory and hard drive issues and watch the health of software applications like Windows Server 2003. SMS enables the Thames Valley IT team to push software and security updates to computers across the school district from a central location.
Business Benefits
The test deployment at Evelyn Harrison Public School showed that Microsoft Windows Server 2003 could meet Thames Valley's expectations for improved management and increased stability. Over the next three years, Thames Valley and Promethean will deploy the Microsoft system at each of the facilities in the school district.
The Thames Valley IT team is looking forward to centralized management capabilities and improved system reliability.
Centralized Management
The Microsoft Windows Server System product family has improved management functions at Evelyn Harrison Public School dramatically. In particular, the system update process is much more efficient.
With approximately 100 computers at the school, installing patches required IT staff to visit each system and spend the day updating the software. With the SMS, the IT team was able to update all of the systems in about 10 minutes. In the future, the Thames Valley team hopes to translate that efficiency across all school in the district, and keep physical travel to a minimum.
"The Microsoft system will help us achieve the 80/20 rule. Right now we spend at least half an hour driving to each school and even more time updating individual computers," says Linsdell. "In the future, technicians will spend 80 percent of their time in the office fixing things through the remote features, and less than 20 percent of their time on the road."
Centralized management will save Thames Valley in travel costs, and allow the IT team to focus their time on improving the overall infrastructure of the school board, instead of performing minor maintenance or traveling to separate schools to install or fix software.
Improved System Reliability
The Microsoft Windows Server platform will ultimately provide students and teachers with more reliable access to key applications. With so many computers throughout the school district, ensuring that each system worked properly was a challenge for the Thames Valley IT team in the past.
"With the Microsoft platform, students and staff will be able to go to any computer and do what they need to do on it," says Linsdell. "We will be able to take proper inventory of our hardware and software to ensure that each part of the system is updated and working properly."
Standardized System Access
The consolidated system will also allow teachers and administration staff to travel between locations without changing passwords or learning to navigate different systems, saving time and easing frustration.
"As we implement the Microsoft system, we're excited about how it will improve operational efficiency for staff members," says Linsdell. "The Microsoft system will allow all staff to move quickly from school to school and not invest time learning the nuances of a different system, which is what they have to do now."
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: 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 Promethean Systems Consultants Inc. products and services, call 416-862-9300 or visit the Web site at: www.prometheansys.com
For more information about Thames Valley District School Board products and services, call 519-452-2000 or visit the Web site at: www.tvdsb.on.ca
