University of Pittsburgh

University Speeds Application Delivery, Enhances Responsiveness with Virtualization

Offering a variety of academic programs in the arts and sciences and professional fields, the University of Pittsburgh has 12,000 faculty and staff members serving more than 34,000 students. The university’s Computing Services and Systems Development (CSSD) department has just five IT staffers who support 1,000 computers and more than 100 applications for student computing labs. It needed to streamline and accelerate application deployment, and be more responsive to faculty needs. Using Microsoft® Application Virtualization, CSSD cut the time needed to deploy each application from 40 or 50 hours to just 5 hours, reduced the time required to deliver software updates and upgrades, and enabled multiple versions of an application to run on a single computer. The IT staff now can respond to faculty requests for new applications without having to wait until the summer to implement them.

 

Situation

The University of Pittsburgh was founded in 1787 as a small, private school. Today, it has evolved into an internationally recognized center of learning and research, with more than 34,000 students and 12,000 faculty and staff members. Its Computing Services and Systems Development (CSSD) department is responsible for providing innovative, reliable, and low-cost IT services—including supporting the university’s computing labs on its main campus and four regional campuses. However, with just five CSSD staffers dedicated to supporting the labs’ more than 1,000 computers, it was often challenging to efficiently deploy and maintain the more than 100 applications needed by students.

CSSD staff tested images thoroughly before delivering them to the labs to ensure that students would not have problems related to application compatibility conflicts. The process involved installing the operating system on a development computer and then installing applications one at a time. As each new application was installed, it and all previously installed applications had to be tested to ensure that there were no conflicts introduced. This iterative process of installing and testing applications continued until all necessary applications were successfully installed, all problems resolved, and the final image released for distribution.

“Because applications took so long to test and deploy—typically 40 to 50 hours per application—we couldn’t add new software packages to the labs during the main school year. Instead, we would spend the summer getting applications ready for the labs,” says Jinx Walton, Director of Computing Services and Systems Development for the University of Pittsburgh. “When faculty members requested new applications during the year, we would tell them they would have to wait another term so that we could test against all of the existing packages to ensure there wouldn’t be conflicts and unforeseen problems that could cause the software to stop responding.”

Often, the IT staff would encounter problems late in the summer as the last of the applications were being tested. “It was a major ordeal because, as new conflicts arose, we would have to go back to square one in terms of testing all the applications all over again,” Walton adds. “This put a lot of stress on our employees, because they knew the deadline was fast approaching.”

Deploying software updates was also a major ordeal, because of the extensive time required. As the labs used more applications and images grew larger, doing more frequent updates became increasingly important but also increasingly cumbersome. According to Walton, CSSD typically postponed these updates until the department had ample time—something that was in short supply until the summer.

“We had limited flexibility,” Walton says. “We couldn’t respond to last-minute requests or changes because it was just too risky to add or modify applications during an academic term. As a result, we never added new applications or updates during the school year. And if faculty didn’t send in requests for new applications by our deadline, which was the end of the spring semester, they would have to wait for an entire additional term to get their software. That was understandably frustrating for faculty who couldn’t get what they wanted for their students when they needed it, and we felt we were doing them a disservice.”

CSSD tried a number of ways to streamline the deployment process, focusing primarily on the delivery of the image once it was prepared. However, none of those methods sped up the overall process significantly. In 2007, several CSSD system architects who had been working with Microsoft learned about Microsoft® Application Virtualization and realized that it could eliminate the need for much of the lengthy imaging process.

“In theory, it looked like Microsoft Application Virtualization could solve our problems, cutting down on the time required to deploy applications and giving us the flexibility that we needed to be more responsive,” Walton says.

Solution

In 2008, the University of Pittsburgh began evaluating Microsoft Application Virtualization in a test environment with a limited number of applications. The university uses the product to transform applications into virtualized, network-available services, resulting in dynamic delivery of software that is not installed, minimizes application conflicts, and reduces costly application compatibility testing. “We had great results and were confident that Microsoft could provide the support that we needed to make the full-scale implementation a success,” Walton says.

Microsoft Application Virtualization … solves so many of the deployment problems that we grappled with in the past and streamlines the entire application management process. Jinx Walton Director, CSSD, University of Pittsburgh

With the help of Virtera, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, the university began deploying Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.1, part of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance. It upgraded to version 4.5 in April 2009. As of June 2009, the software has been deployed to 70 computers and will be rolled out to all 1,000 computers in seven campus labs during the next six to eight months. To date, the Computing Services and Systems Development staff has virtualized approximately half of its 100 applications, including Autodesk AutoCAD, Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheet software, and the Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation graphics program.

“Automatic application caching and enhanced sequencing are two particularly useful new features in Microsoft Application Virtualization version 4.5,” Walton notes. In version 4.1, a user would start an application and then have to wait for it to be downloaded from the Application Virtualization server. With autocaching, applications can be streaming in the background while the user is connected to the network without disrupting his or her productivity.

By using enhanced sequencing—optimization done to simplify and speed up the virtualization of applications—CSSD staffers can deliver applications to the student computing labs more quickly and effectively than before. “This is particularly important considering the number of applications supported in the computing labs,” notes Walton.

The university is also evaluating Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services to streamline the process of delivering applications to off-campus faculty.

Benefits

Using application virtualization, the University of Pittsburgh has significantly reduced the time and effort needed to deploy applications to student computing lab machines, and enabled the Computing Services and Systems Development staff to be much more flexible and responsive to faculty needs. “Microsoft Application Virtualization accomplishes everything that it promises. It solves so many of the deployment problems that we grappled with in the past and streamlines the entire application management process,” Walton says.

Accelerated Application and Update Deployments

Using the application virtualization solution, it now takes CSSD an average of five hours to sequence an application for delivery, including the time to test the sequenced application in the computing labs. This is a 90 percent time savings over previous methods, which required 40 to 50 hours, or more if conflicts with other applications arose.

“This time savings becomes even more significant when you take into account the effort that was previously required to install and distribute updates, address last-minute changes to an image, and other post-delivery tasks,” Walton says. Now, the CSSD staff can apply updates and upgrades to individual applications instead of to whole images.

Because each application is isolated, we no longer worry about conflicts or spend time regression testing. We’re much more efficient and can deploy software in a fraction of the time that it used to take. Jinx Walton Director, Computing Services and Systems Development, University of Pittsburgh

“Because each application is isolated, we no longer worry about conflicts or spend time regression testing. We’re much more efficient and can deploy software in a fraction of the time that it used to take,” says Walton. “We also have a much greater sense of security, knowing that we’re not going to break applications when we add a new package and won’t run into unforeseen conflicts down the road.”

Enhanced IT Responsiveness

The university now can respond to requests for new applications and upgrades as they’re needed, rather than having to wait until the summer. “We can finally be flexible enough to deploy applications when professors request them, and updates when they become available, without having to postpone them until we have a big window of time,” Walton notes.

Not only is this critical to providing responsive service, but it also “makes life much easier and less stressful for the IT staff, who won’t have to struggle against end-of-summer application delivery deadlines,” says Walton. Additionally, it allows staffers to spend more time consulting with students in the computing labs instead of preparing applications for delivery, so that they can continue to provide the highest level of direct student support.

Ability to Run Multiple Application Versions on One Machine

With Microsoft Application Virtualization, the university can simultaneously run multiple versions of the same application on the same computer. “This is critical because we support the needs of a diverse user population—from undergrad to grad students and even faculty—and a variety of courses that require different versions of the same software,” explains Walton. “In the past, we had to standardize on the most popular and frequently used versions. The other versions that faculty requested just couldn’t be made available.”

Walton sums up, “The computing labs are an extremely important aspect of the university’s education system because they’re convenient and enable students to easily access a wide variety of applications. The more efficiently and effectively we can offer this critical service to students, the better it is for everyone. Microsoft Application Virtualization enables us to accomplish this.”
 
Microsoft Desktop Optimization
Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance makes it easy for an organization to administer its applications, offering tools for virtualizing and inventorying software installations, for managing Group Policy settings, and for system repair and data recovery.

For more information about MDOP, go to:
www.microsoft.com/mdop

For More Information

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www.microsoft.com

For more information about Virtera products and services, call (800) 848-7185 or visit the Web site at:
www.virteratech.com

For more information about University of Pittsburgh services, call (412) 624-4141 or visit the Web site at:
www.pitt.edu