Azure Virtual Desktop is the last piece of full cloud migration, Future of educational field by “Digitalization of School Affairs”

Foresight of Saijo City Board of Education that was quick to promote as a local government the cloud migration of education/school affairs system

One of the major cities in Ehime Prefecture, Saijo City has a population of approximately 110,000. In the field of education, the city has 25 elementary schools and 10 junior high schools, for a total of 35 schools (all municipal), attended by approximately 8,000 pupils/students. The chief of Smart School Promotion Section, School Education Division, Saijo City Board of Education Secretariat, Mr. Masakazu Shiraishi, who is in charge of ICT environment in those elementary/junior high schools, has the following to say about the ICT utilization in the field of education in the city.

“Under the basic educational policy centering on the comprehensive plan for the entire city, Saijo City Board of Education has been working to realize the smart school and GIGA school vision. We started cloud migration as well from early on. Introducing Azure, we have established/operated a system ensuring security and convenience, a hybrid with on-premise environment. We actively utilize cloud service both for learning and school affairs, aiming to increase efficiency of ‘learning’ and ‘work’ (Mr. Shiraishi).”

In this way, Saijo City has been promoting cloud migration of education/school affairs systems from a fairly early stage for a local government. Behind this was the aim to take advantage of cloud service to achieve both convenience and security, and to ensure the continuity of work in case of an earthquake or other disaster. For school affairs in the field of education handling sensitive personal information, security is ensured by establishment of a mechanism of boundary separation using VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), but clients of VDI have fallen behind in cloud migration and operated on a virtualization platform in an on-premise environment. The chief in charge of Smart School Promotion Section, School Education Division, Saijo City Board of Education Secretariat, Mr. Tomofumi Yagi, who is involved in the entire ICT system in elementary/junior high schools in Saijo City, says that the cloud migration project was started because the virtualization infrastructure had become outdated.

“We had adopted Azure to operate the ICT system in the field of education, a hybrid between on-premise and cloud until the virtualization infrastructure became outdated and we considered whether we should update the existing virtualization infrastructure or take this opportunity to migrate the system to cloud. We consulted with Shikokutsuken, who had supported us as a partner in introducing Azure as well, and they suggested us to introduce Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) (Mr. Yagi).”

Considered introduction of cloud-type VDI that makes it easy to increase or decrease resources, and adopted AVD that is highly compatible with the current environment and cost-effective

They say that Shikokutsuken, who have been promoting cloud migration of education/school affairs systems in collaboration with Saijo City Board of Education, had its sights set on full cloud migration in the future from the time Azure was introduced. Furthermore, the director of Niihama Office, ICT Business Department, Shikokutsuken Co.,Ltd., Mr. Hirofumi Hattori says that they suggested AVD that was highly compatible with the current environment where Azure had been adopted partly because access attestation-type zero trust was recommended in the guidelines on the educational information security policy which was revised in 2022 by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT).

“In order to enhance information security with three separated tiers, you need to place systems and data in respective environments. Saijo City had adopted a mechanism in which teachers access from VDI Client when handling school affairs, such as grade information, and operated it by building VDI environment for a couple of hundreds of people. However, Saijo City had more than 700 teaching staff members and, during busy seasons such as the end of a term, more users than expected used VDI, so there was a problem of resource shortage. The on-premise virtualization infrastructure did not have the flexibility to respond to such problem. That’s another reason why we found the cloud-type VDI service effective (Mr. Hattori).”

Mr. Yagi from Saijo City Board of Education also explains why they switched to cloud migration, saying “With on-premise, when a teacher uses a school affairs system from VDI and uses up resources, another teacher cannot use it unless the teacher logs out.  In this case, AVD can control resources in a flexible manner. We see that as an advantage of cloud-type VDI.” He also says that the cost-effectiveness is another reason why they decided to adopt AVD.

“The number of people using school affairs systems significantly increases during busy seasons such as the end of a term, but the number may become extremely low during the summer vacation period, for example. In the on-premise environment, you decide on sizing in prospect of busy seasons, which causes unnecessary costs during off-season, but you can optimize costs with AVD by decreasing the number in operation during off-season. Furthermore, Saijo City had previously introduced Microsoft 365 A3 for teaching/school affairs and AVD license was included in this. And I felt that this was also a great advantage that leads to cost reduction. (Mr. Yagi)”

According to Mr. Shiraishi, combining Microsoft 365 A3 and AVD increased the storage capacity available to teaching staff and this was another great advantage. He says, “There was a limit due to the storage capacity of the server, but now we have little problem related to date storage area because we became able to use 1TB OneDrive storage per person.”

Built a system with a sizing design that matches the characteristics in the field of education and also sought for effective ways to use AVD’s auto-scale function

This is how the VDI environment cloud migration project using AVD started. As mentioned above, Saijo City had been operating various school affairs systems, including the school register/grade system and attendance/health management system, on Azure’s IaaS and the reform of on-premise VDI infrastructure became their final piece of full cloud migration. They say that, along with the cloud migration of school affairs/teaching/learning systems, Saijo City Board of Education was also quick to establish a remote work environment using VDI and has been able to deal with the situation of recent new coronavirus pandemic, so-called COVID-19 catastrophe. Mr. Shiraishi emphasizes, ”Considering the reduction of the burden on teaching staff, etc., we had been working on the establishment of remote work environment from early on, so there was little impact on school affairs even during COVID-19 catastrophe.” These efforts have been highly praised nationwide and Saijo City won the “Japan ICT Education Award 2018” at the National ICT Educational Executive Summit. In this project, their remote work environment has also been migrated to AVD, realizing more flexible and efficient remote work.

In constructing the system, what became the key point is the sizing design that matches the unique characteristics of schools which are different from those of general companies. The system engineer, Solution Marketing, ICT Business Department, Shikokutsuken Co.,Ltd., Mr. Takahiro Okabe, who has been involved in this project from the design stage, reflects as follows on the difficulties he faced in building the AVD system.

“We had a wealth of knowhow about introducing VDI solutions, but we had little experience with AVD, so we had a of difficulties with the sizing configuration combined with the characteristics of work unique to schools. In examining how much sizing design could withstand the operation, we prepared dozens of client PCs in the company and actually connected them to verify the performance and network status. We designed and built with the optimal configuration, balancing costs and convenience. (Mr. Okabe)”

He says that, in introducing AVD, they took into account the aspect of performance and used Azure NetApp Files, which could be used as a fully managed (PaaS) file server, for the storage area of user profiles. Mr. Okabe also explains how they used their ingenuity when building the system that configures AVD’s auto scaling functions in light of the usage of school affairs systems at school sites. “At school sites, the hours of use are different from those of general companies because teachers conduct classes during the day and most of them handle school affairs after pupils/students go home. For that reason, we designed the system in consultation with Saijo City Board of Education, considering the effective timing of applying auto scaling.”

Mr. Hattori says that, in designing and building the system, they received generous support from Microsoft. He expressed their delight, saying “Microsoft has a wealth of experience in the field of culture and education, and they taught us about design knowhow, construction methods, points to pay attention to, etc. Thanks to their support, we could smoothly introduce AVD without any big trouble.”

Promoted zero trust by applying multifactor authentication and completely eliminated problems with the existing VDI

A collaboration between Saijo City Board of Education and Shikokutsuken, this project has been smoothly delivered with the close support of Microsoft as well. The system went into full operation in November 2022 and is already used by teaching staff in Saijo City. Mr. Yagi says that changing the mechanism of authentication from existing ID/password authentication to multifactor authentication applying zero trust also resulted in constant inquiries from teaching staff at the beginning of operation, but once they got used to the operation, they began to say, “It became easier to access each system”.

“We used to have a general configuration in which devices for school affairs were connected under on-premise Active Directory (AD), but the current authentication infrastructure has completely migrated to Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and zero trust has been realized for access to school affairs support systems. For multifactor authentication, we basically use PIN code authentication, but we also made it possible to use Windows Hello’s biometric authentication and we are planning to switch PCs to those compatible with Windows Hello at the time of replacement. We didn’t make an announcement, but there have been cases where teachers with IT skills set face authentication themselves.” (Mr. Yagi)

Regarding the results obtained through introduction of AVD, Mr. Shiraishi tells us that it became possible to operate without worrying about VDI resource limits and that is the major achievement. And he feels confident about the realization of full cloud migration, saying “At the end of the school year, even when 400 to 500 users accessed at the same time, they no longer needed to wait and comfortable performance was ensured”. Mr. Hattori from Shikokutsuken also says, “Realizing zero trust environment by adopting AVD has made it easy to access each resource by just logging in once and significantly enhanced convenience for teachers. I think it will become even more convenient in the future as more PCs are switched to those compatible with Windows Hello.”

In light of the results of AVD introduction, Saijo City Board of Education aims for the realization of “data-driven education” and “cloud-by-default”

In light of the results of this project, Saijo City Board of Education is planning to promote “reform of teaching staff’s work style” and “concatenation and utilization of learning/school affairs data”. Mr. Shiraishi and Mr. Yagi talk about future prospects as follows.

“We believe that the full cloud migration has enabled us to realize a system configuration that can flexibly respond to initiatives led by the national government. Use of online learning systems, such as ‘MEXCBT’ developed by MEXT, is expanding nationwide, and we’d like to continue to develop the environment with the introduction of those systems in mind.” (Mr. Shiraishi)

“We’d also like to promote the reform of teachers’ work style by providing, for example, a mechanism in which teaching staff can bring devices into classroom to do school affairs, not just at teachers’ office and home (remote work). We are technically ready to realize that at any time, so we will take on this challenge in step with the awareness reforms of teachers. We also aim for realization of the environment of comprehensive data utilization by linking learning systems and school affairs systems, etc. Not just for the efficiency/automation of school affairs, we’d like to make use of data for pupils/students’ learning, too.” (Mr. Yagi)

Mr. Hattori, who has been supporting the cloud migration of the education/learning/school affairs systems in Saijo City, talks about the future prospects of supporting the realization of “data-driven education” and “cloud-by-default” aimed for by Saijo City Board of Education while paying attention to the activities of ministries and agencies, including MEXT, and expects further support from Microsoft.

“Azure has a full range of functions and services, such as data analysis platforms and BI tools, to realize effective data utilization. Adopted as the MEXT/MIC model business related to the informatization of education, Saijo City has already prepared the base for realization of data-driven education, so we, Shikokutsuken, would like to continue to support the city in incorporating the state-of-the-art technology into the field of education while receiving support from Microsoft.” (Mr. Hattori)

The future image in the field of education looked ahead by Saijo City, who is aiming for the reform of work style and learning in the area of education by promoting the creation of “Smart City Saijo”, and Shikokutsuken, who provides all-round support for ICT utilization in the field of culture and education, should provide important “awareness” for local governments across the country.