ZeroPC Case Study
0 likes282 views
The Santa Clara Unified School District was facing budget constraints and issues supporting outdated desktop computers across its 26 sites. The Director of IT explored virtual desktop solutions like VMWare and Citrix but found them too expensive. She discovered ZeroPC, which uses web technologies to deliver virtual desktops through a browser at a much lower cost. ZeroPC allowed SCUSD to repurpose older PCs, reduce storage costs by 99%, support over 1,000 users on a single server, and save over $1 million in the first year through lower infrastructure and licensing expenses compared to traditional VDI.
ZeroPC Case Study
- 1. Santa Clara Unified School District │ Case Study Santa Clara Unified School District rethinks desktop virtualization architecture and saves well over one million dollars with ZeroPC The Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in Northern California serves “We are going to save over one approximately 15,000 K-12 students across 26 sites. It supports approximately million dollars in the first year and, at 5,000 desktop devices and over 30 applications, including Microsoft Office, the same time, have increased Photoshop, Read180, Aleks and various other learning applications. manageability and security over the desktops across our school district.” The challenge – Meet budgetary constraints and provide Mary Phillips updated desktops to students and teachers Director of Information Technology Santa Clara Unified School District “Outdated computers plagued with viruses” were causing headaches for Mary Phillips, Director of Information Technology at SCUSD. Technicians were spending most of their days running around the school district fixing broken machines and troubleshooting software problems. The outdated computers were slow and did not perform well with streaming media or other Internet applications, but operating system updates were difficult and expensive. The biggest challenge for Phillips was that the District had “no money in the budget to replace these computers that were becoming obsolete so quickly.” With a vision to repurpose old desktops and centralize management of applications, Phillips spent over eight months researching virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) by VMWare and Citrix. “I looked at virtualization to see if we could eliminate PC costs and maintenance issues. However, when we added up all licensing and infrastructure costs associated with traditional VDI, the investment was excessive,” says Phillips. Traditional VDI’s limitations started with the backend servers which could only support about 150 virtual machines per blade, so she would have needed about 34 blades within about 5 robust, and very costly, servers to support her student population. On top of the servers, add in all the storage and licensing dollars, and the total cost of supporting 5,000 to 6,000 computers added up quickly. The solutions were also “bulky and had too many pieces”, and could not meet some of the specific needs of the school district, such as customized disposable desktops for each class, lab or library. Implementing the ZeroPC Web Desktop Solution Phillips was about to give up on the idea of desktop virtualization, when she learned about the “Web Desktop” solution by ZeroPC. “ZeroPC was exactly what we were looking for. It was the only solution that was versatile and innovative enough to meet our needs and bring actual budget savings.” www.ZeroPC.com/schools
- 2. Santa Clara Unified School District │ Case Study End User Benefits Desktop virtualization with ZeroPC to save SCUSD over one Anywhere, any device (PC, Mac, million dollars thin clients, etc) Windows-like graphic user ZeroPC Web Desktops use standard HTML/AJAX technologies to render interface desktop interfaces that are delivered to Web browsers via standard HTTP Easy, secure access using a protocol. Unlike the traditional VDI, which is typically based on RDP/ICA browser protocols with persistent connection, ZeroPC uses HTML/AJAX technologies to Personalization provide asynchronous connection which significantly reduces the connection bandwidth requirements. Furthermore, unlike traditional VDI, which requires 10GB of storage per user due to hypervisor and Windows architecture at the IT Benefits backend, ZeroPC Web Desktops only require 1MB per user, saving us $95,000 Lower TCO in storage costs over 1,000 users. The maximum concurrent users supported by a Better manageability entry-level server (single quadcore) also dramatically increases from the Increased security traditional VDI of 100-150 users to 1000+ users with ZeroPC’s solution, saving us conservatively an additional $42,000 in sever blade costs over 1,000 users. “We are able to revitalize 5-7 year old outdated or virus infected computers by ZeroPC Private Cloud Features using a small locked-down version of Windows XP image and running ZeroPC On-premise virtual desktop virtual desktops simply through a Web browser. In addition, we virtualized more deployment than 30 Windows apps such as Read180, ALEKS and other learning applications Seamless integration with using InstallFree, an application packaging software. Simply stated, we created a Windows RemoteApp, InstallFree private cloud and delivered virtual desktops using ZeroPC, packaged the and XenApps application software using InstallFree and deployed this solution to labs and Comprehensive administrative classrooms throughout the district. We have now met our goal of repurposing old dashboard for easy application & computers and maximizing resources by being able to centrally manage user privilege management & virtualized applications and content. We envision deploying this solution to more customization than a thousand desktops within the next few months. All in all, ZeroPC is Disposable classroom desktop expected to save SCUSD well over one million dollars.” ideal for teacher/student school environment Local USB & printer support ZeroDesktop, Inc. 657 Mission Street, #401 San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel: 415-848-9275 sales@zerodesktop.com www.ZeroPC.com/schools Santa Clara Unified School District 1889 Lawrence Road Santa Clara, CA 95051 Tel: 408-423-2000 www.santaclarausd.org www.ZeroPC.com/schools