Centralize control of a widespread IT system and reduce system maintenance expenses.
Done.
A Unisys Thin Client Solution that delivers standard applications to 4,000 end users throughout the university.
The Customer
The University of the West of England, Bristol (Bristol UWE), is one of the United Kingdom's top academic institutions, often noted for its distinguished Law and Teacher Education programs. Boasting a staff of over 3,000 and a growing student body of nearly 25,000, Bristol UWE has become the university of choice for many of England's finest students. With roots dating back as far as 1595, the University of the West of England is currently making tremendous efforts to ensure that its students consistently receive a quality education in a technologically advanced environment.
When the Going Gets Tough
Since 1992, student enrollment has increased 66 percent, forcing university officials to address the challenges of a growing user population - primarily, escalating system maintenance costs and dwindling IT service levels. The IT Services department at Bristol UWE soon found itself attempting to maintain a complicated network of over 50 Novell and Unix servers supporting 4,000 PCs across eight different campuses.
"At any given time there may have been as many as 200 individual applications being used throughout the university," says Alistair Sandford, Project Manager for UWE.
"We were struggling with our levels of customer service and, at the user interface level, the whole environment had become chaotic. We needed a cost-effective solution that would centralize control of our system. We looked to Unisys because of their wealth of experience in large project roll-outs and their understanding of an enterprise-class Windows NT™ environment."
John Saville, Head of IT Services at Bristol UWE comments, "I was confident Unisys understood the importance of a true systems integration partnership, which was essential for the successful implementation of this mission-critical project. Unisys also demonstrated determination and strong technical capability."
Making an Educated Decision
After evaluating the university's current IT system and future objectives, Unisys representatives were able to prescribe the perfect solution to Bristol UWE's problems - a Unisys Thin Client Solution.
Thin client/server computing eliminates the expense of purchasing new PCs and the tedious process of continually upgrading PC hardware and software by centralizing the control of applications on servers. This server-based application approach minimizes the amount of time IT service technicians have to spend performing application installations and upgrades, or resolving user-induced problems.
For Bristol UWE, this means any new applications installed on the thin client servers will be accessible instantly from any PC connected to them. Since only data is passed across the network, less bandwidth is required, and greater control of the network yields less expensive IT maintenance. Ultimately, this translates into more money for the university's academic priorities.
The complete 4,000-seat architecture, which will be implemented in several stages, currently includes an array of Unisys servers with Intel® Pentium® II Xeon™ processors. The servers are loaded with Microsoft® Windows NT 4.0, Terminal Server Edition, Microsoft Office, and Citrix MetaFrame software, which collectively provide advantages such as improved network manageability, accessibility, performance, and security.
A Serve All Solution
"The introduction of an enterprise Windows NT model incorporating thin client technologies enables us to deliver off-the-shelf Windows NT-based applications to users in a manner that minimizes costs and releases funds for academic innovations," says Saville. "In my view, thin client was the only possible option for increasing the service levels while reducing the costs in an organization of our size."
"Thin client computing has also broadened our remote capabilities," says Sandford. "In the future, we plan to deliver educational services and full application functionality to students in areas such as public libraries, other universities, and even students' homes. Incorporating an infrastructure of this calibre is fairly radical for the university sector. However, we consider Bristol UWE to be a leader and have every confidence that our partnership with Unisys will help us achieve our goals."
