The Highlands and Islands area of Scotland is dominated by dramatic mountain ranges and barren islands, and has a dispersed population of only 500,000 people. Until the advent of UHI Millennium Institute in 1992, there was no higher education facility for this remote region. The UHI Millennium Institute has an unconventional structure. Rather than a single dedicated campus, it is made up of 15 colleges and research institutions throughout the region, co-ordinated by an executive office based in Inverness.

The Challenge: Connecting Remote Offices for Easy, Seamless Access

In 2007, UHI aims to receive full designation as the University of Highlands and Islands. To do this, UHI needed an innovative IT framework that could overcome geographical barriers. UHI has 6,000 higher education students, most of whom are scattered hundreds of miles apart in far-flung locations. For instance, the Shetland College, which is a large college and offers some world-leading naval engineering courses, has a learning centre which is based in a very small building in the Shetland Islands with only four desktop computers.

Distance made IT support very difficult to administer. An IT person could travel for up to two days to resolve a problem in a remote location such as the Shetland Islands. On top of time, there was the high average cost of a trip, estimated at £350 (US$668).

Christopher Rydings, head of learning and information services, UHI Millennium, said: “This part of the world can be difficult to travel through and isolated. We wanted to facilitate secure, remote access to our network so that students could access course information from anywhere in the world via the Web. Similarly, for our IT staff, updating software applications was a demanding, time-consuming task. UHI is a modern organisation that is changing the way higher education is delivered, so we wanted to harness the right technology to reflect this innovation. It had to be intuitive, easy to use and easy to manage.”

Citrix Presentation Server for Low-maintenance Virtual Application Delivery

Traditionally, UHI used a client/server architecture with multiple networks, including a wide area network (WAN) with ISDN and satellite links connecting to the UHI environment. UHI’s complex, dispersed setup presented distinctive problems for Christopher Rydings and his ICT teams. When assessing solutions, Rydings had to take into account the size and the level of IT skills of each site.

Rydings had worked with Citrix technology in the past and engaged solutions partner, Esteem Systems, a Platinum Citrix® Solution Advisor. Esteem designed, architected and implemented Citrix Presentation Server™ with Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 on an IBM BladeCenter solution. The 14-server farm is based at one location — Inverness — to provide resilience in case of power or network failures. For remote, secure access, Esteem installed four Citrix Access Gateway™ Advanced Edition appliances for universal SSL VPN connectivity. As PCs come due for replacement over the next five years, the institute plans to replace the majority of its desktops with lower-cost and longer-life Wyse thin-client terminal devices.

Seamless Connectivity Cuts Costs and Eases IT Burden

Using Citrix Presentation Server, UHI Millennium has created a centralised solution for managing applications and delivering their functionality as a service to students. By replacing its desktops with low-cost terminal devices, UHI projects it could save up to £2.8 million (US$5.3 million) over a five-year period, and a further £250,000 (US$477,149) per year in hardware and software maintenance costs. Citrix Presentation Server also simplified the application environment, helping UHI to standardise its system so that all sites are accessing the same version of virtualised applications such as the Microsoft® Office suite. As a result, UHI Millennium could achieve return on investment (ROI) in Citrix in five years.

Rydings said: “Citrix Presentation Server has made the delivery of IT resources to far-off sites extremely simple. Because we can control these systems from a central location through features such as session shadowing, our IT staff doesn’t need to travel for days to solve small desktop queries, but instead focus on strategies to improve services.”

Remote Access Overcomes Tyranny of Distance

Citrix Access Gateway has provided flexibility and agility for students working at home, thanks to secure, remote application access over the Internet. Citrix Presentation Server is secure by design, so all information is stored on the servers, and Access Gateway delivers the security benefits of a hardened appliance-based universal SSL VPN, without the cost and complexity. This has enabled UHI Millennium to offer secure access to more services to its international students and protect student’s course work. It has also meant that students no longer need to commute to remote learning centres.

“During the winter months, travel can be very difficult. Roads close and ferry services stop running,” Rydings explained. “Using Access Gateway, we can deliver all software, course documents and anything they need via the Web. Access Gateway has even allowed one of our students, who works on a Mediterranean naval vessel, to access and complete his course work using the ship’s IT systems.”

Technology Builds Communities

Citrix technology has been a true enabler for UHI Millennium, helping the institution reach students and staff that were previously isolated, and deliver the types of systems most university students take for granted.

“The impact of this is not to be underestimated,” Rydings emphasized. “These communities have traditionally been disadvantaged because the younger generation tended to move to mainland cities to enroll in other universities or work, and never return. Citrix, along with other UHI ICT systems are now empowering them to study from home, which will build and strengthen these communities.”

©2007 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix®, Citrix Presentation Server™ and Citrix Access Gateway™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. and/or one or more of its subsidiaries, and may be registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Microsoft®, Windows® and Windows Server® 2003 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.