Derby Public Schools, in Derby, Kansas, a city of 25,000 people, has over 6,000 students, 1,400 employees, and a daily average of 7,000 users on desktops, laptops, PCs, and Macs in four support buildings, and nine elementary and three secondary schools.

Derby had an outdated, expensive and inefficient infrastructure of different kinds of old and new desktops, many underutilized physical servers, and applications loaded onto the hard drives of the desktops located in many different buildings. It was difficult for Derby Schools’ small IT department to meet curriculum goals for technology and education, and maintain the complex distributed computing environment in good times. The situation became even more daunting when the economy slowed and state education funding was scaled back.

The challenge – Deliver leading edge learning tools despite budget cuts

Drew Lane, Derby Schools’ director of IT, faced conflicting demands. Lane wanted  to improve the system to give students access to  the latest learning tools and  cut costs. He investigated ways  to improve server efficiency, and stop buying new, high-powered PCs that oftentimes ended up vastly underutilized. Lane  came across an article on desktop virtualization and quickly realized the solution showed great promise for resolving the school district’s challenges.

Implementing a virtualized IT environment from Citrix

Working with SKT Business Communications Solutions, a Gold Citrix® Solution Advisor, Derby Schools is now implementing a completely virtualized environment for its servers, desktops, and applications with Citrix® XenDesktop™, Citrix® XenApp™, Citrix® NetScaler®, Citrix® XenServer™, Citrix Receiver™ and Citrix® Access Gateway™. “We did a few select desktops at a time and one day they would log in and they would see the applications, the next day they would log in and the only difference they could see was that the background color had changed,” said Lane. “We did that so we would know which systems were virtualized and which systems weren’t.” They looked and acted that much alike. By the beginning of the school year 2012, Derby Schools’ IT environment will be completely virtualized except for a few locations and applications that require a local host to function.

Savings in desktop refresh of more than 50 percent

The desktop PC refresh benefits were immediately evident. Instead of buying new desktops for the district every four years, virtualization extends the life of existing PCs, replacing them only as they fail with inexpensive mobile devices. “We can get the laptops and Netbooks that we know students are going to want to use for less money than what we were spending on desktops and apps,” said Lane.

School is now wherever the student is

While saving on desktop refresh costs was the driving force to implementing a virtualized IT services delivery model, Derby Schools found that it also helped expand  education outside the classroom. Students no longer have to come into the school to access applications. Now, their lessons can come to them. Students can access the school desktop and applications from anywhere—at anytime—all that’s needed is a computer and an Internet connection. “On a regular basis, we have students who are homebound for one reason or another,” said Lane. “They don’t have to be completely out of the loop. If they have a computer at home that has any sort of Internet connection, we can provide them applications using our Citrix environment and the student doesn’t have to miss school.”

Adapting education to student lifestyle

Derby Schools’ virtualized system also lets students use devices that they like to use, which makes education more student friendly. “You give the students the device they want to use and the mobility that they like to have,” said Lane, “and they are more interested in what’s going on. They look at the computer as their communication device, their entertainment device, as well as a device they can do school work on. We think it’s going to be an overall positive for our district.”

Added flexibility

Desktop virtualization  made Derby Schools much more flexible. Its virtualized infrastructure easily manages a mix of Windows® and Mac® computers. Some of the teachers have Mac laptops with Citrix® Dazzle™ installed. “To them,” Lane said, “it looks like absolutely native access to those applications,” yet the applications are virtualized in the datacenter and delivered to the laptop via Citrix Receiver and Dazzle.

Into the future

“We had a distributed computing environment and what I’m trying to work toward is a receiver-based computing environment,” said Lane. “I want students to think of their computer for education the same way they think of their cable box or their DIRECTV receiver for entertainment. As long as you have one, you can get the programming.

“We’re trying to get a system where we only worry about infrastructure and connectivity. If somebody comes to us and says, ‘I want this application.’ Whatever device you have, if we can install Citrix Receiver on it, you’re good to go. We are making platforms irrelevant and Citrix is helping us do that.”