This blog series from the Citrix Customer Success Management team highlights the business continuity stories of organizations in major industry sectors. While sharing a common goal — continuing operations during the coronavirus outbreak — each vertical faces specific challenges. In our second installment, discover how Citrix technologies enabled two Australian universities to rapidly provide online educational services so thousands of students could continue their course work from home.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on higher education, forcing colleges and universities around the globe to switch abruptly from on-campus classroom instruction to online learning methods, including self-paced courses and virtual labs. Although the experience is different, online learning allows homebound students to keep working toward their educational and career goals and enables institutions to retain tuition and fees that typically comprise a significant percentage of their revenue.
Citrix Cloud technologies are making it possible for universities to deliver online educational resources to students, faculty, and staff with a satisfying user experience, while reducing on-premises infrastructure costs and administration.
Keeping Students Safe and Engaged
One of the universities we’re highlighting enrolls more than 14,000 international students — primarily from China. However, in February these students found themselves in a difficult situation. While the university was on summer break, travel bans went into effect and prevented Chinese students from returning to Australia.
At the time, the university was delivering SaaS and other apps using its on-premises Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment and had no existing arrangements for online learning.
Working with Citrix Consulting Services, the university used the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service in Citrix Cloud to build and deliver a learning management system in just seven days. This solution comprises more than 100 course-specific apps, SaaS apps, and compute-intensive scientific and technical software.
To improve connectivity to app and desktop resources located on premises or in the cloud, the university also set up a site-to-site VPN from the Alibaba Cloud, which is based in Hong Kong and China, deployed the local Citrix ADC VPX gateway closer to users and leveraged a public cloud backplane for faster traffic flow.
After the international students gained access to their course materials, the university turned its attention to extending this solution to its 20,000 in-country students. In addition, the organization plans to consolidate its four data centers into one and transition to Citrix Workspace, with workloads hosted in a public cloud.
Scaling Up a Citrix Cloud Environment
Another university had a head start on cloud and online learning. Based on a cloud-first strategy, the institution was expanding its e-assessment program using both managed and bring-your-own devices in place of traditional exams to reduce costs, human error and environmental impacts. In 2018, it launched a Citrix Cloud-hosted virtual environment that allowed students enrolled at its Australia locations to access applications on their own devices and reduced the need to visit on-campus labs.
Despite this existing cloud solution, which includes hosting Citrix workloads in the AWS public cloud, the organization faced some challenges in Malaysia. This campus had been undergoing a trial of Citrix Cloud when the pandemic hit. When the university decided to pull the Malaysian students into its online learning portal to support remote learning, changes to the cloud infrastructure became necessary. The IT team added eight Citrix ADC pooled licenses to accommodate increased networking demands of a much larger user base and ensure high performance of very large video files used for online instruction. The university is also using Citrix Remote PC Access to provide access to laboratory computers.
The results of both these online learning efforts have been positive, with good feedback from students. Equally important, the universities have been able to keep international students enrolled during the disruption, helping to protect revenue.
Business Continuity Planning Begins with Citrix
Disruptions often prevent organizations from conducting business as usual at standard locations like offices, classrooms and labs. An effective business continuity plan needs to enable people to stay productive from alternate sites, such as a home office, while maintaining security and control over their access to corporate resources. Citrix Cloud services facilitate rapid, seamless scale-up for remote working and deliver apps, desktops, and data with a high level of security and control.
Contact your Customer Success Manager (CSM) or email CSM@citrix.com to learn more about use cases for your Citrix solution or to get assistance building your business continuity planning strategy to ensure your employees and students can remain productive from anywhere, even if you’re beginning to transition back to the workplace or classroom.
