BPS Reaps Benefits of Desktop Transformation with ProfileUnity
Buffalo Public Schools (BPS) is one of the largest urban school districts in New York State. The district serves approximately 35,000 students and 3,500 faculty members with myriad instructional uses cases and supporting software. A few years ago, BPS administration recognized that it was crucial to provide all of its students with a consistent desktop-workspace experience and launched an ambitious desktop virtualization project to accomplish this goal and other organizational improvements.
"ProfileUnity has really enhanced the user experience tremendously. We’ve found adoption rates for BPS Desktop increasing ... and increasing, because users know it's just as good, and better, than if they were on a traditional desktop computer. We have 55 instructional locations, and our plan is to have BPS Desktop installed in every computer lab on every desktop across educational campuses and our administrative offices to serve as many as 12,000 concurrent users at any given time."
Bill Russo - Director of Instructional Technology
Key Economic Trends Affecting Buffalo Public Schools
Like many other school districts across the country, BPS administrators realized they needed to develop a serious response to many external developments that were having an impact on delivery of quality educational programs. These developments included:
Responding to BYOD and Staff and Student Mobility
The school was seeing a greater influx of personal tablets and other personal devices into their ecosystem, reflecting the increasing mobility needs of students, faculty and staff.
Extending the Life of Aging IT Assets
BPS wanted to extend the useful life from existing laptops and desktops. When replacing these devices, BPS wanted the option of using thin clients when applicable.
Providing a Consistent Platform for District-Wide Student Testing
One of the biggest challenges that BPS faced is to provide a consistently performing, reliable, safe and secure workspace to all students to support external testing, including PARCC assessments.
Enabling “At-Home” Learning
BPS wanted to expand learning time by providing a consistent, safe and secure method for students, their parents and caregivers to be able to access their curriculum materials as needed from home.
Elevating Desktop Management and Security
BPS wanted to centrally manage installing and delivering applications as well as performing maintenance, such as OS and application security patches and bug fixes.
ProfileUnity Delivers Crucial User Personalization to BPS Desktops.
All of BPS goals relied on their delivering a consistent, high performing user experience to students on par – or better than – their previous physical desktops. BPS IT staff wanted to reduce login times and application response times to ensure that classroom learning time was maximized. They wanted to offer students personalized desktops both in the classroom and at home in order to enhance the learning process. ProfileUnity was critical in enabling personalized, "follow-me" desktops that provided a consistent, highly responsive desktop experience for BPS students and administration.
For a detailed look at how education institutions like BPS are transforming their desktops, visit the Liquidware VDI Solutions for Education page.
Learn more about Liquidware ProfileUnity.
