ChallengeGreeneville City School System gives

students in its six schools access to

1,700 PCs. The district needed to

reduce spending on hardware and

power and to reduce the demands

that management of the PCs placed

on its IT staff of three.

SolutionThe district began rolling out Wyse

thin clients. The systems provide the

performance of high-end desktop

computers but drastically reduce both

costs and administration requirements.

Benefits• 65% lower hardware costs per

machine over 7 years

• Projected 50-60 staff hours/week

saved on hardware administration

if all district PCs were replaced

with thin clients

• Projected $90,000 savings

annually on energy costs

• 80% less wait time when opening

Microsoft® Word

Application areas• Cloud Computing

• Virtual Desktop

Customer profile

Company Greeneville City

School System

Industry Education

Country United States

Students 3,069

Web site www2.gcschools.net

“One of the great incidental benefits of the shift to Wyse thin clients is that it frees my team from maintenance requirements. We can focus that time on making the technology serve the students’ education.” Larry Jones, Network Administrator, Greeneville City School System

Greeneville City School System relies on Wyse cloud client computing

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Larry Jones, network administrator at Greeneville City Schools, is quick to attribute the district’s success to technicians John Wright and Chuck Broyles, plus the backing of “the best school board in the universe.” He credits Jerry Anderson, the chairman of the board, and Beverly Miller, chief technology officer, with combining a commitment to education with a vision for how technology can best serve students and staff.

High innovation, low investmentAs for Jones and his team, they’re always watching for opportunities to put technology to work for the schools. For example, when Jones went to ISTE to collect the award in 2008, he noted the widespread adoption of netbooks. “I started thinking about what we’re trying to achieve with our computers,” he recalls. “I asked myself, ‘When I put a computer in front of a student, what am I trying to give them?’” The answer, he realized, was that fundamentally, most of the time, students just needed access to the Internet and the Microsoft Office suite.

This insight led directly to the conclusion that he didn’t need to put high-performance PCs on desks—which was good, because the district’s goal of providing students access to high-end PCs was proving increasingly impractical. “Even if I had all-new PCs, I wouldn’t be able to maintain them with my staff of three,” says Jones. “I needed a way to minimize maintenance and running

costs in order to support student access to technology.” Jones began exploring desktop virtualization with Citrix on the back end. As a start, he bought a few third-party terminals and tried turning some PCs into virtual terminals by installing Knoppix open-source Linux, but the results were disappointing.

Performance of high-end PC with less maintenance“Performance is critical, especially in an educational environment where so many of the applications we use are multimedia,” he explains. “I kept reviewing options, and when I saw the performance of the Wyse T50 thin client, I was sold. From a user’s point of view, it was just like a high-performing

Technology at work

Hardware

Wyse T50 thin clients

Software

Citrix® desktop virtualization software

Compass

Knoppix®

Microsoft® Active Directory®

Microsoft Office

STAR Reading and STAR Math

Wyse Device Manager

“When I saw the performance of the Wyse T50 thin client, I was sold. From a user’s point of view, it was just like a high-performing PC—but from my point of view, it was much easier to manage and less expensive to run.” Larry Jones, Network Administrator, Greeneville City School System

Greeneville City School System in Greeneville, Tennessee, has

four elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.

Like public school districts everywhere, Greeneville is on a tight

budget. Yet in 2008 this small district won the Sylvia Charp Award,

presented annually by T.H.E. Journal and the International Society

for Technology in Education (ISTE) to a school district that shows

innovation in integrating technology into teaching and learning.

Its approach appears to be delivering results: In standardized

tests, the district consistently places in the top five Tennessee

school districts.

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PC—but from my point of view, it was much easier to manage and less expensive to run.”

Today, the Greeneville City School System has begun its migration to virtual computing with a Citrix infrastructure that runs two labs in the high school, with 25 Wyse T50 thin clients each, and 70 PCs with Knoppix. Elsewhere, 1,700 stand-alone PCs run in labs and classrooms throughout the district.

On the back end, 80 Dell servers host applications such as Compass and link to Internet-hosted applications such as STAR Reading and STAR Math. They also run Citrix, which publishes desktops to various groups working on the Knoppix PCs and the Wyse T50 thin clients. These desktops, based on Active Directory groups and individual users’ logins, enable the same client device to show an elementary school, middle school or high school student’s desktop, or the most comprehensive class of desktop: that of a system administrator.

Jones manages all the Wyse thin clients with Wyse Device Manager (WDM), which enables him to push policies, set passwords and remotely shadow devices to support users and monitor unusual activity.

The people who most appreciate the difference are Jones’ team of technicians. They know that the Wyse thin clients don’t need repair. If there’s a problem, a reboot will fix it, and in the rare cases when a reboot isn’t enough, they can ship the unit back to Wyse and simply un-box and plug in a replacement unit. Instead of having to spend their time fixing devices, they can get on with the more satisfying work of educating students and teachers and developing creative ways to meet their changing needs.

100 fewer hours of machine downtime per weekThough the present deployment is limited in its scope, Jones and his team are already seeing benefits from their

Wyse deployment. Jones is eagerly looking forward to managing just a few system images and then deploying them across the thin clients with no moving parts. With just three full-time staff and two high school students working afternoons, the district can’t support 1,700 PCs and 80 servers. “Even if I could afford to replace PCs every three years, I couldn’t keep ahead of the maintenance issues,” says Jones. All together, the team spends 50 to 60 hours a week just on hardware issues—which also means at least 100 hours of machine downtime a week due to hardware problems.

Software issues have the potential to be even more time-consuming, so Jones operates a stripped-down maintenance policy: Locking down access as much as possible and forgoing all but the most critical upgrades. When security is at risk, he’ll send out his team to upgrade every PC, but that takes about a week of all-hands effort.

In contrast, managing the reliable Wyse thin clients with WDM takes almost no time. Jones only needs to install upgrades once to run across all 50 thin clients, and he can roll them out within an hour or so, reducing any potential window of vulnerability. If a teacher wants a new application available to a class, Jones can make it available on all the thin clients within several hours, as opposed to a week for the PCs.

Troubleshooting a PC can take hours, but with the Wyse thin clients, an on-site technical leader can just reboot it. If it still doesn’t work, they can pull another one out of inventory and plug it in. “I could get fourth or fifth graders to deploy the Wyse thin clients,” comments Jones. “Connect, reboot and you’re good to go.”

Projected $90,000 per year savings on energy costsThe energy savings of Wyse thin clients are one of the most persuasive benefits of the transition. Thin clients use just 9 watts of energy, while a PC uses 200 to 250 watts. Jones observes that

“There’s no question that buying a Wyse T50 thin client and keeping it for seven years makes much more sense than buying a PC and keeping it for half that time. The hardware savings are considerable, and the hidden cost savings are almost as much.” Larry Jones, Network Administrator, Greeneville City School System

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with IT power needs accounting for 14 percent of the district’s power use in a typical month, he could save the district $90,000 a year by replacing all his PCs with Wyse T50 thin clients.

While Jones can purchase a T50 and a monitor for $350, he could get a low-powered laptop for an additional $150. At first, it looks like a PC isn’t much more expensive, but Jones is busy educating decision-makers within the district about the hidden costs of PCs, which include the time and money required to deploy them, install software, power them, replace batteries, repair the units and purchase antivirus licenses. Plus, PCs don’t last as long, and the older they get, the more maintenance they require. Sooner or later, a new service pack comes out that overwhelms the RAM of the old PC and, as Jones puts it, “turns it into a brick.”

“These hidden costs are huge,” he notes. “There’s no question in my mind that buying a Wyse T50 thin client and keeping it for at least seven years makes much more sense than buying a PC and keeping it for half that time, then replacing it. The hardware savings—about $650 per unit over seven years—are considerable, and the hidden cost savings are almost as much again.”

80% less wait time when opening Microsoft WordJones has always made system security a priority, restricting what students can access on PCs. The Wyse thin clients support his tough security standards.

Students can’t see what they’re not supposed to or make system changes. For Jones, security is about more than protecting the system; it’s about delivering a consistent experience to students, each time, to minimize distraction and maximize their ability to work effectively with the system.

Perhaps the highest compliment for the Wyse thin clients is that users haven’t noticed that they’re any different than a new PC. When students or teachers work on the thin clients, they can see they’re new, so they expect better performance than what they’ve been used to. The Wyse thin clients deliver, with fast boot-up and logins that get users to Microsoft Word in less than a minute rather than the 5- to 10-minute wait periods they previously experienced.

Reducing the wait times allows students and teachers to make more productive use of each class period, enhancing their experiences and allowing them to benefit more from the class time with the teacher.

Focusing on innovation in meeting students’ needs If Jones had the funding, he would replace all his PCs with Wyse thin clients today. “Students would get better performance and more reliability,” he comments. “And just as importantly, my team and I could take the time and energy we currently spend keeping PCs running and invest it instead in figuring out how to help students and teachers achieve their goals.”

With budgets tight, though, Jones is trying to get Wyse thin clients when he can. Meanwhile, he is considering buying Wyse PC Extender so that he can extend the useful life of the district’s PCs by enabling them to emulate Wyse thin clients.

Ever the visionary, Jones has already started using his virtual infrastructure to enable students’ iPad® and Android™ devices and other technologies to run educational and business programs so that they can become a valuable resource to the students—and ease the pressure on the school’s resources.

“Many students’ parents have already bought them devices,” says Jones. “Why duplicate that investment when we can adapt our system to leverage it? One of the great incidental benefits of the shift to Wyse thin clients is that because it frees my team from maintenance requirements, we no longer have to spend our time serving the needs of the technology. Instead, we can focus that time—and the money freed up from hardware and energy expenses—on making the technology serve the students’ education.”

Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visit dell.com/servicedescriptions © July 2012. Microsoft and Active Directory are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. Dell makes no warranties—express or implied—in this case study. Reference number 10011395

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