Wyse Extends Its Global Leadership in the Education Industry with Advanced Cloud Client Computing Solutions

K-12 and Higher Education Institutions around the World Benefit from Low Cost Structure, Improved Reliability, Simplified Management and Enhanced Security

SAN JOSE, Calif. – 09/21/2010 - Amidst reduced education budgets, complex IT challenges, and rising concerns about computer security, Wyse Technology, the global leader in cloud client computing, is announcing a large number of successful education industry customers.  Wyse welcomes these users back to school with a broad array of solutions to meet the needs of schools large and small.

At Clovis Unified School District in Clovis, California, a town of nearly 70,000 in California's San Joaquin Valley, the goal was a simple one: get as many computers in as many kids’ hands as possible.  Charged with this task where Dan Resciniti and Brian Welch from the District’s Network Services department.

Today, Clovis has more than 1,200 Wyse S10 devices in the hands of its students.  Resciniti and Welch are benefitting from reduced management and far greater reliability than the PC systems that have been replaced. 

According to Welch: "We tried other computer solutions, but they weren't the right fit for us, we needed more reliable devices with better centralized management so we ultimately went with Wyse Technology.  Our implementation of Wyse devices has been very successful."

"I can't overestimate the importance of students having computer access," added Resciniti. "Today's educational experience is nothing like what adults remember from their school years.  Computers and technology seem to be becoming fully ingrained in these kids' lives and lifestyles. To not have computers as part of the curriculum tool is to take away from the educational opportunity."

At Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland, one of the primary drivers in the decision to deploy Wyse was environmental.  Natural ventilation is intrinsic to the sustainable design of the Craighall campus but this posed a challenge for the information services department.  The problem was standard PCs consume too much power and pump out too much heat to run in large numbers without air conditioning.

The answer was a mass switchover from PCs to an IT infrastructure based on Wyse thin clients and a strategic change to the use of centralized computing.  The solution used Wyse V50 thin clients to deliver the highest possible energy efficiency without compromising on IT performance for the many staff and students of the university.  There are now more than 1,000 Wyse devices at the university with all information services centralized on data center servers running Citrix XenApp.

"Regardless of how energy efficient the Wyse devices are, it was absolutely essential that they met our user requirements and delivered the vision we had for how intrinsic information services would be to the delivery of the whole learning experience at the new campus," according to Fraser Muir, Director of Information Services at Queen Margaret University.  "We are now 4 years into our deployment and the results have been everything we expected and more."

Eastside Baptist Church and Christian School serves hundreds of families and more than 300 students in the greater Marietta, Georgia area.  Bill Bailey, Business Systems Administrator for Eastside, was struggling with maintenance for a collection of donated PCs; spending 15 to 20 hours each week on repairs, troubleshooting and updating the PCs across multiple configurations.

Bailey changed course and decided that a VMware-based centralized computing infrastructure with Wyse devices was the best approach for Eastside.  The new hardware and networks offer better performance and greater reliability, the centralized computing architecture enables more flexibility and tighter system control, and Wyse clients provide an inexpensive, low-maintenance way for users to access Eastside’s central computing resources. 

"I'd whole-heartedly recommend VMware and Wyse thin clients to any organization on a tight budget, especially schools," according to Bailey.  "If there's an issue with a thin client, usually all they need is a restart.  Teachers just call me and I can do that from the server with Wyse Device Manager.  Desktop maintenance has become a non-issue."

"It's a challenge to provide the best technology with current levels of funding," according to Jan Carlson, District Technology Supervisor at South Haven Public Schools in South Haven, Michigan.  "For example, to stay current we should be replacing PCs every five years, but the district can't always come up with that large sum all at once.  It's a catch-22: if we can't afford to replace our computers in a timely fashion, we end up spending more on support and non-renewable resources for older machines."

South Haven found that they could achieve PC-level multimedia performance, together with low TCO, centralized ease of maintenance, and greater control by deploying Wyse Streaming Manager (WSM).  WSM pushes processing down to local hardware to deliver all the functionality of a PC without any of the complexity.  The result is an energy-efficient, productive desktop with all the performance of a PC without the day-to-day complexities and risks associated with PCs.

Crowded classrooms, leaky roofs, and noisy computer labs are now only memories for students and staff at Manchester Essex Regional Middle School and High School in Massachusetts.  A new building that houses both schools opened in September 2009 as a state-of the-art green facility.  It is filled with twenty-first century features, including solar panels, light shelves that bounce light into dark classrooms while simultaneously dimming lights, and modern ventilation systems.  Integral to the vision of making the building a model of sustainability and efficiency was a complete green IT strategy, which included the installation of a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) from Wyse Technology and VMware.

"It's a next generation solution.  We wanted technology that conserved power, optimized our use of space, simplified our IT infrastructure and maintenance, and enabled staff and students to be as productive as possible," according to Stephen Kwiatek, Network Administrator at Manchester-Essex Regional School District.  "I have only good things to say about the Wyse solution.  It has given teachers, administrators, and IT staff the ability to do their jobs effectively and conveniently, and has improved the learning environment for students."

Marist School, a private high school located in Atlanta, Georgia, has been providing a first-class education to college-bound students for more than a century.  The school serves approximately 1,070 students each year and considers itself more like a small college than a high school.  PCs were often the weak link in Marist's technology offerings. To meet the needs of teachers and students for the latest applications, the 70 PCs in Marist School’s science labs were heavily loaded with 66 applications, including the Microsoft Office suite, the Geometer's Sketchpad, and Fathom educational software.

"The more applications we loaded on to the PCs, the worse the machines performed," according to Steve Hoecker, Director of Technology at Marist School.  "We make extensive use of the latest hardware and software but at the same time, performance and reliability are critical for us.  We want leading edge – not bleeding edge.  In our combination of Wyse Technology and VMware solutions, we have just what we needed."

Marist School's eight science labs now feature 70 Wyse V10L thin clients running Wyse ThinOS, and its library houses an additional 25 Wyse V10L machines for a total of 95 thin client workstations.  In the school's data center, two servers with two-way quad core chips are clustered and connected to a four-terabyte storage array.  These servers run VMware View 4, VMware ESX Server, and VMware View Security Server, which features an external IP address to facilitate remote login.

After its first full year of using Wyse thin clients, Marist School saw clear benefits. The school had experienced dramatic increases in the performance and reliability of the machines in the science labs and library.  Maintenance requirements had fallen sharply.  The school had realized the cost savings and energy conservation that the calculators had predicted. And students and teachers were both enjoying the way thin clients enhanced the quality of their work environment.

"Over the past few years we have seen Wyse slowly and steadily take hold at schools and universities from Southern California to South Africa and I couldn't be more pleased," according to Tarkan Maner, President and CEO of Wyse Technology.  "Wyse devices are already in place at ten of the world's top fifteen universities, and it's especially gratifying to have a hand in furthering the technical literacy of students around the world."

More information on Wyse Technology in the education sector can be found at http://www.wyse.com/solutions/education

About Wyse Technology

Wyse Technology is the global leader in cloud client computing, leveraging its industry-leading thin, zero and cloud PC client solutions combined with its advanced management, desktop virtualization and cloud software – on any computing platform; desktops, laptops and next generation mobile devices.  Wyse provides the most complete combination of software, hardware and service solutions for its more than 200 million users.  Cloud Client Computing is the ultimate client computing solution for our time. It replaces the outdated computing model of the unsecure, unreliable, un-green and expensive PC.  It delivers the most optimized security, reliability, total cost of ownership, and user experience with the lowest energy usage.  It simply connects all the dots: Thin and zero client computing, unified communications, desktop virtualization and the web for users to reach the clouds – in a private, public, hybrid or government cloud.  It is software.  It is hardware.  It is services.  It is in business.  It is at home.  It is on the go.  It is freedom – so users can focus on what is important.  Wyse partners with industry-leading IT vendors, including Citrix®, CSC®, IBM®, Microsoft®, and VMware®. Wyse also partners with globally-recognized distribution and service partners along with its award-winning partner programs to service any customer, anywhere and anytime, in the world. Wyse is headquartered in San Jose, California, U.S.A., with offices worldwide.

For more information, visit the Wyse website at http://www.wyse.com or call 1-800-GET-WYSE. * All brands and names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective holders.