2,260 users and counting

September 27, 2012September 27, 2012 Leigh Haynes Anytime Anywhere Computing, Cloud Desktop, Feedback, GCW, Library, Office 2010, Students Union, Thin Client, Windows 7

The Cloud Desktop has been live now for two weeks and we have seen a day by day increase in usage as students have returned and inquisitive staff members have tried out the new service. Over the past 14 days we have seen 2,260 unique users login to the Cloud Desktop. On our busiest day so far we served 811 logon sessions throughout the day, peaking at 148 concurrent users.

The most used application so far is Internet Explorer which has clocked up 1,202 hours of usage. This is to be expected at this time of year as students login to Blackboard and check their timetables. After that, the next significant application is Microsoft Word which has totalled 247 hours.

The feedback we have received so far is overwhelmingly positive, especially with regards to the speed of the desktop and size of the new terminals. The Students’ Union kindly gathered feedback from the students and found that 95% of returning students rated the improvement as “good/very good” (from a random sample of 35 students).

First look

September 9, 2012September 27, 2012 Leigh Haynes Desktop, GCW, Library, Office 2010, VDI, Windows 7

Since the last post the project team has been hard at work on the delivery of the new Windows 7 & Office 2010 desktop solution. Following a series of low level design workshops a detail design was agreed and the project moved into the technical implementation stage. Server hardware was ordered and installed, operating systems installed and the build of the desktop environment and supporting management infrastructure begun. We are now at a stage where we can start to let users test out the desktop and so have opened up access to our colleagues in the Library so that they can take a first look and provide feedback before we go live.

Currently the desktop includes the following applications (more will be added in the future):

Office Professional Plus 2010; Access, Excel, InfoPath, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, Word
Project Professional 2010
SharePoint Designer 2007
Visio Premium 2010
Internet Explorer 9
Google Chrome
IBM SPSS 19
Paint.NET
7-Zip
Acrobat Reader
Sophos Anti-Virus 10

Thin clients selected for the GCW Library

July 13, 2012September 9, 2012 Leigh Haynes Anytime Anywhere Computing, Desktop, Library, Office 2010, Thin Client, VDI, Windows 7

We have now selected and ordered the thin client device (small dedicated cloud computer) which will be going into open access areas of the GCW Library in September. It is the latest T10 model from Wyse which boots up in 12 seconds and uses just 7W of power. It has no fans or other moving parts and so is completely silent in operation. We are planning to mount them on the rear of the monitors which will result in a neat and tidy solution which is very space efficient.

SMT gives the green light

October 27, 2011March 7, 2012 Leigh Haynes Anytime Anywhere Computing, Desktop, Library, Office 2010, RDS, Thin Client, Windows 7

Last week we presented the proposal to deliver a flexible centralised Windows 7 & Office 2010 desktop using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services to SMT. I am pleased to report that the proposal was accepted and we now have approval to proceed into full implementation.

As the solution requires significant new supporting network and server infrastructure we will now enter into a tender exercise and period of procurement which is likely to take us well past Christmas. The plan is to have the system up and running with a core set of general student focused software applications in time for the new academic year. To compliment this we intend to replace PCs in some open access locations such as the Library with thin client devices.

We will then start to add the business applications and subject specific software based on a more detailed requirements analysis. This will identify those applications which are most frequently or widely used or are otherwise critical to a specific deployment scenario.