When deployed appropriately, Desktop virtualisation  can unlock new capabilities that could never be achieved through  traditional physical desktop solutions, and also help greatly in  reducing the carbon-footprint of the organisation. For P.A. College, the move from traditional PCs to Thin & Zero client endpoints has slashed energy consumption, and this has helped greatly in solidifying  our Green Computing initiative. 

In a sense Desktop virtualisation made it possible to  centralise control and simplify management, improve security and  compliance, rapidly respond to changing business needs, minimise help  desk calls, whilst making user-centric computing a reality. This  effectively allows students to access their coursework, applications and specifically-customised virtual desktops from any location within the campus, on any compatible device, and the same benefits of course are  also afforded to the faculty. 

All available endpoints are Thin & Zero clients  that have a very small energy-consumption footprint which provides P.A. College with a more sustainable and long-lasting ‘Eco-friendly’ technology platform, since all processing is being done centrally within  the data-center. 

Benefits of the P.A. College approach

Our methodology has allowed P.A. College to reduce the overall time and resources associated with provisioning and managing  distributed campus endpoints, whilst ensuring that more of its students and faculty can access this technology through both dedicated and  pooled resources. By decoupling the operating system, applications and data from the traditional PC-based endpoint device, and instead having these components firmly within our datacenter, we have seen a dramatic decrease in saving time and resources needed to fulfill help desk tickets, push out updates & patches and provision of new images to  individuals or pools of users. As a result, we are far more agile and  ready to meet any change in business circumstances within a matter of  hours and not days or weeks. 

Our Information Services Department can deploy virtual desktops and applications to a variety of learning environments including labs, library, classrooms, and offices that provide our faculty, staff and students with secure, easy access to their data and  applications at all times. These desktops follow the end-user regardless  of compatible device or location. 

The latest innovation that P.A. College now offers to  all of its students, is secure remote access to the exact same  infrastructure they have on campus, but from the comfort of their home or anywhere in the world for that matter. Our agile virtual  infrastructure allows us to offer this and to also grow exponentially as and when the need arises, whilst observing our Green computing  initiative and reducing our overall Carbon-Footprint.