Lyman High School (US) Case Study
Lyman High School has some 2,500 students using 1,000 PCs on their campus (a combination of WinXP, Win2000 and Win98) based in Seminole County, Florida. Initially, they were searching for a third party ‘import wizard’ to perform mass user imports into Windows NT Server. The school district had already standardized on a desktop security product, so that was not the initial focus of the search. Several desktop security vendors were contacted, and Lyman High began looking through the different software and hardware based solutions.
Having narrowed the selection to three products, each was placed on several computers in a computer science lab and the students were asked to "hack" them as best they could.
Once using WinSuite, the technology staff quickly realized how much time the centralized administrator saved them, compared to the school’s then current desktop security product, which was PC specific.
“WinSuite was the only product that our students were not able to get into.”
Shortly thereafter, Lyman High installed the WinSuite Client on all of their 1,000 PC's on campus.
In the past two years that Lyman High have had WinSuite installed, they have saved more time than they ever thought possible.
Using WinSuite’s User Import Wizard, they have created individual user accounts for each of their 2,500 students, each with a separate share on the Server that is accessible only by the user and Domain Admins (or any other selectable user or group). WinSuite prevents the changing of most individual Windows or program options so that users cannot make changes. This ensures that when students or faculty (staff) alike, enter any of their computer labs or classrooms, they find a computer in working condition, that has the same look and feel of every other computer on campus, and in each program that they launch, they find the toolbars set and available as they should be.
Students are encouraged to make use of their Home folders as opposed to using floppy drives. This has hugely reduced the number of viruses reported on the school network. User shares are easily scanned for viruses and because students rarely use floppy disks, they do not have a problem with students bringing any viruses in from home.
Rarely do they have a computer in ‘downtime’ from something that students did.
Uptime in labs has increased significantly, leaving the technical team time to work with students and teachers, instead of trying to fix “silly” problems on PCs.
At the end of Lyman High's first year with WinSuite, the school abandoned its site license for their then ‘county standard’ desktop security product and the District purchased a district-wide license for WinSuite for all of its secondary schools. It is now successfully implemented in most of the district's middle and high schools, with the rest being installed in the Summer of 2003.
“As we all know, even the best product can be worthless without strong support. The NDI Support and Sales staff have always gone out of their way to make sure that any issues we had were resolved quickly. I have been extremely pleased with WinSuite. I would not recommend it if I did not believe in it.”
-Keith Yahn
Network Administrator
Lyman High School, Florida
Pennine Way Junior School (UK) Case Study
"Following our recent upgrade to WinSuite 3 I thought I would take this opportunity to contact you and thank you for the excellent service we received and the benefits that we get from using the software. It is one we, as a school, recommend to many of our colleagues for a variety of reasons."
Running a network in any environment is a challenging one, but working in a primary school, with children who are immensely trigger happy, can soon have a detrimental effect on the up-time of PC's.
We have been running WinSuite on all of our PCs for over 3 years now and there has never been any occasion where a child has been able to alter any of the settings on the PC.
The security features are excellent and as a result the down-time of our PCs is kept to a real minimum. Prior to WinSuite the stand-alone PCs, that we had around the school, were soon reconfigured by the children and much of my time was spent repairing them.
The notion of a secure PC is also emphasised in respect to assisting in the protection against virus'. The ability to lock out drives securely from the children simply and easily across the network ensures that unwanted virus' or other material cannot be brought into the school network by floppy disk or on any media.
As a primary school, where budgets are tight and our hands are sometimes tied, we do have a number of specific problems which WinSuite easily overcomes.
One of these is the many different Operating Systems we have running, from Windows 95 to Windows XP. In a primary school with children ranging from 7 to 11 familiarity is the key. 'WinSuite' easily affords the children this opportunity by integrating with all manner of Operating Systems without me having to do anything. Whatever the Operating System WinSuite offers them the same screen and to the teachers of our school, who are not specialist in the field of ICT, this is one of it's most valuable assets. This became particularly relevant prior to upgrade. We had received a new PC courtesy of our LEA and it was running Windows 2000. Our previous version of WinSuite did not run on this Operating System. As a result the children did not like using the new computer. With WinSuite 3.0 running across the network now, the new PC is being regularly fought over and this will be the case for future upgrades during the coming years.
The ability to easily configure different users by the administrator is also an extremely valuable asset. Currently we keep the number of users to a minimum but it is essential for staff and children to have different access and this is again easily achieved. I know that in the future, when all children in the school will have individual user accounts specified for them, this will be easily achieved by WinSuite. I am looking forward to rapid growth in the school's network over the next two years and I will be doing this in the knowledge that I have a product in place that has the adaptability to move forward with me.
It is easy to receive a new piece of software through the post and begin installation oneself, however the most recent installation of WinSuite 3.0 by one of your specialists was not just clinical but informative. Mr. Easton not only installed the software but ensured aspects of our Server which were integral to WinSuite were working properly and provided some very effective on-site support in the immediate aftermath of installation. This ensured that I was familiar with the new software and amendments to our system and this was very much appreciated.
Installation of WinSuite in the future could not be any easier, one command on the network and any new PC installed receives exactly the same set up as any other. This saves so much valuable time, and when this is at a premium, it is much appreciated.
There are many other features of WinSuite that, as of yet, we are not using. I am sure though, that in the future they too, will be used and, in turn will be as valuable as those which the comments above refer to.
I hope that in the near future, you may take the opportunity to visit us and see how the software is being used in school. In the meantime, should you be working with any schools who would like to see WinSuite on site please do not hesitate to contact me. I would be more than happy to show them round our network."
-Richard Mansfield
Deputy Head teacher/ICT coordinator
Pennine Way Junior School
New College Leicester (UK) Case Study
New College Leicester was established in 1999, with the closure of several Leicester City schools, to form a ‘new, large, college’. We have some 1600 students, approximately 100 members of staff, plus approximately 70 clerical support staff. The school itself, is located to the western perimeter of Leicester City, and is an 11 – 18 (age group) Comprehensive school.
Before we had WinSuite, certainly in the old New Parks Community College building, there was a product being used called Futurelock, which was based on individual machines, rather than across the network. Obviously,
[Before WinSuite] there was a lot of time and effort required to go around and install the program on each machine.
When New College opened, WinSuite was one of the products that we considered from the LEA, and as we had a large investment (in computers) as a new college of approximately 160 or 170 machines in the college which came pre-bundled with WinSuite. We did have initial problems, with machines where WinSuite was not installed, which meant that desktops were being changed and some software was being deleted without permission.
We needed to implement a security product that would save us both time and effort in terms of maintaining the computers in a suitable working condition.
The objectives of fully implementing WinSuite were ease of use, and the saving of time. I can certainly guarantee that over the last three and a half years that we have been opened, the time-saving element has been a crucial factor. We certainly don’t have to visit machines, re-installing software; where WinSuite has done it’s job. Obviously, it doesn’t stop us from having to ‘re-ghost’ machines where the machines actually go wrong, but
In terms of maintenance it is very rare that we have any security issues with WinSuite. It is also true, that since we have had WinSuite, we have not even considered any other alternative front-end piece of software to secure our network.
We now have somewhere in the region of 500 PCs and 100 laptops, all of which have WinSuite installed.
Basically, WinSuite was suggested to us (by the LEA) and we had it in the early days, we have upgraded with it. It has always coped with the new machines that we have installed, implementing newer versions as they came along. We are always willing to have the newer versions as they are developed, and look forward to implementing version 3.50 and eventually version 4, that will deal with Active Directory. That will cope with our future requirements in terms of putting Windows XP machines into the classrooms.
The benefits of using WinSuite at New College, from the operation perspective are very clear. Currently we have a Network Manager and one Technician and if their time was spent going around re-installing software, or re-ghosting (rebuilding) so that all machines provided a consistent view to all students, then we would need a lot more than two technicians with the number of machines that we have.
Having WinSuite literally saves time and means that usually we do not have to worry about things like software being deleted, saving to drive C: or desktops being changed.
All of these are eliminated with the WinSuite software. Obviously, this has a knock-on effect for our time, and of course, cost savings. This is because paying for technician’s time to do work on the network has its own cost implications, and if they are not doing that, they can be doing other work within the college like maintaining the curriculum and the administration side of the software. At the same time, it frees them up to do research and development as well.
"Where does the project go from here?"
Well, it continues, hopefully – because we don’t want to go back to having any problems with network security. New College Leicester has an ongoing need for WinSuite, and WinSuite needs users!
"So, is WinSuite is as essential as Microsoft Office?"
Oh, yes, at the moment I think it is probably more essential!!
The bigger a school becomes, the more up-to-date with technology they become. Networks are getting larger and larger in Secondary schools, the Internet is getting bigger and bigger, the use of ICT is growing, so what you need is that security front-end to eliminate the obvious problems that you will encounter. Particularly as students get older, they get more inquisitive as to how things work and happen, want to download information or use games and so on. This is all in conjunction with some other security issues that we have, in that we are members of the East Midlands Broadband Consortium, who have some reasonably good filtering on the Internet. That in conjunction with WinSuite means that New College is fairly tight in terms of the security of the machines.
-Chris Smith
Assistant Principal and Head of ICT
New College Leicester
NDI Technologies