Scale Computing Successful in Educational Institutions

Scale Computing, Inc. announced ongoing momentum with customers in education, as its HC3 platform enables educational institutions of all sizes to optimize operations with self-healing, automated infrastructure for all applications in the classroom, the campus, and beyond.

“Educational institutions require powerful systems that can run workloads with efficiency and speed. HC3 allows you to manage any workload of any size, while leaving more resources available for learning,” said Jeff Ready, CEO and co-founder. “With the new American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, education leaders at every level will have federal funding available to invest heavily in new technologies in preparation for greater online learning, summer programming, and the 2021-22 school year. Scale Computing’s HC3 platform combines servers, storage, and virtualization into a single solution to make IT infrastructure easier for schools and universities of every size.“

Educational institutions continue to face challenges from the past year with the growing demands and pressures of remote learning. HC3 uses self-healing and automation to simplify management, maximize application uptime and performance, and protect data. Te company also celebrates 3 recent wins in the education sector with new partnerships with Hood College, Virginia Tech, and Community High School District 218.

Auburn University earns its reputation as a premier public institution in part for how it embraces IT. Like most institutions of higher education, each college within Auburn University functions autonomously from one another with the respective dean deciding how best to appropriate their respective budgets and staff various departments in the interest of its students and programs.

HC3 platform brings storage, servers, virtualization and management together in a single system. With no virtualization software to license and no external storage to buy, HC3 products lower out-of-pocket costs and simplify the infrastructure needed to keep applications running. They make the deployment and management of a highly available and scalable infrastructure as easy to manage as a single server.

Joel Beckum, IT coordinator, Auburn University noted: “Scale’s HC3 solution does everything that I need it to. It simplifies my network infrastructure so that I can be an expert. I was a desktop support guy who’s now a system admin. Scale Computing makes me look like a pro. As far as my users know, I’m a genius.“

The New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation is a public school district and has operated as a separate governmental unit since 1956, enrolling approximately 12,000 students in pre-kindergarten through high school programs, and employing more than 1200 full-time personnel. When the school district needed to support immediate work from home solutions in response to Covid-19, they turned to Scale Computing. Leveraging VDI technology, the vendor packaged 2 VM images customers can download for free, and put together a how-to video and trained technical support staff to assist them in deploying the remote work technology solution. The VDI Connection Broker, Gateway, and Agent provide easy, intuitive configuration and management for the HC3 environment, whether using remote access, only on-premise access, or a combination of both. No additional devices or services are needed to get organizations up and running quickly.

As Chris Bowers, IT manager, the New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School, said: “When the work from home order was delivered the administrative offices needed connectivity and access, but many of the staff did not have a computer at home. Purchasing laptops was not going to happen in such a short time frame, and we did not want the security risk of opening up VPN connectivity to devices we do not manage.“

He continued: “Luckily, we did have Chromebooks on hand and we issued those to people who needed them, but critical applications were a mix of web-based and internally-hosted applications. Scale Computing had emailed their customers with details for a fast solution, and it met our needs. The message claimed deployment would be in an hour or less, and honestly we didn’t really believe it. But it was true – we timed it and we were able to finish deployment in just under an hour. We had the school staff up and running, working from home, and we haven’t received a single support call since. It all just works.“

Willard Public Schools, a public school system in Willard, MO, has been relying on HC3 since 2011 for its long-term, future-proofed IT infrastructure to power its educational institutions. After its 2011 implementation, it decided to replace its entire remaining legacy infrastructure with Scale Computing, creating an all-in-one hyperconverged solution with reliability, maximum availability, and ease of use. With HC3 as its IT foundation, it has a future-proofed and efficient IT infrastructure. Simplifying its entire IT infrastructure allows Willard’s IT team to focus on more strategic projects.

Willard Public Schools’ technology director Scott Wooldridge noted: “With 9 schools spread out across the district, we needed an IT infrastructure that didn’t require us to devote additional time or resources to manage the technology. With HC3, we found a solution that checked all the boxes and allowed our IT team to focus on more strategic projects. Not only is it self-healing and reliable, but it actually does what it says it will.“