Digital Transformation In Higher Education Vmware
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Securing and Mobilizing Digital Learning Environments
to Enable Limitless Learning
DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
Securing and Mobilizing Digital Learning Environments
to Enable Limitless Learning
DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
IN HIGHER
EDUCATION
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 1
BREAKING BARRIERS
Academic institutions have always found ways to push boundaries. Today, the ability to rapidly adopt new
learning, teaching, and business models have department heads conferring with campus CIOs to more
aggressively pursue IT and business transformation initiatives that improve oerings while also reducing costs.
Although once sucient, siloed IT systems are no longer suitable to address new learner demographics and
demands nor to thwart increasingly advanced cyber threats. The rise in non-traditional over traditional student
enrollment and online learning as an integral part of the educational landscape requires IT teams at academic
institutions to adopt more modern, integrated approaches that enable limitless learning. Key to success is
simultaneously reducing IT complexity across student learning, faculty teaching, advanced research, and
collaborative work environments, as well as protecting student privacy, financial data and transactions, health
services data, and the myriad of other sources of sensitive information in higher education.
“Today’s average student is no longer the 18-year-old whose parents drive her up to ‘State U’ in a minivan
stued with boxes. Instead, the ‘new normal’ student may be a 24-year-old returning veteran, a 36-year-old
single mother, a part-time student juggling work and college, or the first-generation college student. The
faces we picture as our college hopefuls can’t be limited by race, age, income, zip code, disability, or any
other factor.”1
TED MITCHELL
FORMER UNDER SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
Modernize
Data
Centers
Integrate
Public
Clouds
Empower
Digital
Workspaces
Transform
Security
Grow Revenue, Drive
Operational Eciencies,
and Reduce Costs
Improve Data Security
and Protect PII and IP
Mobilize Learning
and Retain Students
+ +
Accelerate Digital Transformation in Higher Education
This paper provides guidance about what’s needed to ensure academic institutions secure and mobilize digital learning
and working environments at lower costs. It illustrates how academic institutions are using VMware solutions to reduce
IT complexity and cost while improving performance and eciency by modernizing core IT platforms. It addresses how
learning leaders and campus IT are teaming with VMware to scale and improve services with integrated hybrid clouds;
provide anytime, anywhere access from any device to required education resources through the digital workspace;
and mitigate threats while protecting academic brands by transforming security and compliance.
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 2
TRANSFORMATION DRIVERS
There is no denying education’s future is digital. Four in ten (42 percent) college students report using two or more
devices during an average school day.2 Globally, mobile data trac has grown 18-fold over the past five years. By
the year 2019, there will be nearly 1.5 mobile devices per capita (a total of 11.5 billion), exceeding the world’s projected
population (7.6 billion) at that time.3
Collectively, campus IT’s role is primarily to satisfy student and faculty demands for secure access to the apps and
data they need, but they are not the only constituents. IT sta must invest time maintaining, updating, and upgrading
software that supports the business of education—from financial aid and development oces to campus security. Because
many traditional teaching resources, learning platforms, and campus operations still depend heavily on legacy applications
to run critical processes, academic institutions incur more maintenance costs and exposure to risks than necessary.
Investment in digital transformation enables academic institutions—from community colleges to research universities—
to introduce better ways of learning, new experiences, and inventive business models that drive successful outcomes.
Yet no campus IT team wants to start over, which is why VMware accelerates digital transformation with a software-
defined approach that enables ecient evolution from legacy applications to a future-proof infrastructure that ensures
security from the data center to the device.
VMware provides unprecedented freedom and flexibility in how campuses build and evolve their IT environments. The
VMware Cross-Cloud Architecture™ enables academic institutions to seamlessly extend their data centers by running,
managing, connecting, and securing any app on any cloud—private or public. VMware’s secure digital workspace
solutions provide anytime, anywhere, any device access to data and information, improving learning engagement
and productivity.
“VMware technology has enabled us to improve and increase services to students at no additional cost. Those
saved funds make it possible for us to provide other services, academic and support services, that we otherwise
wouldn’t be able to provide. For other universities who may be contemplating similar changes—I would strongly
encourage them to do so.”
CLIF FLYNN
SENIOR VICE CHANCELLOR FOR ACADEMIC AFFAIRS, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA UPSTATE
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 3
Modernize
Data
Centers
MODERNIZE IT INFRASTRUCTURE,
PROCESSES, AND APPS
Over the last generation, college enrollment has increased4 due to
economic recession, deindustrialization, and increasing demand for
skilled workers. Greater and more diverse participation in learning has
brought challenges and opportunities to higher education. A software-
defined data center (SDDC) approach provides the foundation for an
evolutionary modernization of core education platforms that deliver
more responsive and student-centered operating models through
automation and IT as-a-service capabilities.
Virtualizing Beyond Servers
For nearly two decades, academic institutions have lowered capital
expenses by consolidating data center infrastructure with VMware
server virtualization. Now, they are further reducing legacy infrastructure
costs and risks while improving operational eciency with virtual
compute, storage, and management in a tightly integrated software
stack. Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) lowers TCO by shifting to
low-cost, high-volume server economics and simplifying management.
An ideal foundation, HCI oers powerful, high-performance infrastructure
anywhere—for example, for makerspaces—without academic institutions’
having to build dedicated computing spaces in libraries or other facilities.
Broadening IT Automation and Simplifying the Student Experience
with SIS Integration
Campus IT teams are modernizing data centers to optimize for
performance, availability, and cost. For more ecient app and
infrastructure deployment, monitoring, and maintenance across
physical, virtual, and cloud environments, they are relying on intelligent
operations management and automation. They are creating policies in
VMware vRealize® Automation™ and VMware NSX® to deliver workloads,
apps, and compute services with network and security services attached.
For campus IT teams that have already invested in an Ellucian Student
Information System (SIS), VMware’s Connector for Ellucian automates
and updates the delivery of apps and resources to student digital
backpacks based on their course loads. As students add and drop
classes throughout their academic careers, their digital backpacks
seamlessly reflect their academic journeys.
Supporting Legacy Apps and Running Modern Apps
In support of online and new educational models, IT is tasked with
evolving legacy apps and enabling the delivery of modern apps.
VMware solutions simplify legacy app deployment and migration by
isolating apps from underlying operating systems (OSs) to eliminate
conflict and streamline delivery and management. VMware investments
in open source technologies such as Photon OS™ also enable academic
institutions to securely build, run, and manage cloud-native apps on
infrastructure as easily and cost eectively as legacy apps.
“As an open enrollment
environment with
more than 30,000
students pursuing
traditional education,
continuing education
and professional devel-
opment across more
than 70 study areas,
Schoolcraft College
operates in one of
the most diverse and
dynamic learning
environments. This
new solution for
Ellucian from VMware
will help us deliver a
secure and consumer-
simple experience to
our students while
streamlining our costs.”
PATRICK TURNER
VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION
OFFICER, SCHOOLCRAFT COLLEGE
Integrate
Public
Clouds
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 4
EMBRACE THE PUBLIC CLOUD
Experts have suggested the best way for universities to compete is to
innovate, adopting fluid architectures that encourage online learning
and partnerships with private industry. The physical setting for a large-
scale research eort involving many parties can vary from multiple
concurrent settings that include university labs, corporate centers,
and national labs to a single dedicated research campus community.5
Modern IT-as-a-service capabilities, cutting-edge research environments,
supercomputing, virtual labs, and creative learning spaces are best
enabled by hybrid cloud services.
Scale to Expand Online Learning
A five-year study at the University of Massachusetts found that the
blended structure (face-to-face plus online learning) led to increased
engagement with course material which promoted more active learning
during class meetings and ultimately improved student success.6 A
multiyear trend report by the Babson Research Group shows growth
in online enrollments continues to outpace overall higher education
enrollments.7 Universities are turning to public clouds to fortify and
future-proof their data center models. Investments in VMware Cloud
Foundation™ and OVH are giving higher education IT leaders the
unprecedented ability to move workloads and applications into and
between clouds, creating new opportunities to aordably meet the
expanding needs of online learning and cutting-edge academic research—
without downtime and all while keeping cross-campus data secure.
Reducing Space and Cost Requirements with Virtual Labs
To make learning more accessible and aordable, universities are also
relying on the hybrid cloud to enable virtual computing labs—with high-
performance applications such as computer-aided design apps—both
on campus as well as on the go, on systems of students’ choice. VMware’s
solution provides an exceptional user experience and high-performance
graphics virtualization powered by NVIDIA GRID, for the ever-expanding
list of graphics-intensive software applications. Through virtual labs,
students have more access to lab time, improving overall experiences
and helping college departments grow remote and online learning
experiences as additional revenue streams. The solution also makes it
possible for higher education institutions to accommodate more
students without adding new buildings and infrastructure.
Maximizing Uptime for Learning and Research Environments
Moving to cloud infrastructure has also been a way for IT leaders to
help respond to today’s performance, manageability, and security
challenges. While minimizing downtime and keeping IT in control, VMware
cloud solutions enable decentralized departmental decision makers to
support their own diverse program needs.
“Making a very consistent
experience for everyone
means we’re breaking
down some of the
barriers that we’ve
had in the past about
accessibility to resources.
That is something we’re
very excited about.”
MARK ELLERSICK
TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT ANALYST,
WESTERN CAROLINA UNIVERSITY
Empower
Digital
Workspaces
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 5
CREATE EXCEPTIONAL
MOBILE EXPERIENCES
Learning today is less about place and more about purpose. The
modern campus depends on connectivity and collaboration, not just
physical spaces. Globally, device diversity is a campus reality. For
campus IT, the job isn’t just to deliver apps to disparate devices, but
to ensure seamless experiences between them.
Secure Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device Access to Digital
Learning Environments
Regardless of where a student is working—on or o-campus—the
VMware Secure Digital Backpack for Education, powered by VMware
Workspace ONE™, provides secure access to all of the resources
students need. It simplifies IT management and the reliable delivery of
today’s high-performance learning environments with relevant native,
web, and 3D applications, that personalize user experiences and help
evolve teaching models.
The Digital Backpack drives down campus capital and operating costs,
streamlines IT management, and safeguards data. It uniquely combines
desktop and app virtualization, enterprise mobility management, and
centralized identity management. The user-simple and enterprise-secure
solution drives teaching and learning initiatives campus-wide by delivering
a consistent user experience to any app through VMware AirWatch®
and VMware Identity Manager™ from a unified app catalog. IT sets
self-service policies and credentials across bring-your-own (BYO)
and campus-issued, personally-enabled (COPE) devices to increase
productivity while ensuring data remains secure in the data center.
Academic institutions seeking to meet on-demand education
requirements are also deploying virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI)
to modernize computing infrastructure and oer secure digital
workspaces to all faculty, students, and sta. Highly reliable and secure,
VMware Horizon® improves productivity while reducing IT management.
Simplified Windows 10 Migration and Ecient App Delivery
and Management
Traditional approaches to Windows management have been complex,
costly, and restricted. AirWatch provides a cloud- and mobile-centric
approach that simplifies Windows 10 device management and security
with cost savings for all departments—especially those requiring
automated patching of productivity apps. Desktop app management
and associated packaging has also been a major campus IT expense.
VMware reduces costs with a just-in-time app delivery and lifecycle
management model that disaggregates IT managed apps and user-
installed apps from the OS. With the solution, IT can more eciently
manage, deliver, upgrade, and maintain apps throughout their
lifecycle—minimizing TCO and maximizing eciency.
“Thanks to VMware
Horizon, our students
have technology that
suits their needs, with
the ability to study from
anywhere and via the
device of their choosing.
We’re already getting
great feedback in our
internal student surveys
and expect this to carry
on through to external
rankings, which ultimately
will help to attract more
students to come here—
as well as the very best
academics.”
IAN ROWLEY
DESKTOP MANAGER, IT SERVICES,
UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
Transform
Security
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 6
BETTER PROTECT PERSONAL
DETAILS AND RESEARCH DATA
Technology-driven learning creates new opportunities, but also generates
new risk. On campus and o, students, professors, and business partners
want to ensure intellectual property (IP) and personally identifiable
information (PII)—including birthdates, social security numbers, addresses,
paystub information, and more—is protected. Although educators,
students, and sta demand non-stop access and innovation, security
remains a top campus IT priority. Only VMware oers a transformative
approach to security—through a ubiquitous layer of software—that
provides comprehensive, unified end-point management and network
security technology, purpose-built for providing IT with granular control
that starts in the data center and finishes at the device.
Zero-Trust Networking with Micro-Segmentation
Classic perimeter security models focus on protecting the outside.
VMware NSX works from the inside out, creating a zero-trust network
built around granular, workload-specific security that guards against
dangerous lateral threats that breach perimeter defenses and may
linger, undetected, in the data center for months. NSX makes micro-
segmentation economically and operationally feasible, providing the
networking and security foundation for the software-defined data
center, enabling the three key functions of micro-segmentation: isolation,
segmentation, and segmentation with advanced services.
Protection from Data Center to Device
VMware solutions keep data protected by ensuring it stays in the data
center, not on end-point devices. Through conditional access policies, IT
can enforce access decisions based on a range of decisions, including
strength of authentication, network, location, and device compliance.
Powerful policy controls also help IT to protect against compromised
devices. Additional VMware AirWatch technology makes remote device
wipe not only possible, but simple.
Comprehensive Approach to Security
As any campus that has experienced a public data breach can attest,
hindsight is 20/20. Traditional, policy-based checklists of security
functionality are no longer sucient. Preventative measures are integral
to a holistic cybersecurity strategy because campus data is now
accessed anytime, anywhere across a wide variety of devices.
Comprehensive VMware security and compliance solutions include
protecting the following:
• Devices–Protect against malware, viruses, and suspicious device behaviors
• Networking–Block malicious networks and man-in-the-middle threats
• Applications–Scan, analyze, and validate apps
• Cloud–Secure and monitor cloud services for data loss and threats
“VMware vRealize
Automation and
VMware NSX add real
value to the business,
ultimately securing data
and giving us the ability
to meet compliance.
We are part of HIPAA,
FERPA, and about eight
dierent audit compli-
ances. NSX gives us the
ability to more easily
meet compliance in a
streamlined way that’s
less expensive and less
manual. What this allows
us to do is double and
triple in size without
increasing the amount
of sta so that’s a
huge benefit.”
BRIAN PIETREWICZ
DIRECTOR, IT, COMPUTING PLATFORMS,
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION | 7
TRUSTED VMWARE SOLUTIONS EARN
HIGH MARKS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
For students and educators that demand greater personalization and learning resources access, anytime,
anywhere, on every device, IT innovation is critical. That’s why leading global academic institutions are deploying
the comprehensive VMware portfolio of solutions. Across campuses worldwide, VMware solutions are helping IT
sta modernize infrastructure and apps while expanding learning opportunities with cloud, creating exceptional
mobile experiences, and better protecting PII and research data.
VMware virtualization technologies have saved academic institutions millions of dollars in capital expenses. With
the software-defined data center, VMware is reimagining learning and the business of education by extending the
paradigm of resource abstraction to all infrastructure domains, on-premises and in hybrid cloud environments,
while the digital workspace improves user and customer experiences, driving the digital agenda.
VMware solutions accelerate digital transformation for academic disciplines as well as other institutional services,
from financial aid and development transactions to university medical center care to campus transportation services.
VMware solutions are ideal for solving academic institutions’ infrastructure, cloud, customer engagement, digital,
security, and compliance challenges—all while reducing IT complexity.
Learn more
www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/education.html
1. Department of Education, “Reimagining the Role of Technology in Higher Education,” January 2017.
2. Pearson “Student Mobile Device Survey,” June 2015.
3. Cisco. “Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Trac Forecast Update, 2016–2021,” February 7, 2017.
4. National Center for Education Statistics. U.S. Department of Education, https://nces.ed.gov.
5. R&D Magazine. “How Academic Institutions Partner with Private Industry,” April 2015.
6. Life Sciences Education. David Gross, University of Massachusetts, “Increased Preclass Preparation Underlies Student
Outcome Improvement in the Flipped Classroom.”
7. Babson Survey Research Group. “The 2015 Survey of Online Learning,” February 2016.
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Copyright © 2017 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. VMware products
are covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United
States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Item No: VMW-BRO-EDUCATION-HE-USLET-106
05/17
Learn more
www.vmware.com/solutions/industry/education.html
