York University
Canada's York University faced a common challenge in Higher Ed; their students were struggling to access the software they needed to get their work done, wherever and whenever they needed it.
It's a common challenge when it comes to IT in Higher Ed... How do you deliver all your software apps to any device, across mulitple campuses or labs, in a way that the students expect; their software to just work, on-demand!
Traditional deployment methods result in either apps being only available in certain labs or on certain machines, or a gigantic image size to deliver all software to every device. Alternatively, many universities explore VDI to deliver their applications, and soon realise that it's not scalable and cost-prohibitive.
Learn how Ontario's York University is improving student outcomes and student success by delivering software across campus on demand, to any device. Learn why the University replaced its existing VDI infrastructure to deliver apps to Windows and non-Windows devices in a consistent way at anytime.
Location
Toronto, Canada
Number of students
50,000+
OS platforms supported
80% Windows
20% Mac
Previous solution(s) used
VDI, SCCM
Example apps delivered
SAS, SPSS, ArcGIS, Adobe suite, Microsoft Office
Improving student outcomes at York University - Video transcription
The students, when they come to IT here, or when they come to university, what they expect from IT is, is the ability to do what they need to do for class without too much headache. So when they go to a classroom, or when they go to a lab, they, they expect the computers to boot quickly, the applications to be available and usable.
They also expect that when they come to, to university here, that if they have a laptop or a, a device of some sort, that they're able to use applications that they would use in a regular lab, so bring your own device [BYOD] as well.
Here at York University we have close to 10,000 devices actually. We have 80% Windows machines and we have 20% Mac machines. We deliver everything from statistical software like SAS, SPSS, ArcGIS, Adobe.
AppsAnywhere is launching an app anywhere, anytime, wherever you are, on any device. You may be at home, you may be at a café, you may be in a student lab, you may be in a classroom, you have that consistent uh, user experience in terms of, I don't mind where I am right now, so I can, you know, have the same experience and do my work.
We want them to have that software available anytime they need it. So whether they're on campus in a lab, whether they're working in the library or, or even at home, uh, doing just, just doing work at home, with AppsAnywhere, it, it just covers all the bases basically.
And also they, you know, the fact that they can use their own device and they don't have to come into the university to use our lab machines to be able to run the, the software.
So prior to AppsAnywhere, we had looked at VDI and also application virtualization. As a matter of fact, two of our faculties, uh, went down the path of VDI and quickly realized that it was extremely expensive and uh, resource intensive proposition. And since we've deployed AppsAnywhere, they've dropped that project and they've uh, latched on to uh, our application virtualization through AppsAnywhere.
With the AppsAnywhere uh, we have the option now to have a modern interface uh, as well as a consistent uh, user experience across uh, many platforms independent of devices and OS platform as well.
The student are essentially our bread and butter, so we wanna make sure that their experience with IT and technology as a whole is topnotch. So the feedback that we've received from students uh, with AppsAnywhere has been tremendous. The, they've been very happy with uh, with the service and all we've heard are good things.
The support from software to have been absolutely tremendous. I mean, those guys have been absolutely fantastic in term of uh, us, you know, delivering a very critical service, you know, to the community.