Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School Streamlines Device Management

Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School (MICDS) has implemented systems management appliances to reimage and service the increasing number of devices in use by students.

Technology is a core component of the school's curriculum, but the IT team did not have a systems management solution in place to assist with device reimaging and servicing. The school selected Dell KACE K Series systems management appliances, which the IT team is using to reimage hundreds of laptops each year, streamline its service desk, maintain an inventory of assets, and complete other systems management tasks. The team has reduced the amount of time spent on imaging from months to weeks and has reduced service desk calls by up to 56 percent.

"With Dell KACE we've experienced benefits that have been critical to the evolution of our approach to managing our systems," said Ron Falkoff, system analyst, for MICDS. "Today we have the flexibility to efficiently reimage our machines, insight into our asset inventory, and can innovate on our service desk. Now our day-to-day issues are just that, allowing us to focus on more long term strategic IT projects."

According to Ken Drachnik, director of product marketing for Dell KACE, "education institutions make up a significant portion of Dell KACE's business."

Key features of the Dell KACE K1000 systems management appliance include:

  • Hardware and software inventory tracking;
  • Asset management;
  • Software and update distribution;
  • Service desk and user portal management;
  • Configuration management; and
  • Security enforcement and patching.

Key features of the Dell KACE K2000 systems deployment appliance include:

  • Disk imaging;
  • Network operating system installation;
  • Centralized deployment library;
  • Remote systems recovery;
  • Pre and post installation configuration;
  • User state migration;
  • Discovery; and
  • Inventory.

Further information about the K1000 and K2000 is available at the Dell KACE site.

Mary Institute and Saint Louis Country Day School is a nonprofit, independent preparatory school located in St. Louis, MO. It serves more than 1,200 students from Kindergarten to grade 12.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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