Flexible IT Infrastructure for an Evolving Education Environment
As education institutions aim
to become more flexible to meet modern demands,
teachers will continue operating under hybrid learning models —
making the need for disruption-free virtual lessons and network
access all the more critical. To best accommodate these needs,
investing in a flexible IT infrastructure that can support
remote-learning, especially as our country undergoes one of the most
pivotal time periods in history, will be an important factor.
Cost-Efficient Solutions to Tackle
Academic Resilience
Due to declining enrollment rates and
increasing costs driven by COVID, schools are facing tight
budget restrictions
for the
2021-2022 academic
year.
Knowing this, IT departments should look toward cost-effective
solutions that will support their remote workforce and students. A
hybrid and multicloud environment, built on hyperconverged
infrastructure (HCI), is a proven model. It allows organizations to
benefit from lower costs and the increased security of private cloud,
for predictable workloads, while giving the flexibility to burst onto
public cloud resources as needed. This allows institutions to more
closely monitor IT infrastructure spending while gaining the
flexibility necessary to quickly adapt.
At the start of the pandemic, school
districts like Millard
Public Schools in Nebraska were tasked with upgrading
their IT infrastructure, simplifying operations and strengthening
their business continuity plan to support distance learning for their
24,000 students. However, as a public school district, they needed to
act with financial probity. Investing in HCI allowed the district to
create a consistent and outstanding educational experience for
students while providing ways to maximize investment. For example,
instead of operating dedicated labs and buying hundreds of high-end
workstations for students learning CAD, they now run virtual desktops
on low-end laptops. Students can remotely access fully functional
high-powered graphics, with limited financial investment needed.
Security Threats Remain and Must be
Identified
In 2019 alone, 89
U.S. universities, colleges and school districts were victims of
ransomware attacks, followed by at least 30 in the first five months
of 2020. With the increase in the possibility of both outside and
inside threats, schools and districts must be able to detect and
mitigate unusual behavior within their networks such as failed
authentications, unforeseen increases in network traffic, or large
volumes of file uploads. Technologies that provide role-based access
control, identity and access management, and multifactor
authentication to allow only authorized users into programs and
restrict them to certain activities will enable a stronger security
posture. A unified hybrid and multicloud environment will also
provide the necessary end-to-end visibility, and enable common
security policies.
In addition to identity and behavioral
analysis, microsegmentation to divide networks and application
components into isolated segments can help minimize the degree of
damage. Microsegmenting your virtual infrastructure is a method of
creating zones to isolate attacks and stop them from spreading. When
combined, these solutions can help companies detect and contain
threats more quickly. In the event of an attack, microsegmentation
can help limit the spread to a specific segment rather than to the
entire organization.
Should a ransomware attack occur and
result in loss of information, educational organizations should have
a data and disaster recovery plan in place. Investment in Disaster
Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) technologies, along with
securing data and creating real-time copies of the data that’s
stored within their network, allows for a quick response to limit any
disruption to students’ daily learning and intellectual property.
Digital Transformation Efforts
Increase Remote Communications
Each organization bases their IT
investments on a unique set of criteria, but seamless communication
has become a core, universal need for the education sector. The
recently released annual
Enterprise Cloud Index (ECI) shows that nearly half
(47%) of education respondents cited providing “adequate
communications channels” among educators and their students as a
top challenge.
As the possibility of hybrid education
continues, investing in agile technologies will foster a seamless
transition from a traditional environment to a virtual one. Though
the future of education has yet to become clear, responses from the
ECI found more respondents than average mentioned digital
transformation (54%) and making the organization more agile (49%) as
priorities as a result of COVID-19. With the ability to respond to
changes quickly, IT teams can more easily leverage programs to
accommodate the evolving needs of the student community.
For example, they must be agile enough
to put hybrid learning processes into place on-demand. A scalable,
Desktop-as-a-Service
(DaaS) solution, like what Texas’ Klein
Independent School District implemented, provides
students and teachers with a secure platform where they can access
their application and data, regardless of location. Additionally, the
onboarding process onto individual laptops takes minutes, instead of
hours for each user.
Enabling teachers and students with the
tools needed to support interactive, remote lessons is not only
essential for institutions to continue serving their communities — but
to ensure that students have the same academic experience as the
generations before them. IT plays a crucial role in these evolving
student and teacher experiences, and educational IT teams must invest
in flexible, cost-effective solutions to support all aspects of the
educational environment.