Annese & Associates, Inc. teamed up with Washingtonville Central School District in the Hudson Valley to deploy virtual desktop integration (VDI) that will span approximately 1100 workstations upon project completion.
Washingtonville implemented a virtualization strategy across three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. Investment in the infrastructure, as opposed to just replacing the desktop hardware as part of their equipment refresh cycle, allows the district to extend the lifespan of their existing workstations while enhancing IT resources.
Annese implemented Cisco UCS Servers, an EMC2 storage area network, Cisco core switching infrastructure, VMware View 5 software, and Trend Micro agentless antivirus software. The workstations will be swapped with zero client terminals, a much less expensive alternative to PC replacement.
The deployment proved especially timely as the district prepared to administer a state-mandated online assessment test to elementary students. Before VDI, this task would have required a manual software installation onto each PC for students to be able to access the application. Post deployment, IT was able to load the software onto one machine, which all the other desktops access virtually.
With VDI, Washingtonville is also prepared to support a Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) environment in conjunction with their wireless infrastructure.
