CHALLENGES
Our client, a large London university, manage a PC estate of around 1,000 devices for students, and around 100 different applications. In addition to this, the university manages over 3,000 staff devices.
Both staff and student devices all have applications that require packaging, including some very specific applications.
Every year the university’s IT team have to go through every device and update different versions of applications. Some applications are simple to update and are carried out in-house. This process is time consuming for the university’s small managed desktop team, and keeps them from other IT tasks and value-added projects.
SOLUTION
For applications that require more complex updates and setups, the ORIIUM team assist the customer with application management services. Application discovery is done in-house and then passed to the ORIIUM team, this is done annually. The bulk of the work is carried out from Easter to September every year, with ad-hoc updates throughout the year as required.
Included in the work are 50gb Windows 10 builds for staff machines, and 200gb builds for lab machines. This process is not always straightforward given that there are some highly specialist pieces of academic software such as those used at NASA and CERN.
Once applications are installed, they are finalised and tested. New applications and those that need updating are also part of the process.
Regular hardware replacements are also part of the project, with 75 PCs replaced last year and 300 scheduled for this year.
RESULTS
For the university’s managed desktop team, instead of this onerous task being carried out in-house, the application packaging is outsourced to specialists who can produce higher quality packages in a shorter amount of time. This saves days and weeks of in-house IT time, and ensures that applications come back in top working order. The university’s in-house team are then able to focus on things such as improving the task sequences used to create system images and various other projects.
About the customer
Our customer is consistently ranked in the top 25 universities in the UK and covers a range of academic disciplines.
“ORIIUM are a great partner for our application requirements. Of all the apps they have updated or installed for us over the last 2-3 years, there has never been one that comes back and does not work first time. The fact that they are able to work with their own processes or the university’s packaging machines means that the work is carried out as efficiently as possible”.
Senior Managed Windows Desktop Analyst
Find out more about our Application Management Services
