It would be difficult to find an industry as adaptable as the education industry. From the simplistic yet effective oratory and oral communication of the Greeks and Romans, came the chalk, slate boards, overhead projectors, and finally technology assisted education with audio, text, images, animation and streaming video. Attempts to adapt AI to the education industry started in the 1980’s but were, and still are, slow to gain traction, as AI is simply not able to deal with the variety of ways students learn. AI’s inability to view student diversity through the lens of a human teacher is highly illustrative of the core concept of the diversification of technology in education. Technology works – it just needs to be adaptable.
Recent studies of the use of cloud computing in higher education have found that the market is predicted to surpass $53 million by 2027, an easy prediction when you realize that cloud computing now powers administration, facilities, admissions, HR, fundraising, smart classroom, distance learning, security and almost any other system in use on a high-functioning campus. eLearning Industry wrote, “More than any other technology, cloud computing unlocked the door of high-tech education.”
Why are people moving away from more traditional architecture and into the cloud? First, traditional 3-tier architecture is expensive to build, difficult to manage and is less predictable and reliable than other options. Its complex manageability issues require the use of a specialized IT engineer, or maybe more than one, at great cost to the institution. Use of traditional PC’s doesn’t allow for the interconnectivity critical for real-time communication, resource sharing and data protection. Traditional architecture can’t keep up with the bandwidth requirements students and teachers place on their network and offer very little control without complex configuration. Traditional firewalls are unable to protect systems effectively, with its focus on external attack but with no internal control functions. Indiscriminate student (or teacher) clicking, downloads and uploads often leave systems exposed to cyber-threat.
Many IT enterprises have developed IT solutions for their education clients, based on the needs and requirements unique to those in the industry. Deployment of Sangfor Technologies SDDC solution for education, based on hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), full network security and management solution and their virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution for libraries and computer labs, has helped educational institutions like University of Jember in Indonesia, Punjab Medical College in Pakistan and Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia simplify their management, lower costs and help students and faculty communicate more effectively.
Why Sangfor Technologies?
Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), considered the biggest "comprehensive universities" and most respected Islamic-based institution on the east coast of Peninsular Malaysia required a reduction in the number of racks they used, to lower pressure on their cooling system, to integrated DR and backup solutions, support open source systems and simplify maintenance.
6 nodes of the Sangfor SDDC Solution for Education Sangfor HCI was provided. 3 nodes were deployed at each production and DR site. Compute, storage, network, security and DR were all integrated. VMs and storage could now be backed up locally or remotely. If production server was down, the DR server would resume operation within an hour. In this case and many others, Sangfor’s software defined architecture transformed existing facilities into more location-independent, flexible and collaborative learning environments with low TCO.
Founded in 2000 and a publicly traded company as of 2018, Sangfor Technologies is an APAC-based, global leading vendor of IT infrastructure solutions specializing in Network Security and Cloud Computing. Visit us at www.sangfor.com to learn more on how can Sangfor make your IT simpler, more secure and more valuable.
