A different perspective on university IT

A different perspective
on university IT
A report exploring
divergent attitudes to
IT in UK universities

2
VMware: A different perspective on University IT
Contents
Foreword from Andy Tait, Head of Public Sector Strategy at VMware 3
About the research 4
The survey findings 5
What can be done 10
Case study of a university leading the way in innovative IT - Kingston University 11

3
Foreword from Andy Tait, Head of Public Sector Strategy at
VMware
Welcome to our report on the current state of IT at Universities, which
explores student, IT decision maker (ITDM) and department head
attitudes to IT in their institution.

As head of UK public sector strategy at VMware, I’m talking all the time
to IT leaders within the public sector, as well as those more specifically
in higher education institutions. As in any other industry, IT in Education
is a hot topic. Universities are under an incredible amount of pressure
to cut costs, while at the same time striving to deliver the highest
level of education and the best student experience. With fees at their current level, universities are
increasingly becoming businesses providing a service, with students the customers who have huge
expectations around what they are paying for.

But how to make sure you’re providing a top-notch service? Surveys such as the National Student
Survey help to give students a voice, so universities can understand which areas they need to be
improving on. Importantly for universities, they need to be seen to improving year on year as this
attracts more students and more funding.

So what’s important to students today? More and more we’re seeing the generation of students
entering university having grown up with the latest in cutting-edge technology. They are used to
having mobile access 24x7 – making them more demanding and tech savvy than ever. Thanks to the
sophisticated laptops, smartphones and tablets they use on a daily basis, students are now coming
to university familiar with technology – and an expectation that it’ll work as well on campus as it does
at home. They anticipate being able to access the same applications at home that they do in class in
order to study in exactly the way they want to.

For this reason, you could argue that universities by their very nature created the BYOD concept.
After all, there is no other industry that has such a proliferation of devices all personally owned by the
student and has a significant attrition rate - between a quarter and a third of the student population
naturally churn every year. But this issue here is with the IT department – suddenly they are being
challenged with ensuring they are equipped with the right infrastructure to support student access to
systems at any given time, rather than it being a ‘nice to have’.

As this report shows, IT departments are aware they need to meet this need. Many are well on the
way to success but face a number of challenges including limited budgets, legacy systems or old-
fashioned processes blocking the path to modernisation.

4
I believe that those universities who can put IT at the forefront of their agendas will
ultimately be those putting themselves in the front line when it comes to enhancing the
student experience and attracting the best students. Technology will also play a vital role in
ensuring that the UK continues to feature in performance tables and rankings of world-class
universities across the world.

In the report, you’ll see evidence from Kingston University, which has put a dedicated focus
on their IT and dramatically improved the student experience as a result.

I think the time has come for university IT departments to make major and rapid changes
within their organisations and revolutionise not just the way they deliver IT, but the way
in which they deliver services to students – this will be crucial for getting top results in
surveys such as the National Student Survey – and driving more government funds for the
institution, as well as making students happy. The following report outlines some of the key
expectations of today’s students and considers the kind of changes IT departments need to
make in order to meet, or even exceed, them.
About the research
University IT departments, like those in any other business, are being challenged to meet the
needs of their end users – in this case students – while also cutting costs.
This report aims to give a snapshot of the current state of IT in universities across the UK –
uniquely taking in the perspective of the student as well as those challenged with providing
the technology – the IT decision makers (ITDMs) and even further – business leaders at
universities. The research was carried out in two phases – an initial phase analysing just over
1,000 student attitudes to IT1
and a subsequent phase2
looking at the opinions of 100 ITDMs
and 50 business leaders.
Its purpose is to determine whether universities are providing IT to a standard that students
would firstly expect and secondly, to enhance their study experience.
1
The first phase, the student research, was conducted by Opinium in November and December 2013. It questioned 1001 current
students at universities (or academic institutions offering degrees) in England and Wales.
2
The second phase of the research was conducted by Ingenium in January and February 2014. It questioned 100 IT decision
makers and 50 business leaders at universities (or academic institutions offering degrees) in the UK.

The survey findings
The importance of IT
Technology in society has undergone a drastic change over the past couple of years. The
Millennial Generation is relatively sophisticated with the technology it is using every day –
whether this is posting daily updates to social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter,
or even downloading and playing with the latest applications on their smartphones. They have
access to technology when they need it and wherever they need it.
One of the biggest revelations from the research was just how big an impact this trend is having
on universities. Thanks to their experience growing up immersed in the latest technologies,
students see IT as one of the most important aspects of their university life. This goes as deep as
actually affecting their decision on choosing which university to attend.
What students expect
Students now arrive on campus expecting to have the same connections to help them in their
studies. But this isn’t just a requirement; students actually see IT as a means to significantly
enhance their experience – especially from a learning perspective. In fact, 84% of those
students we questioned said being able to access university systems remotely and use online
collaboration tools would facilitate greater academic success.
5
We found nearly half of
students (43%) considered
the level of IT on offer when
choosing their university.
More than a third of students even
said that they would pay higher
tuition fees if it meant their university
would provide better IT services.
43% 1/3

6
Flexibility was a major requirement from students – 79% said that if they had access to improved
technologies such as on-campus Wi-Fi or the ability to connect remotely to lectures online with
mobile devices, then it could help them work more efficiently. Having grown up with technology
wherever and whenever they want, students feel like still having this access at university will be
beneficial. Our research showed that the vast majority (92%) believed the ability to study in a
more flexible way can enhance their experience.
Technology is absolutely essential for both attracting students and
ensuring they have the best academic experience. We strongly
believe that universities have to constantly evolve their entire
technology offering - from infrastructure and networking, to the
applications they make available and how they are accessed - if they are going
to remain competitive and to meet the expectations of new and prospective
students. VMware View allows us to give students the freedom to work from any
location – whether that is on campus or from home – while still being able to
access their university desktop, complete with all the applications they need for
their course. With VMware View, I believe Kingston University offers one of the
country’s most complete and compelling access to learning environment in the
UK.”
Simon Harrison, Chief Information Officer ‘CIO’, Kingston University

7
IT departments falling short
But at the moment, IT departments seem to be falling short of meeting these expectations.
What was surprising is just how aware universities are that improved IT is crucial to their
institution meeting the needs and expectations of its students.
This notion of IT departments falling short of providing the service students need was
supported by business leaders.
Worryingly, over a quarter (26%) of students said they don’t feel that the
technology being provided by their university meets the level they would
expect for the tuition fees they are paying.
More than a third (35%) of university IT leaders actually said they didn’t
think their institution was currently meeting student’s technology needs.
26%
35%
Only 27% completely agreed that their IT department was able to give
them the support required for them to best serve the needs of their
students.
27%

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Immobility
Despite a call for on-campus Wi-Fi from the majority of students, only 13% of Universities said
they offered Wi-Fi campus-wide, which is restrictive for any students wanting to study online
from the places that suit them best. Instead they’re limited to accessing some systems in
dedicated areas of the campus, even though these might not be convenient for them, and there
may not always be laptops or PCs available for students to use. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem
likely to change any time soon. While 20% of IT leaders acknowledged their main challenge in
2014 was to increase mobility, only 13% actually had plans in place to do this.
“It was quite shocking to see these results. Kingston University is
one exception and has invested hugely in its IT infrastructure.
Technology is absolutely essential for both attracting students and
in providing them with the best possible academic experience. We
strongly believe that universities have to constantly evolve their entire
technology offerings, from infrastructure to networking, as well as the
applications they make available, in order to remain competitive and to meet the
expectations of new and prospective students.”
Simon Harrison, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Kingston University
only 12% of universities said they
were offering them the ability to
use mobile devices for study.
and a smaller number (6%)
let students attend lectures
online.
12% 7%
Additionally, in spite of students having access
to flexible and mobile technology at home,
Even fewer institutions allowed students to
connect with lecturers online

9
More investment needed
Across the board, there was a call for more investment in university IT. Of the ITDMs we questioned:
said that investment into better
IT in their institution would help
to enhance the overall student
experience
went even further – saying that
it would help to better meet
the actual needs of students –
making sure they can actually
conduct their studies and
submit their work in time.
95% 89%
of students completely agreed
– more than half (54%) of
respondents believed their
university needed to invest
more in IT.
even went as far as to say that
they would be willing to pay
increased tuition fees for better IT
services at their university, such
as accessing lectures remotely,
better tools to collaborate with
other students and lecturers, and
improved tools to help plan their
courses and workloads.
54% 34%
of the university leaders
questioned didn’t feel that
the IT on offer represented
value when compared with the
tuition students were paying,
with more than a third (35%)
of them actually saying they
didn’t think their university was
keeping up to date with the latest
developments in technology.
blamed finances - saying
insufficient funding was a
barrier to ICT meeting student
needs, while 27% thought
legacy systems were the issue
and 23% admitting they were
being hampered by old-
fashioned processes.
40% 30%

10
What can be done to meet demand?
Universities are starting to attract more technology-savvy learners who want more flexible
learning solutions, including distance learning. Students and staff want to use a range of devices
such as mobile terminals, smart phones, iPads and eBooks as universities continue to invest in
new learning platforms and rich multimedia content.
On top of enabling campus-wide Wi-Fi services, universities need to be investing in Bring Your
Own Device technology, which allows users to access the relevant IT systems for them from
anywhere on campus and via any device.
We offer a solution – VMware Horizon View – which is a fully validated architecture that provides
end users with quick and easy access to desktops, applications and data across devices,
locations and networks. Designed to help IT teams address BYOD and mobility initiatives, this
solution centralises, streamlines and automates desktop application and data management and
provides IT with the ability to apply location-aware, policy driven access to corporate resources
with higher levels of security and compliance. This is important for universities as it means that
student data remains safe and secure – eliminating the risk of a student logging in to a system
and finding another student’s data. Whether personal information, or even just their latest essays
– only students will have access to their own information.
“The work we have carried out with VMware means that we have been
able to fully embrace ‘Bring Your Own Device’ at Kingston University
and provide our students with truly next generation learning tools.
They can access everything from 3D applications to virtual learning
environments specific to their university course from any device and any
location, which means they don’t have to come onto campus to compete with
other students for devices on-site. Having simple things such as campus-wide
Wi-Fi also provides essential connections to friends and family, and optimum
network performance enables us to have reliable and fast Wi-Fi for lectures,
helping us increase collaboration and the speed of learning.”
Simon Harrison, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Kingston University

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How universities are leading the way in innovative IT
Kingston University to transform student learning
experience with mobile working and BYOD using VMware®
Horizon™ 6 and Atlantis
“Technology is absolutely essential for both attracting students
and ensuring they have the best academic experience. We strongly
believe that universities have to constantly evolve their entire
technology offering - from infrastructure and networking, to the
applications they make available and how they are accessed - if they are going
to remain competitive and meet the expectations of new and prospective
students. VMware Horizon 6 allows us to give students the freedom to work
from any location – whether that is on campus or at home – while still being able
to access their university desktop, complete with all the applications they need
for their course. With VMware Horizon, I believe Kingston University offers one
of the country’s most complete and compelling access to learning environments
in the UK.”
Simon Harrison, Chief Information Officer, Kingston University
As part of a campaign to position itself as the university of choice for today’s increasingly
tech-savvy market, Kingston University is now using VMware Horizon 6 to transform the way IT
services are delivered to its students and staff members. By allowing access to course materials
and graphic intensive applications remotely and from any device, Kingston University has
allowed its staff and students to work and study in the way which best suits them.
Additionally, the university has been able to manage its 7,000 physical desktops from a central
management console, drastically cutting the time it takes to provide software updates including
major operating system upgrades (Windows XP to Windows 7), bug fixes, repairs and full
system recovery. The IT team is also able to start-up and recover individual desktops in less
than a quarter of the time previously taken, enabling Kingston to devote IT resources towards
innovative new projects. This VDI environment is supported by Atlantis’ virtualized storage
solution, ILIO to ensure optimum performance of the virtual PCs.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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Based in Kingston upon Thames, UK, Kingston University has more than 20,000 students
and more than 2,000 staff members spread across four separate campuses. Founded as the
Kingston Technical Institute back in 1899, the organisation was granted university status in 1992.
Kingston University offers a diverse and comprehensive range of full and part-time courses for
both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Additionally, it offers a range of foundational
courses and continual professional development programmes.
Responsible for the IT infrastructure and services across the campuses – including data
transmission, storage and security – Kingston University’s IT department found that servicing so
many end-users could be a real challenge; particularly with a team of only six members of staff
to manage its 7,000 desktops.
“Our end-users now rely on IT in a way they didn’t even just five years ago,” explains Simon
Harrison, CIO, Kingston University. “We essentially have three distinct communities demanding
IT services – students, academics and administrators. All three expect increasing levels of
mobile working, whether that’s across the various areas of campus, in university halls, or on an
international basis, for example with international students returning home for the holiday or
academics presenting their work at conferences across the world. We wanted an IT solution
that could accommodate this rising demand for mobility and flexibility and offer users seamless
access to their university desktop,” explained Simon.
The university IT department also wanted to move away from the traditional user-centric model
and reposition its role as a service provider. This would ensure that the department could offer a
better level of service to both staff and students and in a faster and more efficient way.
New Student Demands
“The old model no longer worked for us – students expect the same level of technology they
have at home. Technology now seems to be firmly integrated into a student’s hierarchy of needs
– second only to food and shelter – and is a major deciding factor in whether a student chooses
to study at your institution.”
CUSTOMER PROFILE
ORGANISATIONAL CHALLENGES

13
“From the moment they arrive to the day they graduate we want to make sure students don’t
ever experience a second of frustration with our IT facilities. From email access to social media,
we want everything to run smoothly. Supporting laptops, tablets and smart phones, we knew
we would have to deliver an IT experience that could accommodate any number of different
working methods.”
IT Administration Burdens
While the IT team was keen to focus on innovation and delivering new ways of working, much
of their time was taken up with maintaining the university-owned desktops and laptops which
are available for students to use. Deploying desktop images was also a particularly difficult
challenge - with the base image requiring 35GB of data over a much slower network, it would
often take up to four hours to deploy.
“Back in the first quarter of 2014, the team had to manage software updates for 800 machines
which was an extremely onerous task. In all it took almost 1,200 hours during a three-month
period,” explains Dan Bolton, End-User Computing Solutions Manager at Kingston University.
“Not only was it an exceptionally slow process as each image had to be tied to a desktop; if
anything went wrong - due to software corruption, a virus, failed hardware – then everything
had to be reinstalled. It was impossible to keep up with, which meant that a number of machines
were frequently being left out of order for several weeks until we could physically get there to fix
them. This meant there were fewer PCs for our students to use to access crucial facilities.”
PC compliance was also a serious issue. The update process was done through push technology,
meaning that patching and security updates could be very hit or miss as any interruption (such
as a student turning off the machine midway through the process) would halt the upgrade.
“We lacked the resources to manually update all desktops, so some of our staff were continuing
to use machines that were years out of date, which meant they were less responsive – not to
mention the threat of serious risks to our data security,” adds Bolton.
Restrictive User Experience
Additionally, due to the graphically intensive nature of a lot of student work, the previous
desktop software, Quest Software’s vWorkspace, could be restrictive on user experience.
vWorkspace struggled to access applications which required graphic acceleration, many of
which, such as CAD programs, were integral to the students’ learning experience. Instead, the
IT department was forced to dedicate specific PCs for specialist applications, often leaving
students to queue for PCs in labs in order to access the tools they needed to complete
assignments.

14
At the start of 2014, Kingston University embarked on an ambitious technology refresh strategy.
Aiming to develop a technology solution that would not only better service the needs of current
students but also attract new prospects, the IT department rebuilt its infrastructure from the
bottom up. The Kingston IT team oversaw the re-cabling of the university; providing high speed
web and data access to the entire campus enhanced with the introduction of more than 4,500
wireless access points. Additionally, servers, storage and back-up hardware were all replaced,
providing a robust and resilient foundation for a seamless end-user experience.
Harrison explains: “An important part of the challenge was that we wanted a single solution that
could help us manage both a physical and virtual environment. With this in mind, we quickly
began looking at VMware Horizon 6.”
Improving the User Experience
While the initial technology refresh provided the infrastructure for a faster system which
offered better connection for students, the university also wanted to build on the improved
IT experience that the infrastructure refresh could offer end-users, ensuring that students and
faculty could work in the way they wanted to.
The university chose the storage software provider Atlantis Computing to help overhaul its IT
infrastructure, consolidating its data centre and simplifying the storage environment to provide a
solid and reliable base for VMware’s virtualized desktop solution.
“We’d already invested significant amounts of time and resource in bringing the university’s
IT estate up to date – we wanted to make sure that end-users could directly benefit from the
refresh. While we did consider Citrix, we felt Horizon 6 represented a best-of-breed virtual
desktop solution,” said Harrison. ”It offered the technical capabilities we needed and also
allowed us to reduce the number of point solutions we were using, simplifying our overall IT
estate. Choosing VMware meant we now had a strategic partner. Not only had we used Horizon
6 to power the Virtual Desktop, but VMware underpinned our data center operations; the
company’s vision really aligned with our vision for the desktop and datacenter of the future.”
Streamlining Update Processes
To reduce the amount of time it took the IT department to handle the desktop imaging
processes and ensure that all computing environments were kept up to date and compliant,
Kingston University also deployed VMware Mirage across 7,000 desktops. “Although we
considered products from Quest and Microsoft, VMware was the obvious choice as we would
THE SOLUTION

15
be able to group everything into a single deployment strategy. VMware Horizon allows us to
streamline our update process and release time spent on maintenance tasks and to invest in
innovative IT projects that can continue to improve end-user experience, including online lecture
materials and greater collaboration tools between students, academics and teaching staff.”
Students and Staff Working from Anywhere, on Any Device
Working with VMware has completely transformed the student experience at Kingston
University, providing levels of technology that match – or even exceed – the personal
expectations of students and the kind of technologies they will experience in their future
workplaces.
Harrison explains: “The work we have carried out with VMware means that we have been able to
fully embrace ‘Bring Your Own Device’ at Kingston University and provide our students with next
generation learning tools. They can access everything from 3D applications to virtual learning
environments specific to their university course from any device and any location, which means
they can work at a time and place that suits them. We’ve had great feedback from users with
many commenting on how seamless the transition is between working on campus and working
remotely; for example, we have students working on their Chromebooks at home who report
that it is just like being sat in the Library at university. Having simple things such as campus-wide
Wi-Fi also provides essential connections to friends and family, as well as better collaboration
with lecturers and each other. Many students have said that this technology is really driving their
learning experience and they are very proud to attend such as innovative university.”
“Horizon allows us to deliver the technology experience our students really need – we want IT to
been seen as an enabler in helping students, our main customers, to concentrate solely on their
studies without growing frustrated by a lack of PCs or an inability to access the applications
they need to complete coursework.”
For Kingston University’s administrative staff the investment is already paying off. During the
university clearing period (a process which allows students without offers to secure a place on a
university course for the next academic year) the university’s workforce needs to be expanded
for a short period in order to deal with the volume of requests. Complementing the use of a
separate off-site facility, the Kingston University IT team was able to scale capacity with ease
giving incremental staff full access to a virtualized desktop environment – allowing them to
begin working with little to no transition to meet the increased demand.
BUSINESS RESULTS AND BENEFITS

16
Making Life Easier for the IT Department
Harrison also cited the value that Atlantis Computing had delivered for the university: “Being
able to rapidly expand storage has been crucial and is something that we couldn’t have done
with a huge amount of investment in our physical infrastructure. From an end-user point of view,
we’re now able to offer an SSD-level performance, with login speeds on shared PCs reduced
from several minutes to less than 15 seconds, allowing students to access their desktops much
quicker. Atlantis allowed us to do this at a hugely cost effective rate while reducing the physical
space the infrastructure takes up.”
Moreover, by implementing VMware Mirage, Kingston’s IT department has been able to cut the
time needed to refresh the desktop: “VMware Horizon allows us to manage our entire physical
desktop estate across all four campuses and various satellite offices from the operations centre.
While before it could take up to four hours to apply a desktop image, it is now less than 40
minutes - that’s more than 80% faster. PCs no longer sit around waiting to be fixed; if hardware
breaks we can quite easily provide a new device, and within a short time access the old persona.
With 7,000 desktops across the university, this is saving us significant technician time each
month. The fact that we can also use VMware for unified image management across both
multiple physical and Horizon virtual desktops saves us an incredible amount of time as we can
apply the same updates across all PCs at once,” explains Bolton.
CIO Harrison adds: “It has also enabled us to release funds that we’re now redeploying into new
projects – we’re currently building our business intelligence solution and offering new analytics
capabilities to our senior management who can, in turn, exploit insightful information when
making strategic decisions.”
Bringing in New Prospects
Improvements to Kingston University’s IT system are also expected to drive a positive impact
on prospective student applications, with the team hoping that the investment will pay off in
improved fee revenues from increasingly tech-savvy students being attracted and retained by
the university’s facilities: “I fully believe that Kingston University now offers one of the best IT
services of any university within the UK – it’s something we’re immeasurably proud of and our IT
service offerings now play a key role in our marketing and retention propositions.”
“The NUS National Student Survey includes a section on technology facilities – I’m certain that
our rating in the 2015 survey will continue to rise over the next five years due to the investment
we have made in meeting – and exceeding – student expectations.”

17
Kingston University’s IT team viewed the initial EUC project with VMware as the first step
towards a single-vendor strategy, and a crucial part of its journey towards a fully software-
defined organisation. With its End User Computing elements, from desktops through to
mobile devices, now software-defined with VMware, the university continues to develop its
own Software-Defined Data Center, with VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus as the underpinning
infrastructure to enable more automated management within its data centers and the
deployment of a private and hybrid cloud strategy.
FUTURE

VMware, Inc. 3401 Hillview Avenue Palo Alto CA 94304 USA Tel 877-486-9273 Fax 650-427-5001 www.vmware.com
Copyright © 2014 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and
intellectual property laws. VMware products are covered by one or more patents listed at
http://www.vmware.com/go/patents. VMware is a registered trademark or trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United
States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective
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