IBM Software
Case Study
Twin Rivers Unified School District Streamlining IT operations with automated endpoint management
Overview Challenge When the district IT team merged the IT environments of four school districts into the Twin Rivers Unified School District, it found that existing manual software distribution and update processes were costly, slow and ineffective. There was also minimal visibility into asset inventory and software usage.
Solution Twin Rivers uses IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology, to support software distribution, patch management and power management.
Benefits Saved $127,000 on application deployment in first 15 months; increased patch management compliance; supported significant reduction in labor costs; improved licensing true-ups
In July 2008, Twin Rivers Unified School District was established in Northern Sacramento County, California, after several communities worked together to identify a common need: the unified governance of a fractured public school system. Citizens worked with local agencies, school districts and elected officials to create a grassroots movement to address educational concerns and establish a new district to better serve the needs of the children and the community. Today, Twin Rivers serves a growing and ethnically diverse community with approximately 27,000 preschool through adult education students over a 120 mile radius. When merged, the Twin Rivers Unified School District resulted in 76 physical sites, 2,700 staff members, and roughly 10,000 computers (primarily PC-based). These included Pre-K, K-12, and adult education sites, as well as nearly a dozen dependent and independent charter schools that needed to be able to utilize any of several thousand computers applications throughout the day to deliver a technology-rich learning environment for their students. To create an IT environment that would ensure the new district ran efficiently and cost-effectively, the IT team faced significant network challenges when merging the four school districts. First, four Active Directory environments and one Novell environment had to be merged, resulting in major network changes and the need to reconfigure all computers multiple times. Once completed the team discovered the existing manual software distribution and update processes were costly, slow and ineffective. There was also minimal visibility into the asset inventory and software usage. Moreover, the outcome of the merger called for the combined IT department headcount to be reduced from 26 to 15 people in two years.
IBM Software
Case Study
“We have achieved a significant reduction in labor costs and more than $127,000 savings on application deployment alone over the past 15 months.” —Jeremy Briggs, Technology Services Department, Twin Rivers Unified School District
Automating endpoint management Twin Rivers uses IBM® Tivoli® Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix® technology, to support software distribution, patch management and power management. The solution helps the district’s IT personnel to perform the following: ●
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Distribute critical software updates to remote servers, satellite office desktops and roaming laptops, giving IT staff cost-effective operational control and visibility to the software delivery and installation process. Improve deployment of patches to remote PCs. This was previously an unmanageable and unsuccessful process for the IT team using the existing Microsoft® Windows® Software Update Server (WSUS) tool. Implement the district’s first ever power management scheme on all district computers, a significantly more efficient conservation strategy than using free utilities and Active Directory policy and scripts.
Reducing labor costs Through more efficient endpoint management, Twin Rivers has increased patch compliance across a distributed network—including remote desktops and laptops. Significant reduction in labor costs was achieved through automation and patch management, with more than US$127,000 savings on application deployment alone over the
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IBM Software
Case Study
Solution components Software ●
IBM® Tivoli® Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix® technology
past 15 months. The combined total of these efforts is a major part of workload reduction by 81 percent over two years, translating into 250 open work orders, compared to 1,300 two years prior. Twin Rivers has also gained invaluable real-time visibility into asset inventory and software usage. This has improved licensing true-ups—the process in which IT personnel determine how many licenses end users are actually using and “true up” by purchasing any additional licenses required. Twin Rivers had budgeted for a licensing buyout post merger for nearly 13,000 computers. Real-time statistics validated only 10,000 computers actually existed within the district. Subsequent physical inventories confirmed this difference and resulted in a net savings of more than $160,000 in licensing costs. Statistics also revealed smaller discrepancies in existing license counts, which Twin Rivers was able to correct without incurring costly fines. Lastly, real-time tracking of hardware assets helped Twin Rivers to implement its first ever PC refresh, setting a minimum standard for efficiency within the school networks.
Gaining new levels of control By gaining the ability to perform a growing list of operational and IT management tasks with Tivoli Endpoint Manager, Twin Rivers is able to streamline processes, significantly improve patching and efficiency for the staff who perform them, as well as reduce the person-hours associated with these tasks. Twin Rivers is also able to reduce the need to purchase licenses for various kinds of single-function software. In comparison, Twin Rivers found other tools such as Microsoft’s Windows Software Update Service, were unreliable and significantly impacted user productivity. Since Tivoli Endpoint Manager easily enables administrators to control the timing of updates, these changes can be automatically applied overnight, without impacting users and allowing IT staff to better control the change management schedule.
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For more information To learn more about IBM Tivoli Endpoint Manager, built on BigFix technology, please contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/tivoli/endpoint You can get even more out of Tivoli software by participating in independently run Tivoli User Groups around the world. Learn about opportunities near you at: www.tivoli-ug.org For more information on Twin Rivers Unified School District, visit: www.twinriversusd.org
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2011 IBM Corporation Software Group Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 U.S.A. Produced in the United States of America February 2011 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, BigFix and Tivoli are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation, registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates.
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