Technology & Learning - May 2008 - (Page 30)

Case Study, School District of Hillsborough County: To standardize and update the district’s technology, decision makers needed to evaluate equipment purchases on the basis of the total cost of ownership. At the same time, they wanted a greater return on investment from what they were purchasing and committing to, not just on the dollar volume, but value from a relationship with one vendor and the value-add that it can bring. Chief Information and Technology Officer Jack Davis says, “Under our partnership with HP, the standardization of devices throughout the School District has meant our teachers can remain focused on educating students, and our IT staff has been able to train quickly and comprehensively, making it highly successful at maintaining the availability of the technology.” Analyzing the existing situation is the first step. It should focus on assessing the capacity and limitations of the current infrastructure, staff, and funds available for immediate and sustainable long-term growth. A team should explore and evaluate current technical and networking resources. It should consider the new program’s educational and administrative goals to determine if the capabilities and capacity of the old infrastructure are sufficient to meet these requirements and are capable of easy expansion to address future needs. Understanding the full range of costs associated with technology assists school leaders in budgeting for the future. In order to plan for technology and change, districts should evaluate the Total Cost of Ownership, factoring in direct costs such as support, training, and management; indirect costs like downtime; and hidden costs incurred when teachers, staff, and office personnel must manage and support the equipment on their own. Only by evaluating all of the components of technology programs can a district determine the real costs. The Consortium for School Networking offers a free, online tool to determine Total Cost of Ownership for technology. You can access the tool, along with background information and case studies at http://classroomtco.cosn.org/gartner_intro.html. The infrastructure solution must meet the intended goals; thus doing a needs assessment is a second and concurrent step. This assessment should consider what demands on the technological and support infrastructure will emerge with the addition of new equipment, new administrative mandates, and new classroom models. Another “Collier County Public School District, and every consideration is the refresh rate or student within it, has benefited enormously from the lifecycle of technology. Demands standardization on HP solutions at all layers of our grow and capacities need to be infrastructure. We have been able to centralize our enhanced and sustainable over time. Since 1997, schools have received discounted telecommunications services based on economic need and location (urban or rural) through the federal E-rate program. Discounts can be business operations and simplify core functions and deliver applied to commercially available Budget telecommunications services, an integrated, simple to maintain environment in which all Internet access, and internal Building the infrastructure well students have equal access to the latest technology.” connections. Eligible services is an initial investment that pays —Dr. Russell Clukey, Executive Director of Technology range from basic local and long off in lowered costs over time. Collier County Public School District distance phone services and Initially, decisions must address Internet access services, to the vision of educational goals, the acquisition and installation of current infrastructure’s capacity, equipment to provide internal connections. Because of this program, network scalability and maintenance, future needs, and the staff many districts are able to leverage costs to provide a robust networking support required to create, maintain, and expand support services. infrastructure that sustains educational and administrative services and In addition, assessments should include at least interoperability with reduces both initial and long-term costs. legacy systems, ongoing access control and data security costs and efforts, simplicity to deploy and manage, and flexibility to address future changes to follow industry standards. This infrastructure will consume the largest portion of a project’s initial budget, although it may end up being a small portion of the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). serVer Solutions It is important to address 5 years into the future when calculating an ROI/TCO. Often the first year or two are not enough, especially in the K-12 environment where systems and solutions must last a minimum of 5 years and often are not replaced for ten or more. This is critical when putting long term plans together since it is often the operational costs that strangle a district’s budget. Issues to be addressed in putting this together should include maintenance, management and training, warranties, software licenses or seat licenses, training, and ongoing security costs. A server, including the device itself and its operating system, provides services for connected clients as part of a client-server architecture. Services can include database access, file transfer, remote access or resources such as file space over a network connection. It is designed to perform these tasks, often for extended periods of time with minimal human direction. Examples include file servers, web servers, and e-mail servers. Blade servers are self-contained computer servers, designed for high density, space, power and other considerations. 2 www.techlearning.com/K12/Fundamentals http://classroomtco.cosn.org/gartner_intro.html http://www.techlearning.com/K12/Fundamentals

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Technology & Learning - May 2008 Contents New@techlearning.com Editor’s Desk News and Trends E-Learning Gets Real Cover Story: Make Students Info Literate School CIO Product Guide Reviews Best of the Blogs What’s New LOY Profile Series

Technology & Learning - May 2008

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