Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development

Success at a Glance

South Korea (officially called the Republic of Korea) has a 2,500-year history of formal education, dating back to the time of Confucius. The country's national education programs are highly successful. More than 97 percent of South Koreans between 25 and 34 have completed high school-the highest percentage in the world-and South Korean students consistently perform well in international mathematics and science competitions.

To maintain this level of excellence, the Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development uses advanced computing technology. In 2003, the ministry launched the National Education Information Systems (NEIS) project, which would centralize information about the country’s teachers and students. The NEIS project aimed to reduce the time teachers spent on paperwork, giving them more time to devote to instructional activities. An additional goal was to allow schools to share information, improving administration efficiency and reducing redundant processes.

The NEIS was the first large-scale national project implemented by the Ministry of Education, so it was important to succeed and stay within budget at the same time. To minimize software licensing costs, NEIS chose Linux for its individual schools.

Sun has a history of providing reliable products to Korean schools-more than 4,000 systems since the mid-1990s-so the ministry invited Sun to bid on the project, along with IBM and HP. Sun proposed 1,200 Sun Fire V40z x64-based servers equipped with AMD Opteron processors for the Solaris platform. For applications that supported multiple schools and thus required greater stability and security, Sun recommended 200 Sun Fire V240 and V440 UltraSPARC-based servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System.

Sun collaborated with the ministry and systems integrator partner Samsung SDS to benchmark the products at the Sun Solution Center. The Ministry of Education accepted the Sun proposal because of the performance and value of the Sun servers as well as the proven stability and security of the Solaris 10 OS. Sun products and services represent about 70 percent of the project’s IT budget, making Sun the major IT supplier for NEIS.

The deployment of the Sun servers and software took place over a six-month period and went smoothly. The Sun Customer Ready Systems program delivered pre-configured and pre-tested racks of servers and software, saving deployment time and reducing the burden on the ministry’s IT staff. Sun Services also provided assistance during the installation and deployment.

The NEIS project was officially launched in March 2006. The ministry reports that the Sun-powered infrastructure is highly stable, experiencing less than one percent downtime due to server errors. A SunSpectrum Gold Service Plan and Sun training services helps the ministry deliver such high-level service. For one set of applications, three Sun servers have replaced 30 legacy servers, a 90 percent consolidation.

The Korean Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development is highly satisfied with its decision to use Sun technology. Delegates from other countries in the region, including Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia are now visiting Korea to inspect the NEIS system and learn how such a solution could benefit their countries.