Sun Ray ultra-thin clients, with their high-performance and low-cost, are an ideal solution for educational institutions. This article describes how institutions around the world are using Sun Rays to provide a flexible, affordable environment that extends programs and services for their students.

Danish Technical University (DTU), Denmark
Danish Technical University (DTU), one of Northern Europe's largest technical universities, was looking for a way to provide easy-to-use computing facilities for its constituents. Ph.D. students and researchers use dedicated HPTC servers for large-scale mathematical and scientific calculations. Other students and faculty use the servers for their day-to-day work, using numerous third-party mathematics applications, Sun StarOffice Office Suite, e-mail, browsing, and report writing software. Both groups expect high application performance 24X7; it's not acceptable for the university to allocate processing power to compute-intensive applications at the expense of productivity applications. DTU chose Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology to replace their aging mix of HP servers, workstations, and X-terminals with a new configuration that provided high performance for users, supported open standards, and had greatly simplified administration.

DTU frequently hosts workshops and conferences on its own campus as well as other locations, so the university needs to quickly set up terminals for students, at low cost. A short time before the class, someone from the IT department simply connects the Sun Ray 150 ultra-thin clients to a LAN. "The portable classrooms have been very successful for our workshops and conferences, and also when classrooms need to move, because of maintenance or renovations," says Dr. Bernd Dammann, HPTC Support Manager at DTU. "We can set up our mobile classroom of 60 Sun Ray ultra-thin clients in less than one hour."

Students and teachers use the Sun Ray 150 ultra-thin clients to access university applications running on Sun Fire 6800 servers. They simply insert their smart cards to start a session and remove it to free the terminal for someone else's use. Re-inserting the card in any Sun Ray ultra-thin client, at any time, brings up the session exactly where the user left off. A student who begins working on a computing problem in class on Monday, for instance, can resume at exactly the same point the following Monday - even from a different terminal in a different classroom.

Standardizing on the Sun platform also has improved manageability of the university's HPTC Centre. "Before we consolidated on the Sun server platform, every teacher was responsible for installing the application software for his or her course. Now application software is managed centrally, by the same administrators responsible for day-to-day server administration. In fact, just two or three administrators support 15,000 registered users using Sun Ray ultra-thin clients, a ratio that would be impossible with a workstation or PC solution," according to Dammann. The Sun Ray solution provides DTU with very low maintenance costs and easy system administration, high performance and uptime, flexibility, and ability to interoperate well with other systems on the campus.

Electronic Information Network (EIN), Pennsylvania, USA
The Electronic Information Network (EIN) is a collaborative project of the Allegheny County Library Association, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and the Commission on the Future of Libraries in Allegheny County. Their mission is to use advanced technology to supply information access to public libraries, schools, and museums throughout the region in Pennsylvania. Over 70 member libraries are networked by EIN's system. Each member institution provides publicly-accessible computer stations that allow patrons to peruse the library card catalog, search external databases, and browse the World Wide Web.

Administration and support problems plagued EIN's distributed, PC-based architecture. Bob Namestka, Chief Technology Officer of EIN, explains, "We have a relatively small support staff, and we were spending an inordinate amount of time repairing PCs and reloading disk drives. We just had to find a better way to give the public libraries the capability that they needed on the desktop without the support nightmare that we were going through." Software upgrades presented similar challenges, requiring someone to physically visit each site when new features or functions were added.

EIN began considering alternatives to PCs as a way to ease their support burden and lower overall costs. Namestka summarizes their thinking, "First and foremost, we had to figure out how to lower our total cost of support, and ultimately ownership of the desktops. We had to find new ways for libraries to acquire additional seats for lower cost, and we wanted to have zero administration on the desktop so that we could use our limited staff proactively, as opposed to always having to put out fires." He continues, "Integral to the total cost of ownership is not just the initial purchase price but the ongoing support and maintenance that's required of those devices. We were spending an inordinate amount of time supporting traditional desktop platforms."

EIN deployed Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology at its central site, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, and at seven branch libraries. At all locations, library patrons retain all the same functionality of the fat-client desktops - they can browse the Web, access the library card catalog, and search external databases just as before.

Library patrons demand the quick display of information, and EIN is pleased with the performance they see. Elbie Yaworsky, Director of the EIN project, states, "The performance has been a great surprise. The Sun Ray ultra-thin client outperforms the existing PCs we have within our network." Yaworsky adds that customer use is a sure sign of success. "Within days, customers find out which performs better, and they move to the better performing device. The customer load has definitely shifted to the Sun Ray clients."

City of Amsterdam Schools, The Netherlands
The Netherlands had set a goal of providing one computer for every ten students by the year 2004. To help reach that goal, the city of Amsterdam, five educational partners, and the SARA Academic Computing Services consulting firm initiated the CIAO (Computers in Amsterdam Primary Schools) project. Through CIAO, the city hopes not only to make computer technology accessible to pupils at each of its 212 primary schools, but also to effectively integrate that technology into the overall education program.

"Our project required the implementation of a network that would be easy to use and manage. Our users are children up to age 12 and teachers who have limited computer experience. Most of the schools cannot afford to have a network or system manager on-site. At the same time, the system had to be sophisticated enough to provide the capabilities we need, with protection that prevents pupils from inappropriately altering or manipulating it," explains Joke Dorrepaal, the CIAO project manager at SARA.

Evaluating a number of computer solutions, CIAO's goal was to find simple-to-use platforms that would offer the financially-sensitive schools the lowest possible total cost of ownership. After considering a variety of computer architectures, CIAO concluded that Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology would provide the best solution.

With the ready-to-use infrastructure that CIAO offers, students and teachers can focus on using the systems for electronic communication and Web browsing, as well as developing their own home pages and creating presentations. Teachers can also use the Sun systems as an internal communications tool. Through the school intranet, various school information such as meeting schedules, test results, pupil monitoring systems, and meeting notes are available on any Sun network computer for teachers at any moment he or she needs specific information. Project CIAO has recognized the low-cost of ownership with the Sun Ray ultra-thin client solution.

Saskatchewan School Boards, Canada
Sun Microsystems collaborated with Canada's telecommunications company, SaskTel, to provide Web-based technology and network computing infrastructure to four school districts in Saskatchewan using Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology. The province is home to more than 1,000,000 people, spread across 651,900 square kilometers-more than a quarter million square miles. The Sun and SaskTel solution helps students from kindergarten to grade 12, throughout 48 schools. Although approximately 250 miles separate the four school divisions, they all shared the same objective to resolve the escalating problem of maintaining their hardware infrastructure.

"We were trying to decrease the student to computer ratio and eliminate as much technical support difficulties as we could. The technical support was becoming a real issue and Sun Ray technology seemed to be the best way to reduce escalating support requirements," says Tom Hawboldt, technical coordinator for the North West Catholic School Division in Saskatchewan.

The installation and implementation of 3,300 Sun Ray ultra-thin clients was completed in less than two months during the summer of 2000. All the systems were up and running by the start of the new school year. With the Sun Ray system, all applications run on a central server, and the desktop client is used only for input and output. Sun's innovative Hot Desk technology enables users to instantly access their own personal sessions and work in progress from any appliance in the workgroup-providing anytime, anywhere learning.

The total cost of ownership associated with Sun Rays is lower than that of conventional PC desktops. Most support costs are eliminated entirely because the Sun Ray ultra-thin client, which comes with a five-year warranty, requires zero administration and no upgrades. If a low-cost client fails, a replacement unit is simply plugged in. All configuration and software updates are performed on a centralized server, simplifying administration and eliminating the need to physically visit each desktop for upgrades or maintenance.

Today, Sun Ray systems provide students, faculty, administrators, and school officials with access to on-line educational materials, resources, and curriculum. Teachers are using on-line administrative packages, such as WorldBook, as well as the StarOffice productivity suite, Sun's multi-platform interoperable, fully featured office productivity suite for instructional development, and Netscape Navigator for the Internet browser. At some of the schools, teachers are using a Web-based attendance application. Teachers sign on to a Web site hosted at one of the school board offices and through a radio button with a drop down menu, they 'click' in their attendance, and it's automatically integrated in the students' schedule.

Some of the schools have also implemented an on-line library system, developed by one of the local IT coordinators. "The Sun project and the availability of Sun Ray clients to the schools was a very important reason for pushing the school libraries to bring their information online so that the students and parents would know what is available at the library and have access to on-line resources as well," explains Owen O'Donovan, technology and multimedia resources coordinator at Battlefords School Division #118.

Summary
As the case studies outlined here illustrate, Sun Ray ultra-thin client technology is an ideal solution for customers in library and education markets. These markets typically require a low-cost desktop that is reliable and easy to maintain. Generally, education and library sites have limited IT staff to administer their many distributed desktops. Teachers and librarians don't usually have the training to fix things when they break - nor should this be expected as part of their job. The centrally-administered Sun Ray system with its zero-administration desktop is therefore a good fit for these environments.

Higher education markets benefit from the flexibility of accessing multiple applications and environments from a single desktop. The Sun Ray's support for open standards allows it to easily integrate into diverse, heterogeneous network environments. Users also benefit from the inherent performance and reliability of Sun servers, and they enjoy a more comfortable work environment with the Sun Ray 1 appliance's fanless, noise-free enclosure and sharp, 24-bit color images.

Special Pricing for Education and Research
Education and research customers can take advantage of discounted pricing on special "Sun Ray Building Blocks" bundles. These bundles combine standard configurations of servers with Sun Ray Ultra-Thin Clients to streamline the sizing, configuration, and purchase of a Sun Ray Ultra-Thin Client environment. The building blocks are based on the Sun Fire V210, Sun Fire V250 Tower, or the Sun Fire V440. All of these servers may be remotely deployed, managed, and multiplied to create Sun Ray deployments of any size.

For more information on special Sun Ray bundles for Education and Research, click here, contact your local Sun representative, or e-mail Education_News@sun.com.