Jeppiaar Institute Of Technology Partners with IBM to Strengthen its IT Infrastructure

India – IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Jeppiaar Institute of Technology, one of the premier educational institutions in south India is transforming its IT desktop environment by implementing IBM’s Smart Desktop Cloud solution. By migrating its 350 desktops across various computing labs to this virtual client environment, Jeppiaar will now be able to reduce energy loss, enhance security and increase savings.

IBM’s Smart Desktop cloud solution adopted by Jeppiaar is being provided in partnership with Verde™ & Wyse, IBM Business Partners, for virtualization & thin clients, respectively. The thin clients help do away with legacy desktops and minimize the usage of Central Processing Unit (CPU) and Random Access Memory (RAM) so that the data that would reside on traditional desktop computers is now stored on consolidated storage devices in the data center. The full desktop operating system and applications are virtualized on highly reliable, fault-tolerant IBM BladeCenter® servers and are located in the secure data center/server room environment at the university.

“With technology being the core of a technical educational institution, we need to ensure high availability and reliable IT services in a highly secure environment. The maintenance, power, cooling, tampering of assets, and recurring costs over a period of few years had resulted in an increased Total Cost of Ownership(TCO). IBM helped us realize a clear value proposition by addressing our challenges and reducing overall energy costs.” Mr. N. Marie Wilson, Director

The Jeppiaar Education Trust, which has colleges of engineering and management studies, was setting up a new college, Jeppiaar Institute of Technology (JIT), in the state of Tamil Nadu and needed to deploy 350 desktops across its various computing labs. The main challenge was the loss of productivity and discontinuity in research, due to non availability of sufficient desktops.

The solution helped the students access the computers from any lab or workstation across the campus – be it the hostel or their home and also enabled images and data to be stored in a centralized storage platform. This collaboration solution also helped Jeppiaar reap the benefits in terms of power and cooling, which translated directly into increased savings as well. The IBM Smart Desktop cloud computing not only transforms the desktop environment and enhances user productivity but also supports Jeppiaar’s Green initiative by reducing the power consumption of the devices.

Girish Vasudevan, Branch Manager - Chennai, IBM India/South Asia said, “Desktop cloud computing provides flexible delivery and financial options. IBMs cloud-based solutions gave Jeppiaar easier access to their critical information, virtually anywhere, to help support their business objectives and enhance student and faculty experience thus resulting in increased productivity.”

· Better manageability and security controls, since all the intelligence is clustered around the servers, which can be centrally managed. Complete control over the security in terms of disabling the USB ports, restricting internet access, tracking student activities etc.

This is a noteworthy win for IBM in Chennai, which is an important city for IBM. IBM has a strong presence in Chennai through its global delivery centre that provides IBM services to clients around the world. IBM also has a regional branch office in Chennai which has been working with client’s across industries in the region to provide advanced software solutions, technologies and services to aid their business growth.

The Jeppiaar Educational Trust, formed in 1987, provides technical education that is both accessible and affordable, through premier colleges of engineering and management studies. Jeppiaar Institute of Technology is part of the Jeppiaar Group which has 9 Colleges with over 30,000 students.