The New Jersey School Boards Association and NJEDge.net have partnered on an agreement to allow members to participate in consortium buying agreements. A pricing model has been created for VMware licensing under a VMware Enterprise License Agreement in association with Promedia Technology Services, Inc. The ELA will allow your school district to procure VMware’s catalog of industry leading virtualization technologies, for 30% less than the already significantly discounted education prices. In the year since the ELA was created, NJEDge members have collectively saved over $2 million on virtualization technology purchases. Now that participation in the agreement has extended to NJSBA members, we are confident that we can help the New Jersey education community save even more.

Steps to Procure VMware

1. Contact Promedia for a VMware consult / ordering guidance.

• Scott Bennett – vmware@promedianj.com or (973) 253-7600 x2223

2. Download VMware ELA Order Form and choose your licensing options.

3. Submit your order form and Purchase Order to eendress@njsba.org

NJSBA Webinar Videos

ELA Introduction

Virtualization 101

Server Consolidation

Desktop Virtualization Webinar Coming Soon. Register here.

Other Resources

Promedia Named Academic Partner of the Year for the Americas by VMware

Original ELA Press Release

North Arlington School District Virtualization Case Study

Promedia VMware View Jumpstart

Promedia has the ability to deliver 1-on-1 VMware overviews and demos on-site or at our headquarters to answer all of your questions about virtualization in your environment. Please contact Scott Bennett for any inquiries about a free demonstration or assessment of your virtualization needs.

For more information on the ELA or any additional questions, please contact:

Scott Bennett – vmware@promedianj.com or (973) 253-7600 x2223

Erik Endress – eendress@njsba.org or (609) 278-5236

Special ELA Pricing List – VMware ELA Order Form

Benefits of Virtualization:

Virtualization will allow your district to realize:

Significant cost reductions from typical physical IT hardware (servers, desktop PCs, etc.) budgets

Significant reductions in operational costs (while simultaneously upgrading performance)

- Reduced heating and cooling costs

- Reduced electrical costs

- Reduction of hardware real estate

- Reduction in man-hours needed for upkeep of network

Positive environmental impact through “Green IT” practices brought about by the reduction in electricity and overall space used for IT, leading to green energy credits for member schools.

The ISE solution is a context-aware, identity-based platform that gathers real-time information from the network, users, and devices. This information can then be used to make decisions about what apps or information can be accessed by a specific user on a specific device based on previously established policies employed by your network. ISE can improve your visibility and control over devices active on both your physical and virtual infrastructure while giving increased ability to enforce network policies. The solution allows you to determine who and what devices are accessing your network, and from where, and employ context-based policies for network access. In addition, ISE provides mobile device compliance and application provisioning using integrated multi-device management solutions to simplify your BYOD experience.

Promedia is excited to add the ISE solution to our portfolio and continue to build upon our expertise in delivering a complete BYOD solution.

This dynamic event will combine the expertise of industry leaders Cisco and Apple with the reliable service and mobile device deployment experience of Promedia. Facilitating the Mobile Device Revolution will help to show the advantages, opportunities, and challenges that mobile devices such as iPads bring to educators, and also illustrate solutions to those challenges.

You can register for this event here.

Promedia will be participating in a panel discussion focused on the growing trend towards BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) that is being seen in government and education. The session, called Bring Your Own  Device – Managing Risk Associated with the Consumerization of Information Technology, will explore ways in which NJ government institutions are currently adjusting to the influx of personal mobile devices being used in a government environment as well as ways that IT professionals can better manage, secure, and monitor these devices.

Apple iOS Device and management is becoming a prevalent topic for many IT administrators. In today’s environment, as iPads, iPod Touches, and other dynamic products become viable educational and business tools, it is important to have a way to efficiently and securely manage these devices. Learn how you can manage these devices alongside your Mac Desktops. Topics in this webinar will include:

• Discussion of the options and technologies available to manage Apple iOS devices
• Up to date summary of Apple’s management framework
• Discussion of mobile device management tools such as the Casper Suite from JAMF Software
• Discuss how Casper Suite can address the major tenets of Mac OS X client management
• See sample workflow used to support thousands of iPads

Presenter: Dan Burger – Manager, Collaboration and Digital Media

The first project was an update to the network infrastructure in the district’s data center. Toms River’s data center is located at the Board of Education office, and connects out to all of the district’s schools from there. The existing network infrastructure contained hardware as much as 11 years old. The administration realized this hardware needed major refreshing, and Promedia came up with a design to upgrade their network switches. The new infrastructure was designed to improve network performance while positioning the district to support current and future applications that require high speed network connectivity.

On the heels of the network refresh, Toms River Regional decided that it was time to take advantage of the new infrastructure and began with the deployment of a district wide wireless network. At the time, the district had no wireless connectivity in any of their buildings, and they had decided to outfit the high schools with a wireless network first. Teachers in the high school had been vocal about the need to utilize devices such as iPads, laptops, and netbooks as instructional aids. They wanted to ability to use educational content from the internet, connect to projectors, and improve lessons for the students through the use of dynamic, internet-enabled devices. A robust wireless network would give this ability, and also put the district in a position to easily scale up and begin a BYOT (Bring Your Own Technology) initiative in the future.

To start, Promedia conducted an assessment of Toms River’s high schools – High School East, High School North, and High School South – to determine the viability of wireless networks in those environments. Using the information gathered from the assessments, Promedia’s engineering team was able to design a customized wireless network for the three schools, and the district decided to move ahead with Promedia implementing the recommended solutions. A wireless LAN controller was placed in the Board of Education office, with a Power over Ethernet switching infrastructure to provide connectivity with the access points in the high school. This approach simplifies the deployment and operation of the network by ensuring performance, security, availability, and maintainability, while also reducing overall operating and annual hardware costs. The controller gave the district the ability to manage anywhere from 12 to 500 access points, which also will allow for a wireless deployment on a greater scale in the future.

With this first step toward deploying wireless connectivity throughout the district, about 80 wireless access points were installed throughout the three high school buildings. Using the wireless assessment that had been conducted along with information from Toms River regarding how many people and devices would be active on the new network, Promedia designed a solution that would be able to provide seamless wireless connectivity to the district’s end users. Promedia deployed this solution, from start to finish, in just over a month’s time.

“The timeframe in which Promedia completed this project was truly amazing,” said Linda Sorrentino, the District Supervisor of Technology. “We don’t have the manpower within the district to undertake a project like this ourselves, and to have someone like Promedia to rely on is very important. They were able to put a great solution in place cleanly and efficiently, and get it all done quickly and correctly. Promedia’s engineers and project management team did a great job.”

Key Contributors: Guy Orlando – Account Executive, Mitchell Yegelwel – Project Manager, Tim Barrett – Network Engineer, Marc Salemo – Sales Engineer, Joe Palazzolo – Cabling Manager, Scott Bennett – Inside Sales Manager

Presenters:

Chris Clark – Operations Manager

Kevin Oconnor – Managed Services Team Lead

Promedia’s ProTecht Service Solutions provide a proactive system that delivers remote and on-site support of your technology infrastructure. These services improve the efficiency and reliability of network operations proactively as opposed to the traditional reactive approach. The session will describe the different options and plans that are available under the ProTecht banner. This webinar will also detail the benefits of Promedia’s ProTecht Service Solutions including:

• Maximized Availability – 24×7 Access to the Network, Increased Uptime, Greater Productivity
• Safeguarding of Assets – Inventory Control, Protect Data, Ensure Reliability
• Cost Effectiveness – Manageable fixed costs for predictable budget planning
• Optimization of IT Staff Resources – Allow staff to focus on technical developing and planning