Customer Conversation with Indianapolis Public Schools
(Original Webcast, Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 10 am Pacific Time/ 1 pm Eastern Time)

Dr. Dexter Suggs, CIO; Wayne Hawkins, Technology Systems Officer; and Luther Bowen, Systems and Operations Manager at Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) will discuss how and why IPS virtualized its servers and more than 5300 desktops, thin clients, tablets, and smartphones. Hear about challenges they faced, including the ability to provide students and staff with access to technology to achieve educational objectives.

Since IPS’s data center uses Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches, Cisco Nexus 2000 Series Fabric Extenders, and Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series chassis, it was a logical evolution to standardize on Cisco UCS B230 and B250 blades to support the administrative and educational applications for the district.

With Cisco UCS, IPS achieved major efficiencies across its IT infrastructure, saving the district an estimated $1 million in hardware costs and services. Cisco UCS allowed IPS to reduce its physical servers from 300 to 17. IPS achieved a dramatic ROI because of reductions in data center licensing fees for Windows and can now upgrade Windows machines to Windows 7 or 8, while saving as much as $2 million. Furthermore, Cisco UCS enabled IPS to make the most of its legacy hardware and software applications without being forced to upgrade.

“In addition to other school districts, we have a number of non-educational organizations asking us for advice,” said Hawkins. “We pride ourselves on being on the cutting edge. But we wouldn’t be there without Cisco. And, with virtualization, we reduced our physical servers from 300 to 17. Considering our budgetary restraints, that’s a major victory.”

Join us for a conversation with the IPS technical team to learn more about IPS’s success through Cisco UCS virtualization along with ROI and cost savings.

Agenda

IPS Customer Conversation with Moderator, Peter Shaplen: 30 minutes
Open forum for questions and answers: 30 minutes