END USER INSIGHT
DIGITAL-LED
EDUCATION IS
CHANGING THE
WAY LEARNING
IS DELIVERED
TO LEARNERS
ACROSS THE
WORLD.
“In Africa, many are battling with the
transition from traditional learning
methods to a digital learning experience
due to their limited exposure to the digital
world. Digital-led education is changing
the way learning is delivered to learners
across the world, mainly because of the
high Digital Intelligence Quotient (DQ) that
exists in developed markets. At Curro, we
want to deliver education centred around
the learner, and all our systems must
support this insight-driven educational
experience that enable learners to absorb
learning better, wherever they are.”
Curro’s technology landscape is made up
of a centralised data centre, on-site data
centres and an intricate network fabric that
needs to cater for over 60,000 endpoints
and supports 11 terabytes of traffic a day.
“Unlike other school (K-12) technology
ecosystems, ours is run as a centralised
network that integrates all our
business and educational systems. Our
centralised enterprise network is a key
differentiator in our approach to the
Digital Transformation journey, as most
other school networks or districts run
their own systems and only integrate
the information between them. In our
business, everything from cybersecurity,
educational platforms and business
systems, is centralised,” said Vlok.
It is this very setup that Vlok said formed its
decision to pair with VMware. “It required
a data centre solution that could help it
execute on a hybrid cloud strategy and still
support and leverage current hardware
investments. The movement of educators,
learners and digital resources within the
school system required a re-evaluation
of the network ecosystem,” said Vlok. “It
required a solution that would let it leverage
the benefits of a cloud-first strategy without
devaluing the investments made in the
existing infrastructure. Practically, the
solution has to allow for sharing, movement
and collaboration between schools of
teachers, learners and learning resources.”
As it started to scale, Curro identified
issues within its data centre strategy,
particularly with disaster recovery and
redundancy. Its hardware assets were
reaching end-of-service life, but instead
of ripping and replacing these assets,
Vlok and his team wanted a technology
solution that would use these assets as
a storage, processing and memory pool
for the next seven to eight years. This
would then help it transition, on its terms,
between a full on-premise and full cloud
solution, without having to write off the
hardware investments made.
48 Issue 17
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