END USER INSIGHT
Education that is always-on
After extensive investigations, Curro
partnered with First Technology Western
Cape, a VMware reseller and systems
integrator, to help the company deploy a
virtual data centre. The solution included
VMware VSAN, VMware vSphere, and all
the sub-services within VSAN.
“Investment into Digital Transformation
gets stuck at the point of technology
execution because of infrastructure costs.
Our virtualised VMware data centre
lets us marry our physical assets to the
physical application and centrally manage
them while adding a cloud fabric where
it makes sense. In short, we can digitally
transform and leverage the benefits of the
cloud without expecting users to change
the way they work,” said Vlok.
With VSAN, the company is less
hardware-dependant and turned its
traditional, often idle infrastructure, into a
high-availability data centre using a VSAN
stretched cluster – enabling it to perform
ALL OUR
SYSTEMS MUST
SUPPORT THIS
INSIGHT-DRIVEN
EDUCATIONAL
EXPERIENCE
THAT ENABLE
LEARNERS
TO ABSORB
LEARNING
BETTER,
WHEREVER
THEY ARE.
disaster recovery more effectively. Vlok
says he is now able to significantly
improve the management of the demanddriven
technology requirement by
‘bursting and shrinking’ cloud capacity
from his cloud service providers.
“Our core product is education which is
available at all times – in the classroom or
remotely. In Africa, we still face bandwidth
challenges, so our new infrastructure
lessens the reliance on bandwidth by
delivering a robust multi-cloud and onpremise
offering, stretching across both.”
Bridging the digital
education divide
Vlok says the environment now supports
its desire to provide reliable education
anywhere, and learners working remotely
now have access to the same platforms
they would have had at schools, bridging
the gap between traditional schooling and
the various forms of remote schooling.
By virtualising a large proportion of its
services, it is more agile and can write
applications in containers. An activeactive
recovery environment versus a
traditional active-passive one means
fewer capacity issues, particularly
around ‘reporting and marking’ season,
when the system undergoes immense
pressure three times a year as educators
need to upload, cross-check and share
information regularly.
“We have seen a massive increase in our
ability to scale and prioritise workloads,
right down to a code and development
level. We are planning to introduce
Artificial Intelligence (AI) with our VMware
solution to help us dynamically allocate
infrastructure and resources. Looking
ahead, we want to use behavioural AI to
help prioritise IT services as well as map
our responses to events,” Vlok said.
“Ultimately, we can now incubate
innovative technical solutions and if
we fail, we can fail quickly with minimal
consequences. This allows us to deploy
innovative solutions faster than ever.”
“Curro is an excellent example of a
learning institution that understands the
modern learners needs. By adapting
to the times and embracing new
technologies as a tool to modernise its
approach to education, its clients which
are its learners, are the true beneficiaries,”
Gerhard Horn, Data Centre Architect at
First Technology, Western Cape. “Working
with Curro as an IT partner has been a
very rewarding experience as it is deeply
committed to reducing the costs of
education to learners, and consistently
turn to technology to facilitate.
“The organisation’s approach to
innovation and the way in which its IT
teams have embraced the agility afforded
to them with a VMware Software Defined
Data Centre (SDDC) highlights how it is
not just trying to stay ahead of modern
education, but setting the standard
today. Its foresight of the importance
of distance and remote learning is
particularly relevant today as we face
global challenges that demand flexibility
in remote working and learning solutions,”
said Horn.
Looking ahead
“We are creating the most comprehensive
educational technology platform available
today. It must serve school administrators,
teachers, parents and learners through
an innovative digitally integrated
experience,” said Vlok. ◊
www.intelligentdatacentres.com Issue 17
49