Tavastia Education Consortium has just under 500 employees and a multiple number of students. In recent years, the IT department’s bold technological choices have paid off: device management runs smoothly, even though the number of devices has grown and remote studying has become part of the equation.
The IT department must manage thousands of devices
Tavastia has so many devices to manage that it is difficult to even calculate the exact number. A device fleet of this size is handled by an IT team of only six people.
This autumn, a new challenge lies ahead as the age of compulsory education is raised to 18. This means that every upper secondary student will be offered a personal computer, bringing 1,800 additional devices under Tavastia’s management.
According to IT Manager Petri Nuorteva, they are ready for the change: IT has been developing and adopting new technologies regularly for quite some time.
“We have a long-standing collaboration with Tietokeskus and thanks to that, our IT is in pretty good shape,” he sums up.
Here are some of the ways in which we have jointly developed Tavastia’s IT environment:
Microsoft Endpoint Manager enables remote deployment and management of devices
Azure’s virtual desktop enables the use of performance-hungry applications
Dell VxRail ensures a reliable server environment
Microsoft Power Platform brings automation to workflows
A future-focused partner ensures continuous IT development
Microsoft Endpoint Manager enables remote deployment and management of devices
Tavastia uses Microsoft Endpoint Manager, which allows devices to be deployed and managed remotely. Updates can be pushed to all devices as one mass operation, meaning that even as the number of devices increases, the same number of hands can manage the workload.
“Remote management started for us already when students first received personal devices. That’s when we began using Intune, which we’ve now had for four to five years. Last year, when remote work and studying began, we already had the means to support it.”
According to Petri, this brings savings in workload and, naturally, in other areas too.
“We have a small IT team and quite a lot of workstations, users and systems. It really helps when a big part of that can be automated.”
Azure’s virtual desktop enables the use of performance-hungry applications
Another useful tool is Azure’s virtual desktop, Windows Virtual Desktop. With it, Tavastia can run its applications and services on any device.
“Late last year, we began testing whether this could help with the increasing number of clients and software. We cannot buy the most powerful machine for every student. With application virtualisation, we aim to provide performance-requiring software even on lighter computers,” Petri explains.
The test is being carried out with Photoshop, used by business students. Even though launching Photoshop from the cloud takes a little longer, it runs more smoothly once open.
“Tietokeskus consultant Markus Tuomi delivered this as a turnkey solution. Now Photoshop runs in our own cloud, and we simply click applications into use.”
VxRail ensures a reliable server environment
When Tavastia’s virtualised server environment was becoming outdated, Tietokeskus helped them move to VxRail. Dell EMC VxRail is developed in cooperation with VMware. Tavastia already had VMware-based virtual servers in use, so moving to a modern, automated HCI environment was a natural choice. Maintainability and ease of updates are at an excellent level.
“We had VxRail already about six years ago and wanted to jump back onboard with the market leader,” Petri says.
“Of course, price is always a deciding factor – that’s unavoidable in our work. We also assess what support is available and how good it is.”
Power Platform brings automation to workflows
Next, Tavastia aims to make more efficient use of Power Platform and build new digital workflows. For this reason, one of Tavastia’s IT specialists attended Tietokeskus training sessions to deepen their expertise.
Training can be useful in the right situations, but in most cases, Tavastia learns through joint projects. Consulting projects are carried out using a Learn by Doing method, where knowledge is transferred to Tavastia’s IT team during the project itself.
“I believe this is the smartest way to use IT training budgets. In a traditional course, you sit in a meeting room doing hypothetical exercises, and not much translates into practice. When you work in your own environment, you gain practical benefit immediately,” Petri points out.
A future-focused partner ensures continuous IT development
According to Petri, the active development work done with Tietokeskus has proven to be a wise choice. For example, they were well prepared for remote learning when the pandemic emerged.
“We already had Office 365 and Teams in full-time use. Luckily, we adopted them early. Now it feels like I don’t even know what we would have done if we had only started implementing them at that point.”
Petri describes Tietokeskus as an brain for everyday life – helping with development, future planning and day-to-day challenges.
“The nice thing about this collaboration is that when a problem comes up, you can stay calm because you know there is someone who knows even a little more about the matter.”
