Case Study Ecno
The Educational Computing Network of Ontario (ECNO) is a not-for-profit technology cooperative incorporated to promote practices and provide cost-effective IT solutions to its members. All 72 district schoolboards in the province of Ontario (Canada), with about 2 million students, are members of ECNO.
Initial Situation
The Shared Technology Services (STS) project started as a collaborative effort to develop a community cloud based platform that would give access of house learning resources to all school boards. It has since expanded to include other cloud-based services, that can assist with the adoption and delivery of cloud based IT Solutions for member-boards.In the past boards were using a number of different processes to build WIM files from the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, Command Line DISM creation and SCCM. Another key issue was that each board needed to maintain the infrastructure to update a WIM. These processes were very complex and required a lot of resources. Therefore, they needed an easy and fast way to generate their WIM files to save time, money and other resources.
Solution
ECNO´s issues creating WIM files are not new. This is where baseVISION comes into play. Especially for these problems baseVISION developed an innovative online service that allows customers to configure WIM files according to their requirements. When Jason Baker, Analyst at ECNO, discovered WimAsAService via Twitter he watched the video on baseVISION’s website and browsed all the documentations and screenshots. He was overwhelmed and had not seen a service like this before. After all of his research there was no other product like WimAsAService available. Because of their large user numbers ECNO chose to use the on Premise Version of WimAsAService. 10 boards started using WimAsAService immediately after it was available to them. Many WIMs had already been created over the first weeks. The produced WIMs are helping IT departments supporting 500 schools with 17 000 employees and 175 000 students. They were starting out with generating WIMs for their Windows 10 operating system deployments but the potential of the service will allow all memberboards to expand to other operating systems and deployment needs.
«baseVISION and WimAsAService has allowed ECNO’s Shared Technology Services team to accelerate the implementation of Windows 10 as the base operating system for all of its member boards, freeing up IT resources and time to dedicate to other projects and issues.»
Jason Barker, Analyst, Educational Computing Network of Ontario
Benefits
By offering WimAsAService they are enabling their boards to accelerate deployment of Windows 10. Under this model, board employees only have to login to a webpage, specify requirements and return to download a completed WIM, freeing time to deal with other IT tasks. The key point that convinced ECNO is Automation. WimAsAService removes the chance of human error, is efficient, repeatable on a schedule, easy to use via a web interface, customizable, fully documented after each build, and perfect for a shared service like ECNO STS because their packages and WIMs will be very similar.For end-users, the process is a simple point and click interface on a webpage allowing them to customize their Image as needed; adding applications, PowerShell customizations and other adjustments before generating the WIM through an easy to understand interface.
Most beneficial Microsoft technologies used
- Windows 10 Education
- Windows Server 2016
- Microsoft Office 2016
- Windows Deployment Toolkit
- PowerShell
What are your benefits?
Save Money
You save money, because you don’t need to build and maintain your own infrastructure and expertise.
Documentation
With each WIM file you receive an extensive and detailed documentation, which is included in this Image. This documentation can be used to compare two image versions and see the differences in a few seconds.
Automation
Your Image is always installed on the same highly automated way. In the background, we use technologies recommended by the world’s most respected deployment specialists (MDT, PowerShell, etc.). We also implement all the bugfixes which will help to generate your WIM Files smoothly.
Customization
You can create custom-configured WIM files in a simple manner. You have the possibility to upload your own applications, but you are also able to use applications provided by baseVISION.