Deakin University implements AppSense solution

Deakin University will deploy AppSense Environment Manager to improve its network logon experience, as well as significantly reduce profile corruption and reliance on group policy.

The university will now be able to personalise user desktops on demand and help protect endpoints with contextual policy control. At the same time, it will also move away from a student environment where desktop configurations were lost every time a user logged off.

Craig Warren, infrastructure service director at Deakin University, said, “We provide Deakin University students, staff and faculty with excellent service, but the performance and corruption problems we experienced with Roaming Profiles was a blemish on that service. AppSense got rid of both problems, which allowed us to focus on providing advanced digital disruption technologies to our customers.”

Previously, logon times varied from 30–40 seconds for users with new machines, to 90 seconds and beyond for older machines. In extreme cases, a logon might take 10 minutes or more.

“The helpdesk for Deakin’s desktop infrastructure support team logged over 600 calls annually for profile corruption. University staff were inconvenienced — often repeatedly — by not being able to log in due to profile corruption. On the IT side, a corrupt profile typically required an hour to resolve, costing the team 600 man-hours per year,” said Jim Zelener, public sector engagement manager for AppSense Go+ Platinum partner Thomas Duryea.

At the same time, Deakin University is also deploying AppSense Insight to collect actionable endpoint data and establish a baseline, to identify the processes that were causing problems and needed attention.

The decision to select AppSense follows a proof of concept (POC) facilitated by Thomas Duryea, during which time it configured AppSense Environment Manager to replace Deakin’s roaming profiles.

Initially, Deakin University has deployed Environment Manager to 300 machines within its IT division. Logon times have reduced and users no longer experience profile corruption.

With the initial rollout now in place, the university has prepared for subsequent implementations. The desktop infrastructure team has begun developing AppSense application templates for faculty machines and has deployed agents to 10,000 machines. AppSense has also provided Deakin with configurations for the numerous virtual applications which students access via Citrix in the university's labs.

Additionally, Deakin is evaluating AppSense Application Manager to support an institutional security initiative. The team’s initial needs include malware protection, initially in student lab environments, and privilege management for staff members.

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