Sacred Heart had limited space and scope to increase the use of ICT without major network changes and also aims to expand, develop and provide new resources to local schools and communities. The school faced a number of problems in day-to-day ICT support, such as limited network potential, budget to replace obsolete PCs and increase on-site support, while the request for more on-site maintenance, and more advanced applications, continued to increase.

They needed a solution to develop a reliable, economical and easily managed infrastructure to run all the sophisticated applications while offering teachers and students flexibility in teaching and learning. Tribune was recognised as an ideal partner to provide the solution, due to a recent successful implementation of several large-scale Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) projects. Tribune was asked to investigate the current desktop environment and propose solutions. The solution needed to deliver quick deployment and efficient management of desktops and applications in a growing computing environment, and provide teachers and students with an enhanced service, without adding to the workload of the ICT staff. The solution needed to work with all of the advanced teaching software in use within the school, together with a variety of peripheral devices supported by the ICT environment.

Tribune's solution was to use a VMware Virtual Infrastructure Platform, and apply the benefits normally associated with servers to the desktop environment with VDI. Tribune utilised and integrated a variety of different industry leading products, including IBM, Quest vWorkspace, and RES Software, to implement an enhanced interface that allowed the use of bi-directional sound, streaming videos and enhanced graphics, and extended the scope of the support for the USB devices. Tribune also implemented VMware's ThinApp application streaming technology and successfully delivered over 50 applications in a seamless desktop environment.

With Tribune's VDI implementation, Sacred Heart can now support a growing ICT infrastructure with the same ICT staff levels. The centralised administration, scalable management, streamlined provisioning, data protection and disaster recovery capabilities greatly reduced desk-side PC support needs. Technical officers can quickly install, deploy and reset systems within minutes to prepare for the next class of students. Teachers and pupils can access a full range of sophisticated applications as well as files and documents, anytime and anywhere, as long as they have access to the Internet. Hardware costs for replacement desktops is significantly reduced by replacing out-of-date PCs with thin clients while the life cycle of PCs is extended by the application not being dependent on PC hardware. Additionally, VDI implementation enables the rapid deployment of new applications, without incurring any additional costs on the hardware. This is achieved by adjusting the desktop resources from the server. Now students are able to develop their ICT skills in an environment that is not restricted by the age of the underlying PCs and are able to utilise the most sophisticated educational packages. Students are encouraged to do their creative experiments, make mistakes and learn valuable skills, without risking the school's PCs.