8/8/2019 A Cloud Gameplan for the Higher Education IT Service and Support Desk from NTRglobal

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Cloud computing is a buzzword that covers a multitude of what may sound like sins

to many IT support professionals: more and more PCs and mobile devices logging

in to the network from the public Internet; a rising number of applications running on

external cloud platforms as software-as-a-service (SaaS); and an increasing reliance

on third-party providers for core services, with all the extra security and compliance

burdens that imposes.

These new challenges are especially unwelcome in today’s economic climate, when

IT support teams are somehow expected to deliver a more responsive service while

under constant pressure to reduce costs. To come out on the winning side, you are

probably seeking a new gameplan. The cloud may be a buzzword, but these trends are

here to stay – and they’re accompanied by more demanding expectations:

The global communities of higher education, comprised of teaching,

research, applied work and social service activities are moving to a real-

time infrastructure in which the IT service and support desk becomes the

operational linchpin of an ITIL-compliant service management strategy.

In this highly distributed community, IT must manage exceptions that arise

related to regional policy, security, compliance and funding issues.

Managers need to cope with powerful forces of change such as the impact

of the financial crisis, environmental constraints, the consumerization of

technology and a greater scrutiny on the cost-effective scalability of education.

The global higher education communities now want IT services that are in

tune with what they perceive as the always-on, real-time responsiveness

and ‘can-do’ collaboration of Web-based cloud computing.

A Cloud Gameplan for the Higher

Education IT Service and Support Desk

from NTRglobal

NTRglobalWhite Paper

8/8/2019 A Cloud Gameplan for the Higher Education IT Service and Support Desk from NTRglobal

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 An effective gameplan doesn’t require a radicalshake-up

While cloud computing and SaaS delivery models and applications are touted as more-

efficient and more-cost-effective ways to deploy on-demand computing power and new

applications and IT services to students, faculty members and institution staff, do thebenefits outweigh the risks?

Fortunately, an effective gameplan doesn’t require a radical shake-up. It’s simply a

matter of adopting the tools and technologies that are now available and deploying

them to best effect. IT service management can now harness tools such as remote

support, IT automation and integrated reporting that are available as SaaS via the

cloud.

The cloud service model offers rapidly scalable IT resources that are delivered as

a service to users via Internet technologies. By scalable we mean that the IT can

automate resources or vitually extend live resources on demand. The model is, in

effect, the latest chapter in off-premises computing, somewhat similar the older modelfor application service provider (ASP) or third-party hosting service provisioning.

Colleges and universities are focusing on costcontainment. IT organizations are looking atcloud computing as a means to reduce costs.Will it?

We see two motivators that drive an organization to explore cloud computing. One iscost savings, but it has to be a significant savings — for example, 50% or more, which

underscores the interest in using SaaS for remote support and IT systems management.

Travel is eliminated, downtime for both IT and the enduser is significantly reduced

resulting in greater virtual productivity and uptime. The second reason is that cloud

computing allows users to do things that they otherwise couldn't do. For example,

professors and students can collaborate, get training and participate in peer review

using cloud-provided applications that would have been otherwise cost- or storage-

prohibitive.

Cloud computing and SaaS do not meanhuge expense and effort to install newinfrastructure

One of the best features of cloud computing is that there is no need for installing

traditional software or hardware. Internally, the basic technology of virtualization means

that you can get a lot more out of existing hardware by virtualizing things on top of it

and greatly increasing efficiency. The initial justification a virtualized environment often

centers on the savings of so-called "hard" dollar costs, such as hardware maintenance,

data center floor space, energy or heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning savings.

With the old software and hardware model too often, institutions delay rolling out much-needed capabilities because it means upgrading a complete service management

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suite. Today tools are readily available from the cloud as SaaS. They can be deployed

rapidly while respecting the prevailing security and governance regime, and use open

APIs to integrate with the existing IT service management infrastructure. A further

advantage: the SaaS model stays up-to-date with continuing evolution in the cloud

environment.

A cornerstone of the fightback by IT support is easiermanagement of resources

Remote support, both live and automated, is crucial to helping support staff multiply

their productivity and for improving user satisfaction. Leveraging the Web’s capacity for

collapsing distance, remote support brings live agents into real-time conversations with

users and gives them the ability to instantly view and remotely control the user’s screen.

Unlike the isolating automation of mass-market Web support, this is a technique that

solves problems collaboratively. Resolution is achieved with a human touch but without

the delays and inefficiencies of conventional phone support or on-site call-outs.

Automated support is a new way to deliver results proactively

In the past, users have often experienced automation as a barrier that separates them

from support agents, for example when they can’t get past automated phone systems

or self-service web portals to get an unresolved problem fixed. Automated support tools

deploy pre-programmed scripted agents that perform remote troubleshooting or run

regular maintenance tasks without the need for user intervention or on-site call-outs by

systems administrators. Providing the same convenience that users are familiar with

from automated upgrades to smartphones and home computers, it frees support staff

from repetitive, time-consuming maintenance tasks and improves the quality of service

that users experience.

These tools are valuable within the network, but they’re even more relevant when

serving higher education’s dispersed user populations. More and more users work off

campus, whether from dorms nearby or across the continent, often using smartphones

and other mobile devices to access computing resources. A cloud-aware support

infrastructure has to be able to reach out across the firewall and beyond the LAN to

keep these users productive wherever they choose to work.

Ready to Run

The IT organization faces a stark choice: either invest in building an in-house

infrastructure that’s robust and versatile enough to support those external users and

their chosen clients; or rely on a cloud-native SaaS provider with an infrastructurethat’s built from the ground up to thrive in that environment. The SaaS option provides

a ready-to-run platform that’s constantly updated to counter the threats and harness

the opportunities emerging every day in the public cloud. For many organizations, it’s

the most cost-effective means of supporting a heterogenous family of clients, including

Windows PCs, Macs, Linux machines and a variety of smartphones and tablets.

The ability to work across the full spectrum of clients also makes it easier to bring

together consolidated reporting of support metrics and service level delivery. A vital

ingredient when providing services today is a keen awareness of performance against

expectations and being able to act on accurate information when something goes

awry.

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Each of these changes brings incremental improvements but aggregated together

they fundamentally reframe the IT support function to make it a more collaborative,

proactive operation that achieves a vastly improved user experience at the same time

as substantially lowering costs. Further benefits include improved compliance and a

contribution to green policies by reducing travel and the ability to remotely implement

power-saving practices.

By bringing the infrastructure into the cloud, higher education IT also positions itself

to integrate well not only with conventional on-premise IT service management tools

but also with SaaS and other cloud providers like Google and Microsoft. Adopting a

cloud-ready gameplan thus both modernizes the support infrastructure to meet the

expectations of today’s users and positions it to interoperate well with future iterations

of cloud computing.

The IT Service and Support CloudGameplan with NTRglobal

The increasing use of computers, laptops, wireless technology and smart phones

in highly distributed environments means IT managers, CIOs and other high level

administrators at colleges and universities need more-efficient and more cost-effective

ways to bring computing power, new cloud applications and on-demand IT services to

students, faculty members and staff.

Cloud solutions need to go beyond simply easing the burden of IT tasks, they need to

contribute to overall institutional efficiency and cost-savings.

Building on ten years of SaaS expertise with more than 15,000 education, government

and enterprise customers around the world, NTRglobal focuses on delivering secure

purpose-built solutions for IT to simplify management of assets and offer multi-access

support channels to mobile users in complex environments. Higher education customers

in the U.S. include Brown University, Cal State University, Grand Canyon University,

University of Texas, Vanderbilt University, Rutgers University, George Washington

University, University of Connecticut and George Washington University.

“ With NTRglobal, we’vegot an extremelypowerfuland cost-reducingsolution for extendingsecure remote support

procedures from the corenetwork all the way outto platforms used in ourdistributed computingenvironments both oncampus and off.

”Michael Joy, Esq.

Manager of Operational Architecture

Grand Canyon University.

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Sign up now for a free trial at

www.ntrglobal.com/service-desk

Always free on 2 computers!

See for

yourself!

Proactive On-Demand IT Reach, Automationand Support with NTR Service Desk

NTR Service Desk empowers IT to do things that they otherwise couldn't do: proactively

monitor and virtually manage computers and technical issues before they become

problems or as they arise on the network and in wireless environments. Its solutionsdelivers powerful capabilities for IT to simplify security and compliance “musts” like

timely security upgrades to workstations, servers and mobile devices wherever they

are located. This includes installation of patches, the repairing of networks and the

ability to mitigate the kind of security breaches that can occur with laptops and devices

that are lost or stolen.

Secure Remote Support forDecentralized Environments

NTRsupport offers a comprehensive IT help desk package featuring secure remote

support tools for optimal help and service desk interaction, collaboration and issue

resolution—from chat to engaging in a remote control and screen-sharing session, to

answering a voice call or viewing a solution with new video call capabilities. From the

initial connection, a quick evaluation of the problem or situation can begin, which caneither be resolved on demand or escalated to the appropriate type of communication

necessary to resolve the situation successfully -- all while staying within the same

platform and maintaining strong security.

Supporting thousands of students, most of which are multiplatform wireless users

roaming everywhere requires prioritization and planning but with NTRglobal it’s a

snap…or simply a click to be more precise. And because the technology offers a

proven SaaS implementation, NTRglobal SaaS is really easy to evaluate, test and

scale with no hassle to the budget as Opex. These are today’s tools. These require

no massive ripping and replacing. NTRglobal SaaS securely integrates easily with

existing systems within days. NTRglobal provides a Cloud Gameplan for the IT Service

and Support Desk that will help you cut costs, extend services, easily scale, enableenhance management by process and quickly report on ROI.

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NTRsupport Help Desk

Clientless multiplatform support

24/7 instant live chat from embeddable buttons

Multisession remote control with 6 modes

Embeddable click-for-help button from Windows apps

Self-service support portal for reduced call volumes

Centralized team management

Statistics & reporting for service accountability

Automatic call distribution

Post-session surveys for end-user experience assessment

Integrate with ticketing, CRM, other business systems

AES 256-bit encryption

NTR Service Desk

Scalable multiplatform enterprise solution

Easy SaaS implementation

Proactive asset management

Dynamic remote troubleshooting toolkit

Task automation with 50 predefined scripts

Support to unattended machines

Configuration managementRich Internet application designed for usability

Full visibility with monitoring and alerts

Integrate with existing business systems

Failsafe multilevel security

About NTRglobal

More than 300,000 IT managers and 15,000 education, government and enterprises

rely on NTRglobal to deliver enterprise-grade security and powerful integration withNTR Service Desk on-demand IT automation, system management and remote

access. and NTRsupport remote support for Windows PCs, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad,

BlackBerry, Symbian OS platforms on servers, smartphones and mobile devices.

NTRglobal ITsystem management SaaS helps businesses enhance service desk and

IT productivity via automation for rapid task management, reporting and scalability.

NTRglobal SaaS is hosted from multiple data centers with fail-over capabilities to

ensure robust performance and reliability.

For free trial of the software and more information visit www.ntrglobal.com 

NTR North America

Tel. +1 (866) 459-2543 - na@ntrglobal.com

NTR United Kingdom

Tel. +44 (0) 1483 734670 - uk@ntrglobal.com

NTRglobal HQ (Spain)

Tel. +34 93 445 07 00 - info@ntrglobal.com