Company profile
Founded in 1914 by a group of New Orleans business people dedicated to the advancement of management education, the A. B. Freeman School of Business is one of 11 schools and colleges that make up Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Today, the Freeman School is recognized as one of America's leading business education institutions by prestigious publications such as Business Week, Forbes and U.S. News & World Report.
The Freeman School annually enrolls more than 1,300 full-time students and boasts an outstanding faculty and an innovative curricula. In addition, the School hosts the nationally acclaimed Burkenroad Reports equities research program, the Levy-Rosenblum Institute for Entrepreneurship and the Goldring Institute of International Business.
Business need
With such a successful and dynamic academic environment, the School administration places strong emphasis on implementing the best available technology to support the faculty's inventiveness.
Tom Gerace, Director of Information Technology for the School, explained, "The IT infrastructure centers on a Microsoft Windows Advanced Server environment, which facilitates file and print sharing between faculty, students and staff. Within the lassrooms, we have made available specialized software, including financial and statistical packages. Externally, we maintain a very strong Internet presence and the School performs web-based marketing activities to attract prospective employees and students. We also utilize a comprehensive web site for internal dissemination of information - it's the first place students go for forms, assignments and just about anything else that they need to do."
The multi-vendor infrastructure delivers bad economics
The School's historical lack of a purchasing strategy for new equipment eventually led to the existence of a very mixed vendor environment at all levels of the infrastructure. This, in turn, caused a number of issues.
Gerace recalled, "Eight years ago the legacy environment was non-standardized, causing it to be very complex and expensive to keep support staff trained. Reliability and durability of some machines were issues - classes cannot stop just because the computer at the front of the classroom has ceased to run."
IT staff looked at the intrinsic value of the loss of processing time for researchers, as well as the impact of downtime on classes. Gerace reflected, "We took a total cost of ownership approach, looking at the cost to the School over a three- to five-year period. It was clear there would be huge benefits to standardizing on one vendor from simplifying maintenance and support - thereby reducing operational costs - and leveraging volume purchase agreements and educational discounts."
The selection of the vendor on which to standardize became very critical. Gerace noted, "We wanted to implement highly reliable PCs and servers, and - in the event of downtime - have the ability to get them back up and running very quickly."
Solution overview
The School selected HP as its vendor of choice because of the strength and durability of he equipment. Gerace was attracted by the tight relationship between HP and one of its Gold Business Partners, Bellwether Technology Corporation, which was eager to work with the School to meet its educational and volume discount needs. He noted, "The deal was clinched when HP agreed to support us as a 'self-maintainer' shop, which allows us to do a certain amount of warranty work on the equipment, keeping costs down and availability extremely high."
HP ProLiant servers and in particular ProLiant blade servers were selected to host the Advanced Server environment and back-end applications. The BL20p blade server technology scales easily, and the grouped systems can be managed more efficiently than individual ones. For example, software and security changes are distributed across all servers at one time, requiring less operational effort than conventional distributed upgrades. Processor performance and virtualization capabilities of the blade systems make them ideally suited to meeting the needs of the School's research community. It deployed three centralized disk arrays storing half a terabyte of data on an HP StorageWorks MA8000, two terabytes on an HP StorageWorks MSA1000 and two terabytes an HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array EVA2C4D - to deliver extremely fast, shared file I/O.
Gigabit fiber backbones support a fully-switched 100Base-T network, with 1000Base-T connections running to key locations in support of the teaching and research activities. HP ProCurve wireless access points 520WL, HP ProCurve 802.11 cards in the PCs and HP ProCurve Range Extender Antennae provide wireless client access to the file servers, applications and Internet.
As classroom space is at a premium, the School selected the HP Compaq Business Desktop PC d500 series as its client platform because it requires minimal space, and blends seamlessly into the user's environment. Finally, HP LaserJet 4200dtn and 8150dn workgroup printers were chosen for their high performance, top-quality printing capabilities.
Challenge
- Leverage volume purchase discounts to lower the cost of new technology.
- Simplify the support environment.
- Increase infrastructure availability.
- Populate new facility with showcase technology.
Solution components
- Servers:
- Seven HP ProLiant DL580 servers
- One HP ProLiant DL380 server
- Six HP ProLiant 1600 servers
- One HP ProLiant 3500 server
- 10 HP ProLiant BL20p blade servers
- One HP ProLiant DL760 server
- Storage:
- One HP StorageWorks MA8000, with 461 GB
- One HP StorageWorks MSA 1000, with 2 TB
- One HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array EVA 2C4D with 2 TB
- Wireless networking:
- 48 HP ProCurve wireless access points 520WL
- 96 HP ProCurve 802.11 cards
- 96 HP ProCurve Range Extender Antenna
- Personal computers:
- 370 Various models of HP PC for office, lab, and classroom locations, including;
- 123 HP Compaq Business Desktop PCs d500 series, for e-mail stations, in classrooms and in the Trading room
- Printers:
- Two HP LaserJet 4200dtn printers
- Nine HP LaserJet 8150dn printers
- Five HP LaserJet 5si printers
- One HP LaserJet 4600 printer
- One HP LaserJet 8100 printer
- 150 Various HP LaserJet printer models for office locations
Results and benefits
- Increased infrastructure availability.
- Decreased operational support efforts.
- Reduced total cost of ownership via volume and educational discounts.
- Showcase teaching facility.
The new building gets the latest technology
The A. B. Freeman School of Business has just completed construction of a second building. The new Goldring/ Woldenberg Hall II classrooms are equipped with a computer workstation, two digital light processing (DLP) projectors, DVD, VCR, cable tuner, sound support, assistive listening and appropriate switching technologies. Ethernet connections and wireless throughout the building provide connectivity for student notebook computers in classrooms, study rooms, the library and lounge areas. Ten counter-height "email stations" near the classrooms provide quick access to e-mail.
With regard to equipping the new hall, Gerace recalled, "We knew what technology capabilities we wanted in the facility because we have a very knowledgeable IT staff. Working with HP, we quickly gained a feel for exactly which products would fill our needs, and Bellwether recommended specific device configurations."
A centerpiece of the new building is the Trading Center - a simulated trading floor that enables students to gain practical experience in areas such as energy, fixed income, equities and foreign exchange - containing $1 million worth of state-of-the-art hardware and software. Gerace observed, "When the Trading Center is in full operation, it can place a significant demand on the infrastructure resources;consequently we deployed a SAN-based disk array in our control room, which supports all of the activities in the Center. We also implemented dedicated HP ProLiant servers capable of running specialized applications and trading room simulation software."
An excellent business decision
The School's experience with running HP equipment at all levels of its infrastructure has been very positive. Gerace noted, "Keeping the faculty and staff up and running, with minimal downtime, is really important. Between the equipment being highly reliable, and being able to handle warranty work ourselves under the Self Maintainer program, we have been able to deliver excellent levels of availability for everyone."
With a simplified HP infrastructure in place and reduced support load, the IT staff was easily able to absorb the operational impact of doubling classroom technology with the opening of the new facility - only having to increase its staffing levels by two extra people.
Gerace concluded, "The business decision to continue to partner with HP each year is an easy one. HP is in a very strong market position and we have an excellent history with its products and support. We have been able to realize cost efficiencies, while simplifying the support environment and increasing infrastructure availability. For the A. B. Freeman School of Business, standardizing on HP makes excellent economic sense."
For more information on how working with HP can benefit you, contact your local HP sales representative, or visit us through the Internet at our world wide web address: http://www.hp.com
2004 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.
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