Qirx deploys Nutanix at six Canberra schools

Canberra-based Qirx has implemented Nutanix at six Canberra schools and colleges.

Nutanix tapped Qirx as the exclusive partner to deploy its Enterprise Cloud to the schools, citing its experience in the education sector and having an existing relationship with the educational institutions.

The schools that received deployments were Canberra Girls Grammar School (CGGS), Radford College, Marist College, Merici College, Daramalan College and St. Francis Xavier College.

"We’d like to see all other private schools in Canberra take advantage of the service improvements we know we can deliver through enterprise cloud computing," Qirx chief executive Nick Winch told CRN.

"The legacy infrastructure in most of the schools was, in most cases, outdated three-tier infrastructure that could no longer meet the digital requirements of the school."

Winch added that more than 10,000 students and staff in Canberra have benefited from the deployments.

St. Francis Xavier College was one of the first at which Qirx implemented Nutanix, replacing 15 server racks last year.

The CGGS deployment is more recent and the school said it enabled it to free up resources and introduce alternative ways of learning, like adding popular online games into its curriculum, giving remote access for students and self-paced learning initiatives.

“Our creativity in how we educate students has dramatically evolved,” CGGS director of ICT integration and eLearning Eric Roussel said.

“We have about 3000 simultaneous connections logging onto our systems but only five people in the IT team. It’s imperative that our IT environment is simple and scalable so that our focus stays on improving education.”

Radford College meanwhile said its new Nutanix-powered IT environment has shrunk to just five per cent of the physical space of its predecessor, cutting down on power consumption and IT energy costs.

“We’re now looking at how we can leverage Nutanix and virtual desktop infrastructure for creating media labs and image and video processing capabilities,” Radford College IT operations manager Carl Flanagan said.

“Schools are realising the need to innovate and start adopting cloud services to provide the stimulus and eLearning tools modern children require and expect.” Nutanix ANZ vice president Neville Vincent said.

“Parents want to see schools using the latest technology to enhance their children’s education and prepare them for a digital future. That’s what we provide.”