Thomas Duryea helps Deakin Uni solve painful PC logons

Thomas Duryea has put Deakin University onto AppSense's endpoint management solutions, with plans to eventually on-board 10,000 computers.

Geelong, Victoria-based Deakin was experiencing painful problems with corrupt and slow-loading roaming user profiles, with PC logon times dragging out to 10 or more minutes in extreme cases.

On average, new machines took 30 to 40 seconds to logon and 90 seconds and longer for older PCs or for large roaming profiles.

"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," said Thomas Duryea public sector engagement manager Jim Zelener.

"On the IT side, a corrupt profile typically required an hour to resolve, costing the team 600 man hours per year."

Thomas Duryea was called in to fix the issue and deployed a proof-of-concept of AppSense Environment Manager to replace roaming profiles.

"AppSense got rid of both problems, which allowed us to focus on providing advanced digital disruption technologies to our customers," said Deakin infrastructure service director Craig Warren.

AppSense announced that Deakin users could now "personalise user desktops on-demand", with contextual policy control protecting the endpoints. Students would no longer lose desktop configurations upon log-off.

The initial rollout has gone out to 300 computers within the university's IT team. The desktop team has already deployed AppSense agents to 10,000 personal computers in preparation for a wider implementation.

AppSense will also allow students to access virtual applications from the university labs through Citrix, and Deakin is currently evaluating AppSense Application Manager to provide malware protection and privilege management.

Deakin University, founded in 1974, has five campuses across Geelong, Melbourne and Warrnambool. The institution hosts 4,200 staff and 53,000 students.

Thomas Duryea is an AppSense Go+ Platinum partner and a current CRN MVP, in recognition of its high-level partnerships with a wide variety of tier-1 vendors. The Melbourne-headquartered firm was acquired by Logicalis in December for $16.9 million.