Situation

• Distributed databases at over 100 schools made for an inefficient system
• Three school boards had partnered to choose a centralized student management system
• One of the boards was considering building a data centre to run the application

Approach

• The application provider recommended a TELUS hosting solution
• The London District Catholic School Board had previous good experience with TELUS as their Internet provider
• The TELUS offering was approved by all three of the Boards

Business Benefits

• The partner Boards have confidence in a hosting solution owned and managed by an independent third party
• The Boards are freed from the responsibility of managing hardware and software and hiring and training technical resources
• By sharing costs across three Boards, the investment required by each individual Board was dramatically reduced
• TELUS guarantees availability of the system, ensuring anytime, anywhere access to it for teachers and administrators

Solution Details

In Ontario, the London District Catholic School Board, Wellington Catholic District School Board and Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic School Board are collectively responsible for educating more than 40,000 students. They offer a full range of programs at every level, from kindergarten through the completion of secondary school, and administer a combined total of almost 100 elementary schools and 14 secondary schools.

Until recently, each of those individual schools maintained its own student management system and database. According to Chris Demers, Manager of Information Technology with the London District Catholic School Board, this highly distributed approach made it extremely difficult to access what he calls "consistent, clean data" about students and their progress.

However, stat-of-the-art student management systems can be expensive. To add to the costs, the London District Catholic School Board had taken the decision to construct its own data centre, where it would house and manage the servers needed for a centralized system. To maximize budgets, the three school boards decided to share the new system and issued a Request for Proposals from application providers.

After considering submissions, the three Boards choose the eSIS solution from aal (The Administrative Assistants Ltd.) because it offers unique features such as the ability to handle multiple school districts out of the box. In later consultations, aal recommended that instead of owning and managing their own servers and connectivity, the Boards should consider outsourcing to a hosting provider. They agreed and asked aal to research the market. aal recommended TELUS.

"TELUS was our Internet provider," says Demers. "So we liked the idea. The other two boards agreed because they preferred to have the solution managed by an independent third party."

Since going live, the entire solution has been working extremely well. The Boards have access to the data they need, while teachers can log into the system via the Web, from anywhere. That makes it easy for them to update student data, such as reporting, even when working from home. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) will soon be added to provide additional security for remote access.

Because the servers are hosted and managed by TELUS, the Boards don't have to worry about availability. TELUS monitors and maintains the systems 24x7, freeing the Boards? own technical resources to concentrate on strategic initiatives rather than day-to-day system management. In fact, the partnership has been so successful that a fourth Board is currently negotiating to join.