CASE STUDY
This has allowed the university to drastically
improve its performance in terms of
allowing faculty and students to work where
they want, when they want, access new
educational tools and generally enhance
their learning experience.
The University of Sharjah, an Emirati private
national university, was founded by its
current President and Chairman, the Ruler of
Sharjah, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad
Al-Qasimi, in 1997.
The university has some 14,000 students
and 610 faculty members with 14 colleges
offering many programmes at the diploma,
bachelor, masters and doctoral levels.
Courses are offered in various fields ranging
from Sharia and law to health sciences,
medicine, fine arts and design, engineering
and communication.
The challenge
Education is increasingly adopting digital
technology to enhance learning and to
www.intelligentcio.com
INSTEAD OF IT RESOURCES BEING
WASTED FIXING MINOR PROBLEMS
ON MULTIPLE DIFFERENT DESKTOPS,
HORIZON 7 BRINGS EVERYTHING
UNDER ONE CENTRAL COMMAND.
perform administrative tasks more efficiently,
and these were areas that the University
of Sharjah was keen to develop. However,
the university’s IT department wanted to
offer students and faculty a more pro-active
service, with digital tools to transform
learning, research and administrative tasks. individual desktops. With so much endpoint
hardware being used, it was also almost
impossible for the IT department to offer the
kind of modern digital services that students
want in a scalable and secure manner, such
as video conferencing and digital access to
lectures and learning material.
But with almost 14,000 students, plus
faculty using non-virtualised desktops, it was
increasingly difficult for the IT department
to maintain existing systems, with large
amounts of resources spent fixing issues with “We needed to provide high-quality services
that people could rely on; and those services
needed to be innovative and allow students
to learn in new ways, to use the technology
and work from where they want, when they
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