The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) selected Nutanix technology to enhance its e-learning services and make its internal operations more scalable and efficient.
EdUHK is a publicly-funded institution focused on advancing the education sector. It offers diverse academic and research programs for teacher training and related social sciences and humanities disciplines.
The university intends to deploy Nutanix hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) over the course of July and August in time for the launch of a pilot program at the start of the new academic year. The full migration is set to be completed in the summer of 2023.
The partnership with Nutanix marks the first time for EdUHK to adopt a HCI solution, and it is part of a continuing trend of digitalisation in academia.
As well as supporting e-learning activities, which are becoming more widespread in the education sector, the move will help the organisation consolidate and scale up its infrastructure and roll out data analytics functions.
EdUHK’s e-learning platform enables students to look up and register for courses, access learning materials, videos and exams, attend virtual classes, and submit homework.
The system was underpowered to serve EdUHK’s 10,000 students efficiently, and using Nutanix as a foundation will help improve computing resources allocation.
In terms of data analytics, EdUHK aims to increase computer processing power to support an increased number of learning needs which include course and programme level analytics.
Nutanix will also help the university strengthen its operating environment and increase computing efficiency. By migrating its network to a HCI environment, EdUHK aims to ensure availability and stability, and enhance computing power.
“Digital transformation is as much of a priority for teaching and learning as it is for the world of business,” said Teddy Ko, country manager at Nutanix Hong Kong.
John Hui, CIO of EdUHK, said Nutanix will provide formal training to the team members to ensure they are empowered to use the new HCI environment to its full potential.
Meanwhile, in Japan, Nutanix and its partner Tokyo-based iret announced that the City of Sapporo has deployed Nutanix Cloud Clusters (NC2) on AWS. The city government selected Nutanix Flow Network Security to create the first hybrid cloud environment used by a local government in Japan.
Sapporo first used a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) solution from Nutanix to modernize and improve the efficiency of its on-premise datacenter. Later, the need to renew its infrastructure while keeping costs down, as well as disaster preparedness and other considerations, made rapid procurement of flexible IT resources a challenge.
By selecting NC2 on AWS, it was able to create a hybrid cloud environment, including its modern data centre, that will enable it to scale-up its IT, as needed, without significant expenditure.
NC2 on AWS has reduced Sapporo City’s IT complexity and operational burdens because it enables applications to be managed on-premise and in the cloud, on Amazon EC2 bare metal infrastructure, using a single interface.
This also resulted in Sapporo City’s smooth deployment without the impact that could have been caused by delivery delays if additional network equipment, servers, switches, etc. were needed due to the recent global shortage of semiconductors. Currently, security-related workloads are being run in the cloud, and Sapporo City’s plan is to migrate its internal IT systems, portal, and external websites to the cloud in the future.
