About Dundee & Angus College
Dundee and Angus College is the only college in the Dundee and Angus area, and with approximately 20,000 enrollments, is one of the largest in the country. The college has two main campuses with a further two smaller outreach centres, providing over 1,000 courses from introductory level to degree and post graduate studies.
The Challenge
Dundee & Angus College wanted to provide students and staff with simple and easy access to applications remotely, that can be used to support distance learning. Enabling remote access to applications would remove the need for students to physically attend on site locations and to provide a flexible learning experience required to support COVID-19 related restrictions. Student access to these applications would also need to be managed via the College’s legacy Active directory.
The Solution
CirrusHQ proposed a proof of concept (PoC) service to test and validate the Amazon AppStream 2.0 service, to host the colleges applications (for example AutoCAD) and to stream sessions to students and staff regardless of their location. This PoC service helped Dundee & Angus College realise the benefits of delivering key applications to any computer without the need for provisioning and operating the hardware, while assessing the Cloud service’s performance, practicality and ease of use.
The PoC service was also used to test the integration of legacy systems such as the student and staff user permissions directory, managed through the College’s existing Active Directory, hosted on their Microsoft Azure account..
The Benefits
- Proof of concept service helped accelerate innovation
Fast & effective testing of a bespoke distance learning platform. - Service continuity and completion of semesters
Demonstrated End-User access to critical application of campus. - Support a digital transformation strategy
Additional knowledge & data to support a more robust IT strategy.
“The college has been running a virtual desktop environment hosted on-premise for a number of years but the hardware wasn’t able to cope with the graphically intense packages now being used. The project was successful in demonstrating that performance of a cloud hosted desktop will meet the needs of the college as we strive to deliver our Cloud First strategy.”
Andy Ross, Dundee & Angus College
About APN Partner CirrusHQ and Amazon Web Services
Dundee & Angus College were introduced to CirrusHQ by AWS as an Advanced Consulting Partner with the correct certifications & accreditations to assist them via a proof of concept service. This service is designed by CirrusHQ in cooperation with AWS to help organisations develop and prove concepts on AWS, securely and rapidly. It supports the delivery of specific customer journeys and customer experience applications at scale and at speed, through pre-built digital components deployed in a standardised way.
Next Steps
To learn more about how AWS and APN Partner CirrusHQ can help your organisation, then get in touch.
