Sun Microsystems Powers the Digital Campus Platform for SVIET

Punjab’s First Hi-tech Smart Campus Delivers an Eco-friendly Desktop, Open Standards-based Environment with Sun's Thin Client Technology
 

Chandigarh, December 19, 2008 - Sun Microsystems India today announced that it has been selected by Swami Vivekananda Institute of Engineering and Technology (SVIET) to enhance the IT infrastructure in their campus by creating a hi-tech and greener desktop computing environment through the deployment of the Sun Ray™ thin client solution.

SVIET comes under the Swami Vivekanand Group of Institutes (S.V.G.O.I.), a leading education group with over 3000 students that was established by Shri Raghu Nath Rai Memorial Educational Charitable Trust, Mohali. This Trust is founded by a group of well-known educationists who have made significant contributions in the field of education in the region.

With a growing student body that has a diverse range of sophisticated computing needs, SVIET aims to ensure that their desktop computing environment meets the performance expectations of students and faculty, and offers robust capabilities like secure, easy centralized administration, minimized upgradating hassles and multipurpose operating system capabilities for the existing and upcoming institutions on campus. Thus, in order to achieve their goal of IT enhancement and expansion, SVIET decided to work with Sun as the technology provider.

SVIET deployed 400 Sun Ray 2 thin clients with smart cards along with Sun Ray Software and Sun™ Secure Global Desktop Software. With Sun Secure Global Desktop Software, SVIET was able to integrate their existing legacy platform with applications on Solaris™ and Linux Operating Systems. SVIET chose the Sun Blade™ 6000 Modular System and Sun Blade X6250 Server Modules with the Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors to run their Solaris, Linux and Windows applications in one chassis.

Sun Ray technology is a highly innovative approach to desktop computing, that offers SVIET simplified administration, low-cost maintenance, and high performance efficiency. The technology is compact, makes no noise, and emits very little heat, enabling seamless integration between Sun Ray thin clients and the university environment.

The Sun Ray 2 is an ultra-low power, small-footprint client packed with all of the traditional Sun Ray security features and offered at a low price. Its typical power consumption is only four watts - about five percent of a PC. Using Sun Ray clients helps SVIET eliminate security, management and maintenance issues associated with a traditional PC environment. Because Sun Ray clients are completely stateless and have no local operating system, a single administrator can deploy and maintain thousands of desktops efficiently. Further, centralized servers are much easier to manage than dispersed PCs or traditional thin clients with embedded operating systems. Sun Ray thin clients will also enable SVIET to use power more efficiently - instead of wasted power sitting on user desktops; the available power is harnessed for other purposes and creates an additional resource for the organization to utilize.

SVIET will also be able to consolidate all data, software and processing power to central servers. Subsequently, data archiving becomes a simple automated process and security becomes centralized.
The convenience of anytime, anywhere access of a thin client relieves students of the burden of lugging laptops wherever they go. Each student will have a smart card that plugs into the Sun Ray client. Students can begin an assignment in their rooms, pull out the smart card, go to a classroom, lab, study area, kiosk, or library — even the dining hall — and continue working where they left off.

Speaking about the deployment, Dr. Manish Malhotra, Director- Software, Sun Microsystems India said, “SVIET is renowned for its technical excellence and as a leading center of engineering education and research in Punjab. For over twenty five years, Sun has also maintained a history of innovation in computing, networking and technology. With this deployment, SVIET and Sun will jointly prepare the next generation of engineering and research leaders. With 400 Sun Ray clients installed at SVIET, this is one of the largest installations in the country and reiterates our commitment to ecology and secure desktop computing.”

In addition to providing innovative Sun technology, Sun will also collaborate with SVIET to enable the institute to deliver training courses from Sun Learning Services (SLS), and equip students in various domains including Bioinformatics and VLSI. Going forward, SVIET will help identify domains for Sun to develop a Competency Center at the SVIET campus.

Speaking on why SVIET selected Sun to power its digital campus, Mr. Manmohan Garg, Chairman, SVIET said, “As one of the first education institutes in the state to leverage IT for the benefits of our students, we recognize the importance of technology to provide our students superior engineering education and are committed to ensuring that our students and faculty have access to state-of-the-art equipment. On evaluating several technology providers, we chose Sun to provide us with the next-generation desktop solution as they offered a value proposition that was hard to resist. We knew we could rely upon Sun’s innovative technology and expertise in providing a truly interoperable thin client architecture based on open standards that would help us not only to enhance performance, but also to keep our operating costs of running this infrastructure to the minimum.”

“In fact our initial discussion with Sun was only for the deployment of thin client solutions in two of our labs but on evaluating the TCO that Sun had to offer, this was extended to administrative computing and every form of client compute requirements in all our departments. Sun’s legendary connection with the education sector further went in their favor. We value Sun’s contribution to our IT infrastructure development and we are proud of our relationship with Sun Microsystems,” Garg further added.

As an early innovator in the thin client market with more than a decade of experience, Sun has seen strong growth for Sun Ray technology. Sun nearly doubled shipments of its Sun Ray thin clients during the fourth quarter of Sun's 2008 fiscal year compared to the third quarter of its 2008 fiscal year. Sun Ray unit shipments are growing faster than the thin client industry at large, underscoring the increased appeal thin client and desktop virtualization solutions are experiencing among businesses and organizations. Contributing to this growth is strong market demand for Sun(TM) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 2.0, which now ships on approximately 25% of Sun Ray units since being introduced in March 2008. In addition, another factor is the unparalleled choice Sun Ray thin clients offer customers, enabling them to display the Solaris OS, Windows or Linux desktops on the same device.

About SVIET
SVGOI is the leading education group with over 3000 students studying across 25 acres of hi-tech campus. The campus is meticulously planned and is setup with state of the art buildings and infrastructure in the footsteps of Shivalik hills. The Campus is divided into functional zones like Hostels, main College Building, Administration Block and a sports complex. The campus is well equipped with well-planned buildings, having facilities like well lit lecture halls, tutorial rooms, drawing halls, laboratories, computer centre, library, canteen, hostel, sports complex. The campus has lush green lawns and landscaping is done by PAU experts. Lecture halls, Tutorial rooms, Drawing halls, Laboratories, Computer centre are well laid out with state of the art Audio Visual support.

About Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by singular vision --”The Network is the Computer(TM)” -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com