Dutch University Virtualizes Apps

AMSTERDAM --( AvansUniversity of Applied Sciences, a university with 19,000 students in theSouth of The Netherlands, expects to reduce the cost, and improve the speedof deployment for new e-learning systems and applications with a Cisco(NASDAQ: CSCO) Application Control Engine (ACE). The University will useCisco ACE to make better use of existing server hardware, centralisemanagement of 230 servers and make application maintenance faster and moreefficient.

Virtualization functionality in Cisco ACE will be used to enable Universityapplications -- such as web mail, an e-learning portal and a learningmanagement system, as well as applications specific to various departmentand schools within the University -- to be shared across servers making iteasier to control applications, simplify management and reduce costs.

Avans estimates the Cisco ACE will help save it EUR 1000 per server byremoving the need to buy extra hardware to enable multiple applications toshare multiple server resources. Cisco ACE also means the University candevelop new services faster and carry out application maintenance during theday without interrupting services to students and staff. Previously,maintenance operations were done out of hours to avoid disruption.

In addition, Avans also expects the Cisco ACE to help the University reducethe number of servers it needs over the next few years by 30 percent.

The Cisco ACEs will be deployed in two data centers as part of the Cisco®Data Center Network Architecture which Avans has adopted to help make itslearning, communication and administration applications available tostudents and staff quickly and from any University location or remotely.Hans Marcus, network engineer at Avans, said, "The Cisco ACE will make thewhole process of developing and managing learning and administrationservices at Avans much easier. It will help enable more effective use ofserver resources by virtualizing applications, and support the University inmaintaining existing applications more efficiently and deploying newapplications faster. Using the server and application virtualizationcapabilities in Cisco ACE, we will also be able to scale services as demandincreases without large increases in hardware investment."

Cisco Systems Inc.