Michigan Technological University

Established in 1885 in the rural North of Upper Michigan, on 925 acres of spectacular nature, Michigan Tech prides itself on providing world class education in science, engineering, technology and mathematics, in more than 140 degree programs. 

The Challenge

Managing access to lab computers for over 7,000 students was not an easy task for the small IT team at Michigan Tech. Many of the applications needed in the complex engineering and science courses are heavyweights, requiring high performing hardware and long installation time.

Software deployments had to be scheduled overnight to not impact lab activities and classes, so students couldn’t have immediate access when they needed it. 

Every summer the Windows IT team would start with a clean slate and reimage all Windows computer labs. It took most of the 40-strong IT Operations student workforce weeks to complete this huge task.

The Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) used at the time was great for slowly building software installs but didn’t cope well with installing over 200 apps at once.

“You would start the process the evening on one day and would come back the morning of the next day and hit all of them with a hammer until they started working again, then come back 5 hours later and hit them all with a hammer again and then eventually they would get to the point where they were done” joked Mitchell. 

The software updates and licensing process was also manual, managed through google sheets via a traffic light system, which took time and effort from the team to continuously maintain it.

Goals

• Continue to offer all students access to any software they needed in any campus lab
• Reduce time spent reimaging, installing, and troubleshooting software in computer labs
• Get better usage data for software
  

“We installed over 250 applications locally on each machine, which took over 24 hours each. They would often get stuck and need manual intervention at least once or twice, so we needed to have loaners ready to go.” says Mitchell Paris, Windows System Administrator at Michigan Tech

The Approach

Michigan Tech transitioned to AppsAnywhere in 2018, first with a small pilot of a few applications in one lab, which was successful. 

The next summer over 80-90% of the university applications across all labs were rolled out through AppsAnywhere. There was a large time investment from the team on packaging applications, but with time they became more efficient going from 1.30 hours per app down to 30 minutes for an average application. 

The simplicity of AppsAnywhere posed a strong business case for Mitchell and his team. No large upfront investment into hardware for a VDI solution, no heavy computing requirements for the server infrastructure, no extra graphics cards, no changes in the existing software licensing, and the existing high-performance desktops could be further leveraged.

The machines are still getting reimaged during the summer break, but instead of 24h, it now takes 30 minutes. The number of applications has increased from 250 to over 300, and most of them are delivered through AppsAnywhere.

In 2022 Michigan Tech transitioned from seat-based licensing to a user-based site license, allowing for applications whose licenses permitted it, to instantly be made available to personal devices. Those apps that required different licenses for personal devices had an additional package created, often by just making a few minor modifications to their existing package. This was all enabled by the transition to AppsAnywhere. 

The Outcome 

AppAnywhere delivered tangi ble benefits for Michigan Tech, with positive impact for the IT team and students across the university. 

Some of the benefits include: 

• Reduced time to reimage lab computers 
• Reduced deployment time and overheads 
• Reduced dependency on SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) 
• Reduced troubleshooting time for lab machines and personal devices 
• Reduced waiting times for applications to become available 
• Opportunity to work on personal devices (BYOD) 
  

“The advertisement that if it works for one device, it should work for all devices was very appealing. Most of our software installation troubleshooting for our help desk can now be reduced to: Why don’t you use AppsAnywhere instead of locally installing it? It just works!” 

Although there are no quantified ROI metrics yet, Mitchell and his team can see a huge difference in their work satisfaction. The workforce headcount has remained the same, but their focus has shifted from reimaging computers to packaging applications and servicing requests. 

“We have been able to be a lot more efficient with our processes, and students, which is most of our workforce, have been able to work on interesting projects that improve the way our team functions. In fact, about 20-30% of our time is spent on this kind of project. We have created documentation and have automated a lot of our processes. Without our student workforce, we wouldn’t be able to offer the same level of service or update our extensive library of application packages.”

What’s next for Michigan Tech IT? 

Mitchell is proud to continue the “grow your own” tradition at Michigan Tech. A student intern himself when he joined the team, he is excited to keep finding and growing the next generation of IT professionals and Michigan Tech employees: 4 out of 5 hires in his team have followed the same path. 

The main goal for the future is to continue to automate processes, and the near future is focused on automating packaging and licensing and leveraging app analytics, inspired by the AppsAnywhere features. 

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