Free Webinar on Demand: Challenges and Outcomes For Universities

Highlights and Insights

David R. Mays, co-founder and director of APPtechnology, presents a 22 minute overview of how application packaging-as-a-service can revolutionise the critical summer break period for university IT services. 

The Summer Break Challenge

Unlike private sector organisations that maintain steady application update cycles, universities typically defer major application updates throughout the academic year to maintain system stability. During this summer break window, IT teams might have to deal with months of backlog, updating dozens of applications with a skeleton crew.

The result is a cascade of problems: mountains of testing and postponing of key IT projects. The knock-on effect is that the summer crunch can become a recurring institutional bad habit. It leaves vulnerabilities unpatched for extended periods and creates poor user experiences when students and faculty return.

Real-World Case Studies

In this webinar, David presents three anonymised, real university examples.

Matthew's university faces updating 180 applications during a compressed summer timeframe. By implementing automated packaging for common applications and capturing key discovery information once, they eliminate repeated interruptions to application sponsors and enable predictable annual budgeting.

Peter's university suffers from massive underutilisation of existing deployment tools, with applications taking days to deploy and new device provisioning requiring two weeks. By adopting a "package first" mentality and implementing common standards, they achieve deployment times measured in minutes, with device provisioning reduced to hours.

Sue's university needs to migrate applications from SCCM to Intune but lacks capacity to maintain dual environments effectively. Through targeted outsourcing that provides additional capacity rather than new skills, they complete the migration as a fixed-fee engagement without lengthy commitments.

Nine-Step Modernisation Framework

You'll learn about the systematic approach to achieving modern IT estate management goals, from fixing foundations through maturity roadmapping, understanding current positioning against peer institutions, and implementing common standards with comprehensive documentation. 

The process emphasises removing complexity from legacy applications that depend on single-person knowledge, creating better end-user experiences with silent background installations. 

Strategic Advantages During Summer Break

Finally, the webinar explains how application packaging-as-a-service particularly benefits universities during summer break by transforming the traditional crisis period into a managed, predictable process. Instead of scrambling to accomplish months of deferred work, universities can maintain consistent application management throughout the year.

The service model allows universities flexible capacity in real-time, scaling up during busy periods and down during quieter times without penalty. This flexibility proves particularly valuable during summer break when internal capacity may be reduced but application update requirements remain high.

Key Takeaways

Application packaging-as-a-service is a transformative solution for university IT departments struggling with traditional summer break challenges.

By outsourcing the most time-intensive aspects of application management, universities can achieve modern management goals whilst freeing their skilled engineers for strategic projects. T

The service model offers predictable costs, improved security posture, and enhanced user experiences. These are critical factors for institutions serving tech-savvy students.

WATCH ON DEMAND NOW

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