Advizex VDI Solution Forges Partnership
with Ohio 2-Year College
The Team
Jenna Gehring, Jared Baber, Joe Clarke, John Moses, Melvin Lewis
The Problem
Owens Community College is a two-year Ohio public college serving students at its suburban Perrysburg and Findlay campuses. Their Spring Semester 2025 enrollment was 7,396 total students. With 76% of the students being part-time, meeting the computing needs of the large number of part-time students proved to be a massive challenge for its virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution before our team entered the picture.
That solution began as a cost-saving measure to replace the aging PCs in the college’s computer labs. However, the LG Zero Clients solution they deployed used the Nutanix VDI cluster, which lacked graphics processing units (GPUs). With many students using the computer labs to watch YouTube and Netflix videos during breaks between classes, the graphics-rich videos strained the cluster beyond its capacity.
In addition, the college’s existing VDI environment put an additional burden on its already taxed systems engineering team. So, the administration tore down the VDI environment and reinstalled PCs in the computer labs.
Then, the pandemic arrived—and with it, the pressing need to provide students with remote access. Many of the students at Owens Community College are High School students taking college classes. Many of these students lack resources such as laptops, so they leverage the Chromebooks that their K-12 schools distribute. The solution needed to allow the use of Chromebooks to access windows tools such as Microsoft Office. The Owens Community College team initially deployed a cloud-based SaaS VDI solution “Apporto” to address the needs of remote students during the pandemic. While this solution was turnkey, the costs were significantly higher.
The Owens team reached out to us to partner with them and find a solution that met their financial needs.
The Solution
To allow students to continue using Chromebooks and access the school’s resources, the college could use either an on-premises VDI or a cloud-hosted solution.
Like most publicly funded organizations, Owens needed a cost-effective solution. In addition, that solution should be a simplified, cloud-hosted solution that their systems engineering team could manage.
While the Apporto solution was meeting their needs, allowing students to access a VDI environment for classes that met remotely. Keeping the college’s long-term goals in mind to leverage Azure for IaaS, we Azure’s VDI for a more permanent solution.
The Implementation
We first built out the Azure environment to support their VDI needs in the cloud. This enabled the team to increase computing capacity during peak usage and decrease it in the evenings and when its students were on break. Then, we conducted an Azure jumpstart service to help the Owens team familiarize themselves with the solution.
The Technology
To meet the school’s pandemic-related and long-term challenges, we provided the following technology and support services:
• Deployed and customized Azure’s VDI
• Conducted an Azure jumpstart service, working one-on-one with the Owens team and answering questions to ensure that team members had the knowledge and confidence to handle any issues that might arise
The Impact
By partnering with the college team to find an ideal solution, we helped the school reduce costs and streamline its operational overhead. Additionally, moving the college’s VDI environment to the cloud reduced costs by 24%, making its processes more efficient and cost-effective.
As an Owens spokesperson put it, “Owens used Advizex when building out an Azure VDI environment to support our students’ remote needs. Advizex worked side-by-side with our team, answered any questions the team had, made sure we had proper as-built documentation, and still came in under budget, which allowed us to utilize the extra funds on a smaller project with them.”
The Conclusion
Leaving our customers satisfied is our primary goal. We have forged a genuine partnership with the Owens community, continuing to work with them well after the initial project ended. Owens Community College is now working with our team on critical projects, including network services, a Network as a Service (NaaS) project, and more.