How IT Analytics aims to give Loyola University Maryland the next generation IT service desk
Summary
Nexthink’s end-user IT Analytics has helped deliver tactical and strategic benefits to Loyola University Maryland within 6 months. Loyola University Maryland was looking for greater visibility of IT performance across its campus to help improve efficiency and plan for longer term strategic investments. In just six months, Nexthink has helped the technology services (TS) department become more proactive in its approach to the management of incidents, security, and improved speed of issue resolution for staff and students.
Background
Loyola University Maryland is a Jesuit, Catholic university committed to the educational and spiritual traditions of the Society of Jesus and the development of the whole person. Accordingly, the university inspires students to learn, lead, and serve in a diverse and changing world.
At Loyola, this means that the curriculum is rigorous and faculty expectations are high. With majors and minors in more than 40 academic fields, Loyola offers an undergraduate program grounded in the liberal arts, focused primarily on developing undergraduate students as well-rounded scholars and leaders who are distinctly prepared to succeed in every aspect of their lives.
Focused on using technology to improve the student experience, the TS team identified the end-user IT analytics technology from Nexthink delivered by Software2 as a way to provide the next generation service desk for the university.
Big data: big benefits
Real-time intelligence on the performance of the end-user endpoints allows university TS to monitor, manage and proactively respond to performance and security issues, fixing them before they turn into problems. The top three benefits in the project so far include:
1. Visibility. Nexthink has enabled the university to map and baseline IT services by analyzing real activity. In addition, the university can capture all local and network activities in real-time at all the endpoints and transform end-user data in a way that provides total visibility. Nexthink has provided a factual representation of reality across the technology environment. The university has improved visibility and security across the campus.
2. Speed of resolution. The simple human-oriented interface provides at a glance, essential information on the health of an end-user device. This means the “staff limited” support teams can quickly identify if a computer has generated any alerts, experienced any errors, flagged any warnings, had new software installed, has experienced difficulties with services, etc. This real-time information is easily accessible from dashboards and aims to help the university to meet service level agreements, internally or externally.
3. Enhanced Security. The university can now identify potential compliance gaps much faster and empower the TS team to respond to external and internal threats using anomaly and behavior analytics. The team will now never lose sight and have all the data needed with the power to extract what’s relevant and drill-down for a closer look in seconds.
The future
Whilst it is still early in the Nexthink project, the ambitious TS team have identified other areas where Nexthink could add value to the IT service across campus over the coming months;
1. Transformational IT & Windows 10 migration. Big data and end-user IT analytics provides the insight to measure IT readiness before large scale IT changes.
2. Green IT and sustainability. Analyzing power consumption/carbon footprint of the endpoint computing environment against target data to drive the Green IT agenda for change and improvement.
3. Role based visibility. Providing various levels of IT with insight whilst ensuring compliance with Data Protection and student’s rights.
Quotes
Patrick Donohue, Director of Client Services at Loyola University Maryland said, “Nexthink has enabled us to quickly and easily determine the root cause of issues for speedier resolution with greater accuracy. Although traditional endpoint management tools provide this information, Nexthink’s interface is simple and elegant allowing any level of skilled technician to use it without having to know complex reporting tools. We are evolving from IT firefighters into knowledgeable proactive partners meeting the demands of technology into the future for Loyola University Maryland.”
Mike Oleksinski, Americas Channel Director at Nexthink said “Nexthink is proud to work with Loyola University Maryland and committed to helping educational institutions benefit from smarter IT in partnership with Software2. End-user IT Analytics enable the ICT department to track the use and performance of technologies, devices, and services delivered to administrators, faculty and students from the end-user perspective. This not only ensures performance and strengthens security measures, but also optimizes costs and capacity planning.”
Tony Austwick, EdTech ambassador and CEO at Software2 said, “We have a big commitment to working with Jesuit Universities and have found the team at Loyola a joy to work alongside. The students are sure to benefit from the forward thinking ICT department as they use Big Data and end-user IT analytics to improve responsiveness and the student experience. This is one of our most exciting projects across 100 universities in 10 countries.”
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