Benedict College

Success Story

Benedict College uses Novell® solutions to improve communication among students and staff.

Overview

Founded in 1870, Benedict College is the largest private college in South Carolina, serving 3,000 students and employing 500 faculty and staff. The College has 28 computer labs available to students and seeks to maintain a ratio of one computer for every 10 students.

Challenge

With its 3,000 students using a variety of Internet mail services, Benedict College found it difficult to communicate electronically. As a result, each college department was sending individual mailings to students, contributing to high administration and postage costs. The College decided to standardize its e-mail system and create a portal to give its students, faculty and staff reliable, remote access to e-mail, as well as other resources and information. To do so, the College required a secure identity management solution to safeguard college data and protect student privacy.

In addition, Benedict College needed a centralized desktop management solution to aid its small IT staff in managing 28 computer labs. However, the College had limited budget and staff to accomplish all of its goals.

Novell solution

"We wanted a comprehensive, reliable solution that would provide a solid foundation and serve us well into the future. We also have a small IT staff, so Novell's consistent support and services are extremely important to us."

Katrina Damon
Network Administrator,
Benedict College

Benedict College evaluated several portal solutions, as well as Microsoft Active Directory*, but selected comprehensive Novell solutions including Novell eDirectory™, Novell DirXML®, Novell iChain®, Novell eGuide, Novell NetWare® 6, Novell GroupWise® 6, NetMail™, and Novell ZENworks® 4 for Desktops.

"We wanted a comprehensive, reliable solution that would provide a solid foundation and serve us well into the future," said Katrina Damon, network administrator at Benedict College. "We also have a small IT staff, so Novell's consistent support and services are extremely important to us."

Working with Alphanumeric Systems, Benedict College created a college portal to give students and staff reliable access to information and resources. Users access the portal with a single ID and password. Novell iChain provides secure authentication and access to the portal based on identity, safeguarding college data and protecting user privacy.

With eDirectory, the College has a single, secure directory to manage all of its user profiles. DirXML ties into other administrative systems, such as the College registration system, and automatically updates user information across applications, saving the small IT staff more than 80 hours of manually updating student profiles.

"When our staff is doing research or attending conferences at other institutions, they can now access the same information as if they were at their desks, without jumping through hoops," said Damon. "In the future, we will increase faculty and staff efficiency with capabilities to track attendance, assign grades and access library resources."

College information and handbooks are now available via the portal, eliminating the need to send expensive mailings, and Novell eGuide provides both student and staff "white pages" that make it easy to locate contacts across the college. Students will soon be able to use the portal to check their class schedules, receive information from advisors, and obtain transcripts.

College faculty and staff use GroupWise for e-mail, and to efficiently manage calendars and schedules. The College's 3,000 students use Novell NetMail, a standards-based messaging solution that provides e-mail, calendaring and schedule sharing across the Internet. Based on eDirectory, NetMail delivers a highly scalable messaging infrastructure at a low cost, helping the College stay within its limited IT budget.

ZENworks for Desktops streamlines the management of 28 computer labs across the campus. For an 11-person IT staff, the ability to centrally manage 320 student machines and 450+ faculty and staff workstations provides significant time and cost savings. The staff can easily deploy applications and updates from a central location, as well as implement policies to limit desktop customization and certain downloads. With remote control functionality, the staff can be more responsive to user issues.

"ZENworks for Desktops is our friend," said Damon. "It saves us an enormous amount of time in managing workstations that have to be refurbished frequently. Time is very important to our small team – by eliminating manual processes and repetitive tasks, we have seen an immediate return on investment."

Results

With a secure college portal for easy access to e-mail and other college applications, Benedict College has greatly improved the communication among its students and staff, which is expected to dramatically reduce its printing and mailing costs. Better workstation management has reduced the number of helpdesk calls, freeing up a small IT staff to work on other projects.

"With limited resources and a small staff, we had to do everything right the first time," said Robert Squirewell, directory of Management Information Systems at Benedict College. "With Novell's proven efficiency and cost-effectiveness, we have created a solid foundation to do even greater things in the future. Working with the right products makes all the difference."