1. Aligning business and IT strategies in the Middle East for 28 years
HEALTHCARE IT: CUTTING EDGE SOLUTIONS IMPROVING HEALTH
An ITP Technology Publication August 2013 | Volume 26 Issue 8
Create the
cloudcampus
Enduser
Proving ID
Mobile services
require more
than two-factor
authentication
Skills certification
Certification is
essential to prove
competence and
achievements
PLUS
Dr Michael Dobe,
President and CEO
of International
Horizons College
International Horizons
College selects an all-SaaS,
no server, set-up to create
agile, cost-effective
learning environment
40
User Experience
Tailoring enterprise
applications to bring
better usability
ERPOPTIMISATION
COREAPPLICATION
GETSNEWCAPABILITIES
52
BUILD
ORBUY?
DATACENTRE
DECISIONS58
Dubai Financial
Market cuts downtime
Hosted backup helps
DFM to stay online
46
3. August 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 41
/INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
August 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 41
/INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
WHEN INTERNATIONAL HORIZONS COLLEGE SET UP
OPERATIONS IN DUBAI, IT WANTED TO KEEP ITS SYSTEMS
SIMPLE YET ENABLE POWERFUL COLLABORATION
BETWEEN STUDENTS AND STAFF. IT TURNED TO DU,
TO DEVELOP AN EXTENSIVE MANAGED SERVICES
PACKAGE, INCLUDING NETWORKS, HARDWARE AND
EDUCATION APPLICATIONS IN THE CLOUD
BY MARK SUTTON
Dr Michael Dobe,
Ph.D, president
and CEO of
International
Horizon’s
College, a
new American
Honours College
in Dubai.
CREATING
A CAMPUS
IN THE CLOUD
4. /INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
42 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS August 2013
etting up green field operations can
be an expensive and time consum-
ing business for any organisation,
but for the education sector, where
expenditure ideally is focused on
learning rather than support struc-
tures, it is even more important that
every dollar is spent wisely. With the
education sector increasingly moving
towards connected classrooms and
a much greater degree of technology
in teaching however, delivering the
modern systems and infrastructure to
enable state-of-the-art learning while
keeping IT investment under control
is a difficult proposition. For Interna-
tional Horizons College (IHC), a new
American Honours College, based in
Dubai, the solution to how to deliver a
21st century learning experience without major investment, was to
turn to the cloud.
Dr Michael Dobe, President and CEO of IHC, said that the col-
lege, which offers two-year Associate of Arts degrees, aims to take
a global, collaborative approach to learning, and to give its high-
performing students an advanced and open learning environment,
to prepare them for study in leading US academic institutions. The
college teaches the American curriculum, and has a partnership
with another two year college in the US, to provide pathways into
the prestigious University of California system. IHC was accred-
ited by UAE authorities in December, and took on a small group of
students in January. The college will have a full launch in Autumn,
with the aim of taking on 50 students.
As a ‘start-up’ operation, with no existing infrastructure, IHC
could be flexible in terms of IT, but it was very much committed to
putting technology, such as videoconferencing at the heart of teach-
ing, Dobe explained. Solutions such as high-definition video are a
vital part of IHC’s vision of a Global Classroom, which enables face-
to-face collaboration between students and faculty in Dubai, and
with their counterparts at the partner college in the US. The aim is
to expose students to US teaching methods, and foster collabora-
tion, rather than to create a distance learning program.
“We don’t use it as a distance education platform, we use it as a
face-to-face virtual enhancement. We are all about the global class-
room, the physical facilities are critical to us,” Dobe said. “We really
value face-to-face, whether it is physical or virtual, we value the
interaction between students and faculty, and we share the skepti-
cism about the quality issues of fully online distance programs. Our
model is face-to-face, where the quality of instruction and interac-
tion between the faculty and students is at the heart of the experi-
ence — you can’t replace that with a blog.”
The solution to putting in high end solutions, without the at-
tendant costs, support requirements, time to deploy and complex-
ity, was to look to managed services. Dobe has previous experience
with managed services, both in the region and the US and Europe,
and has even worked as a managed service CIO. IHC turned to
UAE telco du, to see what could be developed in terms of managed
services. Using his past experience with managed solutions, Dobe
IHC has a ‘no servers
now or in future’
policy, with all
applications taken
on a SaaS basis, and
virtual docs preferred
over hard copy.
5. August 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 43
/INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
worked with du to develop a wide-ranging deal, which involves
du providing connectivity to the campus, hosting applications, and
providing the hardware and software systems such as video confer-
encing cameras, all delivered in a hosted model.
“We have a unique relationship with du, they are a very agile
company, they have been very co-operative and very flexible,” Dobe
said. “We are getting solutions from du — we don’t focus on the
equipment, we focus on what we need the functionality to be. du is
able to meet our needs in a way that blends networking, hardware
and software, so that it is transparent to us which components we
are actually getting from them. The equipment in the classrooms,
no one has ever gotten that as part of a bundle [before], we devel-
oped that with du as a complete end-to-end solution.”
IHC is a ‘campus in the cloud’ both physically, as well as tech-
nological. Located on the forty-second floor of the U-Bora Tower
in Dubai’s Business Bay, the college benefits from being in a brand
new building, with good IT infrastructure and connectivity. With
all of the college’s systems in the cloud, a stable, resilient network
connection was required, and du provides a two fibre run to IHC to
ensure constant availability and no single point of failure.
In terms of applications, IHC has committed to an all Software-
as-a-Service model, with no in-house coding and no servers on the
premises, now or in future.
The student information management system is sourced from a
cloud provider in the US, and because the UAE Ministry of Educa-
tion has based its best practice approaches on US accreditation
“WE BELIEVE
STRONGLY THAT THE
PLACE FOR OUR IT
PEOPLE IS WITH
STUDENTS AND
FACULTY, HELPING
THEM WITH THEIR
LEARNING, NOT
IN THE BACK
OFFICE WRITING
CUSTOM CODE OR
SETTING UP SERVER
INFRASTRUCTURE.”
6. /INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
44 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS August 2013
bodies, maintenance of course materials and so on, this meant that
the system could be used out-of-the-box, costing 10-20% of what an
on-premise system would have cost.
For the learning and collaboration applications, IHC selected
Google Apps for Education, Dobe explained: “We use a number of
different systems that are cloud-based that enable collaboration
with faculty and students. The baseline that we established was
Google apps, we thought the email was a great fit, but it is more
than just email. Google Apps for Education includes docs, spread-
sheets, videos, groupware, you can have a common discussion
group etc.
“We use the full range of Google Apps for Education to provide
people with the ability to collaborate on the cloud. That means they
have a time when they are sitting in the same room, they can be
working through the cloud on their laptops, or they could continue
that conversation when they are back at their apartments, so a
student can collaborate with another student, they can reach out to
a faculty member, they are always connected. Remote collaboration
is not a substitute for face-to-face, it is a way of extending it, and
continuing the conversation even though you are not physically in
the same room,” he added.
One benefit of the SaaS approach is that, as a relatively small
learning establishment, IHC is able to access powerful solutions
without having to scale down systems meant for larger organisa-
tions. It also has green benefits, Dobe said.
“Everything for us is born digital, and we can ad hoc produce
the print copies. We have only used three reams of paper on our
printer since opening, so we think that’s a win for green computing.
It is just more logical, I travel a lot, and I have to have to access to all
of the materials, and I can’t just bring it with me. It is an operational
KIT LIST
Google Apps for Education
Polycom RealPresence video solutions
Polycom EagleEye Director cameras
Polycom RealPresence Desktop 3.0
Blackboard Learning Management System
Vaddio Cameras
Vaddio whiteboard Squiggle Kit
Steelcase media:scape collaboration systems
MacBook Pro
Google Android Nexus Tablets
Samsung S3/S4 smartphones
BlueCoat Systems managed video caching services
All of IHC’s
infrastructure and
solutions have been
provisioned from du
as managed services,
saving cost and
complexity, says Dobe.
7. August 2013 ARABIAN COMPUTER NEWS 45
/INTERNATIONALHORIZONSCOLLEGE
necessity, an academic benefit, and an environmental benefit too.”
The hosted systems also means a much smaller IT staff require-
ment — the college has just one IT support person, compared to
the 12 that Dobe estimates an inhouse approach would require. The
managed services also mean more time for the IT staff to work with
students and faculty.
“We believe strongly that the place for our IT people is with
students and faculty, helping them with their learning, not in the
back office writing custom code or setting up server infrastructure -
that is just not a good use of higher ed. dollars,” Dobe explained.
One fifth of all the courses and lessons are delivered from the
partner campus in California, using Blackboard’s Learning Man-
agement System, and it is here, as well as in connecting faculty
and students to each other, that the Managed Video-as-a-Service
(MVaaS) solution that du is hosting plays a vital role.
The solution uses Polycom RealPres-
ence HDX video systems equipped with
Polycom EagleEye Director cameras,
Vaddio cameras and interactive white-
board solutions in the classrooms, to give
very high quality telepresence. The system
includes a cloud-based Polycom RealPres-
ence Collaboration Server and Polycom
RSS recording and streaming software
delivered by Polycom local partner FVC
and du. The whole systems is integrated
and managed by du. IHC also has a Steel-
case media:scape collaboration workspace
system, for collaborative work groups. The
system is used not just for learning, but for
faculty meetings and interviewing.
Mobility is also a big part of the
infrastructure, with all students, faculty
and staff being issued with MacBook Pro,
with Polycom RealPresence Desktop 3.0
software, to enable remote video confer-
encing. The same model of MacBook Pro
is used throughout, to simplify adminis-
tration and ensure a uniform experience.
Students also have Google Android Nexus
tablets while staff have Samsung S3 and S4
smartphones to also enable a wide degree
of flexibility for mobile connection.
Dobe says that in future the college will look at mobile device
management solutions, not to close off systems, but to facilitate bet-
ter collaboration and interaction. It is part of an open approach to
sharing of content and access.
“One of the things that has always been a real frustration to
faculty, is all of these layers of complex passwords, user names,
segregation of access, it has been a long history, the last couple of
decades, in higher ed. of blocking and filtering and not allowing
people to get access to things,” Dobe said.
“We don’t do that — our access is open, the whole model is to
keep it open, and allow faculty, staff, students and visitors to use
the systems. Where we need to protect our student data we do so,
but we want our users to share Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint
presentations. Higher Education is not about guarding secrets, but
rather about broadening the corpus of human knowledge.”
“REMOTE COLLABORATION IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR FACE-TO-FACE,
IT IS A WAY OF EXTENDING IT, AND CONTINUING THE CONVERSATION
EVEN THOUGH YOU ARE NOT PHYSICALLY IN THE SAME ROOM.”
