The landscape of the Irish education sector is changing at a scale and pace like never before. Irish colleges and universities are competing globally for students and academics. Cumulative funding cuts, over a period of years, has dramatically reduced the budget available to maintain, enhance and develop the learning environment through facilities and equipment. Simultaneously, the education sector has had to address the challenges posed by some of the most important data protection changes in the recent years, including GDPR. To ensure sustainability in the future, third level institutions will need to leverage new digital capabilities offered by emerging technologies. Innovations such as virtual classrooms and mobile learning apps, combined with collaborative learning, will help them stay relevant for academics, staff and students. Cloud Computing, a prerequisite of any digital transformation, will offer increased mobility, more detailed data insights, greater process efficiency and optimised costs. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning – including Virtual Reality and chatbots – will offer educational institutions invaluable communication, engagement and differentiation opportunities. Digital Transformtion in Education
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The landscape of the Irish education sector is changing at a scale and pace like never before. Irish colleges and universities are competing globally for students and academics. Cumulative funding cuts, over a period of years, has dramatically reduced the budget available to maintain, enhance and develop the learning environment through facilities and equipment. Simultaneously, the education sector has had to address the challenges posed by some of the most important data protection changes in the recent years, including GDPR.
To ensure sustainability in the future, third level institutions will need to leverage new digital capabilities offered by emerging technologies. Innovations such as virtual classrooms and mobile learning apps, combined with collaborative learning, will help them stay relevant for academics, staff and students. Cloud Computing, a prerequisite of any digital transformation, will offer increased mobility, more detailed data insights, greater process efficiency and optimised costs. Furthermore, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning – including Virtual Reality and chatbots – will offer educational institutions invaluable communication, engagement and differentiation opportunities.
Digital Transformtionin Education
Architects of Change
Logicalis can make complex IT work simply. We have the necessary skills and experience, across the entire IT infrastructure, to support educational institutions in modernising their IT technologies, systems and strategies. Through our unique engagement framework, we assist organisations in developing a foundation for digital transformation that delivers agility in an environment that is adaptable, automated and secure. We enable transformational projects by following a defined process across Datacentre, Hybrid Cloud, Software Defined Networking, Security and Application Services.
Each customer’s journey is unique and we endeavour to identify and implement the right, high-quality solutions for their individual needs. Our focus is on the outcome, as opposed to the process. We ensure that onsite data centres, as well as public and hybrid cloud systems, work together flawlessly. We have proven skills in improving IT performance, efficiency and reliability, while supporting greater collaboration and the flexibility to access the network from anywhere. Reduced Government support has seen budgets tighten and universities become more cost-conscious. Our hybrid cloud solutions will allow universities to remove barriers to digital disruption, shape change and take advantage of consumption-based IT models.
Higher education campuses, especially those with active research and development centres, require hundreds of applications, and the necessary storage required to securely capture, manage and analyse huge volumes of data. Often, the legacy IT infrastructure is not compatible with the new digital innovations required to meet the increasing demands of students and staff for agility and enhanced capabilities. This level of incompatibility puts universities under pressure to modernise their IT infrastructure through upgrades, customisations or replacements to achieve integration.
Architecture, Hybrid Cloud and Digital Ready Infrastructure
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)The delivery and consumption of educational content has been greatly influenced by devices such as smartphones and tablets. Students, many bringing up to four internet-enabled devices on campus, are benefitting from a more engaged and personalised learning experience through technology. Universities have benefitted from a reduction in the financial and administrative burden of providing and maintaining university-owned devices. However, the bring-your-own-device environment also poses challenges for the universities. The IT team must determine how to manage and secure the myriad of devices and apps that are now accessing the network. They need to keep tabs on the devices, ensure that inappropriate websites are not being accessed, keep private data secure and ensure that virtual learning applications are not leaking sensitive data.
Logicalis facilitates dialogues between the different groups that need to be involved and guide everyone through the design and implementation phases. We help customers meet the high expectations of users while achieving significant business benefits.
The 6 key aspects of the Framework:
• Mobile Use Case: identify the desired business and employee outcomes
• Policy: define the rules that make your mobility strategy beneficial and secure
• Network: right-size capacity to ensure a secure, rich and rewarding mobile experience
• Device: make sure your users get the most out of their mobile devices
• Applications: evolve, transition or transform your application delivery
• Services: support your mobile workforce with new cloud and managed services
Our consultative approach delivers all of this and ensures that you achieve measurable outcomes. Most of all, it frees up your entire workforce, from top to bottom, to collaborate more effectively, make faster and better decisions, deliver higher levels of service and achieve greater results.
Schools and colleges need to evaluate their in-campus experience with a view on how it meets the needs of students and staff. New technologies like AI, machine learning and educational software are supporting a move towards self-directed, internet-based learning. Learning models are becoming increasingly personalised and bespoke as technology allows educators to accommodate unique learning styles on a case-by-case basis. Adaptive learning software is replacing textbooks and students are approaching subjects with the support of customised computer programmes that meet their evolving expectations.
IBM Watson was used by Australia’s Deaken University to create a virtual student advisory service that was available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Watson’s virtual advisors fielded more than 30,000 questions in the first trimester, freeing up the actual advisors to handle more advanced issues. Another area where AI will be dominant is in the area of chatbots. Answering questions about homework or helping students through a paperwork process will ease the workload of the people who would normally fulfil these roles.
However, AI and machine learning is only as effective as the data that powers it. For many educational institutions, their data is siloed and difficult to integrate. Moreover, the accuracy and reliability of it is unknown.
AI and Machine Learning
Logicalis helps organisations adopt AI technologies, transform business models and build capability. We enable this through our suite of innovative AI tools and services, developed specifically to meet the challenges of deploying Machine Learning technologies into organisations.
We can help bring thought-leadership and a pragmatic approach for building AI capability in enterprises. We shape strategy to monetise data and knowledge assets, providing technology appraisals and due diligence services. We specialise in application design and implementation to deliver scalable AI applications. Logicalis Ireland will work with you first to fully understand your information needs, as well as evaluate your systems and level of data maturity. We then proceed to design a solution tailored to those unique needs.
Third level institutions are entrusted with vast amounts of personal, financial and health information about their students and staff. Universities usually invest significantly in research and development, and this investment needs to be protected. The volumes of potentially lucrative data that are stored, combined with the demands for easy access and the growing number of internet-enabled devices on campus, makes educational institutions an easy target for hackers, cybercriminals and scammers.
From ransomware attacks that compromise personal data to denial-of-service attacks that take critical systems offline, cyber security threats pose an increasingly common and costly risk to third level institutions.
Digital and Cyber Security
Logicalis delivers end-to-end cyber security services – helping educational institutions to assess, protect, prevent, detect and respond to cyber threats. Campus Networks are plagued by unique security challenges, such as home-grown hackers, network visitors, countless personal devices and decentralised control centres comprised of potentially incompatible products and applications from various vendors. As a trusted provider, Logicalis Ireland excels in helping organisations become more resilient, protect their infrastructure and adopt systems that tackle issues before they arise.
Our security specialists assist customers in qualifying their security posture and provide advice and guidance on maintaining or improving that posture. We offer a wide selection of key security services, from response services to security analytics, and leverage dedicated security professionals with specialist skills to ensure universities are better prepared and protected. On an ongoing basis, we help campuses perform periodic assessments of their data security systems, evaluate their vigilance and make the necessary upgrades to keep data secure.
About LogicalisAt Logicalis, we aren’t just ready for the global digital age, we spent the last 25 years making it happen. Our expertise enables endless possibilities for businesses, helping make your business goals become a reality.
Hybrid IT
The Digital Workplace
The Digital Ready InfrastructureDelivering a user experience which enables true collaboration and digital innovation; whenever, wherever, on any device; requires a next-generation infrastructure to bring it all together.
To make better business decisions, you need to analyse data from a wide range of sources. We generate measurable value for businesses, showing them how to turn data into information, and how to apply it to create business insight. Make faster decisions, based on insight, not just opinion.
Information Insights
In today’s ever changing threat landscape, security needs to be applied across all areas of I.T. Our customers benefit from our end to end services – from managed firewall and encryption technologies, to global threat protection.
Security
The digital workplace is transforming how businesses share information. Today’s businesses are evolving. You no longer need to be at your desk to do your job. The digital workplace is transforming how businesses share information.
Logicalis’ heritage is in Hybrid IT, we are experts in building innovative infrastructure platforms. Integrating data centre infrastructures with cloud services helps our customers modernise the way they deliver services.
Lifecycle ServicesFinally, our Lifecycle Services have developed from 25 years of experience of supporting our clients. We enable organisations to design, build, operate and optimise their services. Our managed services give our customers peace of mind that Logicalis’ highly-skilled experts are proactively monitoring and managing their IT environment, 24x7.
When it comes to deciding how to fund Logicalis solutions and services, we offer a range of options.Our own finance specialists can help build a business case for IT and plan the best way to structure your investment.
Financial Services
Engaging with businesses at board level, our team of advisers act as independent advisors, interpreting business objectives and ensuring that the right information, people, processes and technologies are in place to maximise success.
Advisory Services
To enable digital transformation, IT operations need to adapt to new ways of working. We’re experts in understanding how an organisation is currently managing its IT environment and helping them to streamline processes, policies and procedures.
