Helping Pflugerville ISD Ask the Right Questions
The technology group at Pflugerville Independent School District provides computing services to administration personnel, teachers and students spanning 24 buildings in the district. These services include local and wide area networking; email and messaging; Internet; file storage and printing; desktop and server management; and interoperability of industry standard applications. The existing infrastructure in place to deliver these services was the result of many past networking technologies and cabling deployments of various ages and bandwidth.
Pflugerville ISD was hard-pressed to meet the daily operational needs of its technology user groups. There was a lack of system standards due to several technology deployments over time. There was not adequate security for the systems including email and Internet access. The amount of time and human resources needed to maintain the legacy systems across the district was evolving out of reasonable limits and interfered with other administrative responsibilities. The most visible symptom of these problems was the technology group using 2-way radio phones to stay in contact throughout the district in order to respond to infrastructure issues.
To accommodate its rapid growth, Pflugerville ISD needed to completely replace its existing infrastructure platform with a robust turn-key solution that would improve the technology group’s ability to provide reliable, scalable and easily maintainable computing services to the district. This situation required an approach that would ensure that the software and the infrastructure hardware would be adequate and compatible now and for future maintenance, expansions and upgrades.
Catapult provided a unique combination of expertise and knowledge to Pflugerville ISD around technology planning and implementation. Together, the Catapult- team developed and managed a Request for Proposal (RFP) program that assisted Pflugerville ISD in soliciting, evaluating and selecting a robust turn-key infrastructure platform solution.
Catapult established a project plan to encompass the formation of the RFP and the evaluation of the RFP responses. The project started off with interviewing Pflugerville ISD technical staff to gather the district’s infrastructure requirements. Key requirements gathered and analyzed by Catapult included:
Cabling Upgrades
Directory Services
File Storage and Print Services
Email and Messaging
Internet Accessibility and Control
Anti-Virus Protection
Centralized Desktop Management
Server Management
Disaster Recovery
Integration with the Regional Educational Service Center
Ability to operate and integrate systems for food services, transportation and library automation
After requirements were gathered, product research was conducted to understand the solution landscape. Requirements were then formalized in preparation to develop and distribute the RFP document. After the RFP was distributed, the team conducted a bidder’s pre-proposal conference, answered bidder’s questions, evaluated the RFP responses, evaluated bidder’s presentations and made recommendations to Pflugerville ISD on which infrastructure solution to move forward with.
The solution proposed and selected by Pflugerville ISD as a result of the RFP program will address all the issues that existed prior to the project starting. Additionally, Pflugerville ISD will receive the following benefits that were specific to particular areas of operation that impacted the district:
Email standardization and security. The email system will be standardized with the necessary levels of security against viruses and spam.
Systems integration. All systems will be integrated into one network that is scaleable for all planned future expansions and upgrades.
Network Infrastructure. All campuses and offices are connected on the same fiber optic network.
Reduced system administration. System administration will be dramatically simplified reducing the number of staff dedicated to it.
Centralized system maintenance. System maintenance and upgrades will be done in a centralized way that reduces the necessary travel and time to keep all servers maintained across the 24 building district.
Systems compatibility. The system is built to accommodate all current printers and desktops as well as for the future growth that would occur.
Collaboration. Teacher groups and student study groups can now collaborate on-line with all the necessary security, monitoring and accessibility desired.