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California State University Chancellor's Office Goes Virtual With Softricity SoftGrid

Posted on: Monday, 10 October 2005, 09:00 CDT

Chancellor's Office To Accelerate Application Management, Make IT Highly Responsive to User Needs

Softricity(R) today announced that the California State University (CSU) Office of the Chancellor, which oversees the country's largest higher education system, has selected Softricity's SoftGrid(R) virtualization platform to simplify and expedite application management, and improve IT responsiveness to end users in the CSU Chancellor's Office.

The Chancellor's Office commitment to excellence drove its decision to implement SoftGrid, the industry's first Windows application virtualization solution. The Chancellor's Office, which supports 75 applications for 600 desktops, wanted a more efficient, reliable way to deploy and manage the applications, and support its diverse base of end users.

"We were spending valuable time dealing with the challenges inherent in managing so many applications and users, and we needed a more innovative way to do this so we could concentrate our efforts on other services," said Laura Guillory, Director of Desktop Services from the CSU Chancellor's Office. "SoftGrid's unique virtualization and centralization technologies eliminate application management complexities and will help us provide even better IT service."

The CSU Chancellor's Office was investigating ways to streamline desktop application deployment and minimize the number of local administrators to improve desktop security. While exploring ways to address these needs, they evaluated SoftGrid. During testing, SoftGrid enabled the Chancellor's Office to reduce deployment time for applications such as PhotoShop from several days to just a few hours and helped them to reduce the number of local administrators.

SoftGrid transforms Windows applications from products that must be installed and managed locally into virtual services that are centrally managed and deployed on-demand--without any recoding--to any desktop, server or laptop. SoftGrid's patented application virtualization technology enables applications to run in a protected "sandbox" environment without installation or alteration to the host operating system. This eliminates the time-consuming regression testing typically needed prior to deployment of new applications, upgrades and patches, accelerating the entire management process.

The CSU Chancellor's Office, which is in the process of migrating its infrastructure to SoftGrid, expects to realize significant benefits:

-- Eliminate application conflicts: With SoftGrid, any application can run alongside any other, totally resolving application compatibility issues. For example, the Chancellor's Office uses a wide assortment of web development and desktop publishing applications. Often these applications conflicted with one another. SoftGrid resolved this issue by virtualizing the registries, allowing these applications to co-exist on the same system.

-- Simplify, speed application deployment: Not only does SoftGrid greatly reduce the time needed to package applications, by enabling IT to centrally administer application rights to individuals and/or groups via Active Directory, it makes deployment as easy as a click of the mouse.

"The CSU is widely regarded for its dedication to high quality, affordable education," said Harry Ruda, CEO, Softricity. "We're pleased they selected SoftGrid to help their operations run reliably and cost-effectively, and to provide the IT service levels needed to best support their faculty, students and staff."

About Softricity:

Softricity helps enterprises simplify and accelerate software management with SoftGrid, the industry's first application virtualization platform. The award-winning SoftGrid utility computing solution transforms applications from products that must be installed locally into virtual services that are centrally managed and deployed on-demand to any Windows desktop, laptop and Terminal Services/Citrix MetaFrame Presentation server. By eliminating application conflicts and regression testing, and increasing change management responsiveness, SoftGrid expedites deployment, upgrades, patches and terminations. Global 2000 companies such as Mayo Clinic, Prudential, AIG, and Raytheon use SoftGrid to save tremendous time and money, enhance IT service quality, and transform into more dynamic businesses. Softricity has a multiyear Strategic Alliance with Microsoft Corporation and is Gold Certified Partner. Softricity is also a partner of Citrix, HP and VMware. More information can be found at http://www.softricity.com.

About The California State University:

The California State University is the largest system of senior higher education in the country, with 23 campuses, more than 400,000 students and 42,000 faculty and staff. Since the system was created in 1961, it has awarded about 2 million degrees, about 82,000 annually. The CSU is renowned for the quality of its teaching and for the job-ready graduates it produces. Its mission is to provide high-quality, affordable education to meet the ever-changing needs of the people of California. With its commitment to excellence, diversity and innovation, the CSU is the university system that is working for California. See www.calstate.edu.

Source: Business Wire

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