Apple - Education - Iona College, Page 2

Profiles in Success: Iona College

“We played with Boot Camp for about two or three weeks to make sure we knew how to manage our image — which was really easy with Apple Remote Desktop — then we just jumped in head-first,” Halaris says. “From concept to deployment was about a month. Everything has worked wonderfully to date, and we’re really pleased with our decision.”

Naysayers Now Fans

Steele says some members of the IT department were not entirely enthusiastic about the concept of supporting a different operating system. Those same employees are now some of the Mac’s biggest fans, she reports.

Now that we have the versatility of being able to put both operating systems on one computer, and the pricing is competitive, it doesn’t make sense not to go with Apple.

— Dimitris Halaris, Associate Vice Provost for Information
Technology, Iona College

“When Dimitris and I talked to our team about this initiative, some of them were worried because they’d never touched a Mac before,” recalls Steele. “Within a week, the one person who was the most fearful came into our office, and said, ‘This is really cool; it’s very easy.’ Once everyone had hands-on experience with the Mac they realized the benefits to the college, and they were very happy.”

Two Machines for the Price of One

The IT group had other concerns, Steele adds. Some members suggested that the Mac would prove more costly to purchase and support. But with Boot Camp’s ability to boot between Mac- and Windows-based applications on a single computer, Steele and Halaris say Iona is getting twice the bang for its buck.

Says Steele, “When you consider the hardware prices with Apple’s educational discounts, the bottom line is just fine. We’ve also gained the ability to get two machines for the price of one. Plus, the Mac software options, such as Final Cut Express and Aperture, are far superior in their design for journalism and publishing.”

“In our classes we had projection systems, and a podium with a PC in them,” adds Halaris. “A typical setup ran us about $15,000, with the DVD player, the screen, and everything. In two of our labs we wall-mounted two 24-inch iMacs, which was a huge savings: We don’t need the DVD players or the whole technology podium; professors just swing the iMacs off the wall during use, then put them away when they’re finished. Not only has this been a significant reduction in costs, it’s enabled a huge shift in the use of technology here. We’ve really started to lean toward the Mac to see what else we can do.”

Apple Wins Now, and in the Future

Given the popularity and nonstop usage of the iMac computers in the library, Halaris says requests for additional Macs are flowing in from all over the campus: New iMacs have been installed in the Samuel Rudin Academic Resource Center, with additional systems planned for the Department of Mass Communications. A trio of iMacs is also being used by Iona’s IT department, an additional Mac has been deployed as a server in the student labs, and two more have been installed at Iona’s Center for Learning and Teaching (a faculty support and resource center). In all cases professors can run their Mac-based programs of choice, while still enabling access to the Windows applications they need.

Halaris believes the inclusion of the Intel processors in the new iMac computers is the key to this flexible computing environment. “Now that we have the versatility of being able to put both operating systems on one computer, and the pricing is competitive, it doesn’t make sense not to go with Apple,” observes Halaris.

“The purchase of our first Macs has created a trend here, with professors from every department requesting that we buy more,” adds Steele. “Every year we evaluate what labs need to be replaced, and we do pricing among three vendors. We look for the lowest-priced vendor who can provide the greatest solution. Clearly, Apple has won that contest fair and square this time around. And in the future, I suspect that Apple will continue to win.”