Nutanix announced that the company is helping educational institutions globally respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. Klein Independent School District (KISD), Millard Public Schools, and Loudoun County Public Schools, three school systems in the U.S. with more than 163,000 students combined, are examples of the many educational institutions that have selected Nutanix to provide their students, faculty and staff the tools they need to support distance learning. Due to tightening budgets, many educational institutions have not had the resources to modernize their IT operations, leaving them to scramble to find the right solution when the pandemic hit. The recently released annual Enterprise Cloud Index shows that nearly half (47%) of education respondents cited providing “adequate communications channels among employees, customers, and clients” as a top challenge, much higher than the global average. However, the education sector is making transformation a focus, with more respondents than average identifying digital transformation (54%) as a priority as a result of COVID. To support educational institutions navigate the challenges of digital transformation and distance learning, Nutanix offers multiple solutions that can help schools, colleges and universities provide students access to applications and resources quickly, efficiently and securely. Cloud-Delivered Flexibility with Desktop as a Service: Already a Nutanix customer prior to COVID-19, the Klein Independent School District, located in Harris County Texas and comprising 48 schools including primary and secondary education, was able to implement Nutanix Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solution, Xi Frame, in just a couple of days to enable distance learning across the district. The district’s GPU-intensive Career & Technical Education (CTE) applications are now accessible to all students working remotely on their district-issued laptops. DaaS has given KISD the speed, flexibility and power needed to provide remote access to the district’s applications their students need and most importantly, it provides KISD with a flexible solution that can easily adapt to the district’s changing needs as the pandemic evolves. Desktop-as-a-Service Enables Students to Access Resource-Intensive Applications from Anywhere: Loudoun County Public Schools was already a Nutanix customer prior to COVID-19. Located in Northern Virginia, LCPS serves approximately 86,000 students with over 12,000 staff members. Initially, LCPS implemented DaaS to enable students to run resource intensive applications, which would previously require the majority of class time to fully load. With Frame already implemented for specific curriculums, it was a seamless process to expand their DaaS deployment when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, allowing students to access their applications from anywhere. A Modern IT Infrastructure to Support the Future of Education: When the pandemic hit, Millard Public Schools, a school district in Omaha, Nebraska serving more than 24,000 students from Kindergarten to High School, was in the middle of a district-wide process to upgrade their IT infrastructure to support distance learning, simplify IT operations, and strengthen their business continuity plan. In close partnership with Nutanix, Millard was able to deploy their new IT environments remotely to continue operations amid the pandemic. As a public school district, it was important for Millard to carefully weigh costs along with operational efficiencies and educational outcomes. Nutanix allows the district to create a consistent and outstanding educational experience for students while providing ways to maximize investment. For example, instead of operating dedicated labs and buying hundreds of high-end workstations for students learning CAD, they now run Citrix VDIs on low-end laptops. Students can remotely access a fully functional high-powered graphics powerhouse even in a remote school environment.