Hello,

I am an I.T. Manager of a district school board attempting to redefine I.T. Infrastructure for our classrooms, students and teachers over the next 5 years.   As time progresses, I see that students are coming to school equipped with their personal computer equipment and I am progressively being charged with developing mechanisms for delivering curriculum and I.T. resources & applications in a customized fashion  based on course selection, teacher and locations.   Vitalization of servers is a no brainer - we have already installed ESX into every location.  I already know that I cannot muster the resources to run every application for 12,000 students on some sort of centralized servers.  This leads me into the VMWARE ACE environment along with some sort of provisioning of applications via Thinapp.  I am also looking at provisioning and "lending" software by integrating software licensing into thinapp packages (for example http://www.softwarekey.com).   Are there any other educational institutions looking at the above technology as provisioning solutions? I think this may allow students to take their computing environment home with them - important for distance and e-learning, especially in a manner that does not require internet access (we live in an area where high speed internet is not universally available).    Do you have some best practices, tips or solutions to share?

Thanks,

Doug Coleman