Virtual Computing: A New Strategy for a New Era

Students and faculty at all educational levels want anywhere, anytime access to a leading-edge, resource-rich computing, learning, and research environment–and CIOs and IT professionals want this visionary environment to be affordable, scalable, usable, and supportable. Responding to these competing needs and constraints, North Carolina State University has developed and implemented a next-generation computing strategy and architecture for the universal delivery of computing services. This environment is now in campus-wide production status. The architecture is highly uniform, extensible, scalable, malleable, sustainable, and supportable. Collectively, these characteristics combine to produce an innovative advancement with the potential to radically transform the access, functionality, and economic benchmarks for the current university computing paradigm.