One of Ontario’s largest school boards has embarked on a three-year project that will allow it to centrally manage its amalgamated IT network, increase reliability and minimize maintenance costs and travel time. Thames Valley School District, which includes 185 schools in the London, Ont., area,
is working with Microsoft Canada Co. technology partner Promethean Systems Consultants Inc. to develop a solution to consolidate its disparate systems on the Microsoft Windows Server System 2003 platform. Promethean is also working with Thames Valley to help centralize its IT management at the board’s head office using Active Directory, Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Systems Management Server 2003. Active Directory lets the IT team manage thousands of staff and student user identities from a single directory. Thames Valley has completed four implementations, and hopes to do about 60 a year over the next three years at an estimated cost of $25,000 per elementary and $75,00 per secondary school.