NetApp Donates $950,000 to Chico State

When California State University, Chico
began running out of hosting capacity in their systems running SAP
software for the SAP University Alliance program, a consortium of
universities worldwide that use SAP applications to support classroom
instruction, it was time to seek out a new architecture.

Chico State needed to provide better access to more products to more
schools so that a larger number of students could receive the training
in business processes and enterprise systems technology they needed to
prepare them for today’s competitive job market.

With a donation from NetApp, Inc.
worth more than $950,000, Chico State was able to build its hosting
center on a cloud-based storage infrastructure that provided far
capacity and a energy footprint. As a result, the school has been able
to reduce energy costs and space requirements while offering more
students the opportunity to work with the market and technology leader
in business management software.

Under the SAP University Alliance, Chico State and four other
peer-hosting centers around the globe are able to teach their students
accounting and business concepts using real-world technology in the
classroom while providing the same experience for the students at other
University Alliance member universities.

A member of the SAP University Alliance since 1996, Chico State began
sharing its SAP expertise in 2000 by hosting other colleges. As the
demand for hosting services grew, adding incrementally to a jumble of
standalone servers and storage subsystems became increasingly
unmanageable and was beginning to limit the program’s reach. This
required Chico to refresh its data center infrastructure to include a
cloud storage foundation to increase data center efficiencies and
securely store information from a growing number of schools on a single
architecture. To address this challenge, the school partnered with
NetApp to build a storage solution that would house the SAP software and
serve as the backbone for its hosting center operation.

With NetApp’s help, Chico State implemented a FlexPod
architecture that enables multiple SAP products addressing different
academic needs to be rolled out quickly to meet each school’s specific
requirements.

Developed as a cloud infrastructure with NetApp as the storage
foundation, Chico State has become a service provider for more than 140
schools in North and South America that are providing an SAP-enhanced
education to 100,000 students per year.

Leveraging the VCS NetApp plug-in to the VMware control panel, Chico
State can now provision SAP clients for each university customer with
ease while providing enhanced system performance and integrity.

Jim Sager, chair, Department of Business Information Systems, California State University, Chico, said: "As
one of the most well-known and respected learning institutions in the
California State University system, Chico State has to ensure that its
IT infrastructure is up to date to maintain the level of service we
provide to our own students, faculty, and staff and those of the
universities we serve. The SAP University Alliance Program provides a
great opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience with the same
software used in today’s enterprise, better preparing them to enter the
technology workforce. NetApp’s donation helps us reach more students as
the number of those enrolled in the program continues to grow."

Regina Kunkle, VP, State and Local Government and Higher Education, NetApp, said: "Attracting
more students into programs that will give them real experience for the
competitive job market is one of NetApp’s key goals. Better preparing
students for real-world business applications is a great outcome for the
school and for the community. Our technology allows Chico State to cut
costs, reduce energy use, and provide a great benefit to its students."

Additional Details
Since installing the new system, the university has downsized computing
hardware space by 80%, and the maximum power draw of the system means
that there will be at least 60% power reduction and 70% less heat
dissipation compared to the previous infrastructure.

With the new system in place, new university clients can be added
quickly, giving faster turnaround so that more students have access to
training on software that is vital in today’s business world.

Deduplication is also important, because storage demands are growing rapidly.