Optimisation of the Use of IT Infrastructure Resources in an Institution of Higher Education: a Case Study

Virtualisation technologies have become increasingly more popular in the higher education sector in recent years. They will likely have a significant impact on the educational environment in the future. The virtualisation concept give many benefits and opportunities like desktop virtualisation with the help of zero client machines which not only reduces the cost of infrastructure but also introduces green computing by limiting energy consumption. In this paper we will show the potential of virtualisation and its applications in institutions of higher education. The main purpose of the paper is to discuss the issues of IT infrastructure optimisation especially from the economic point of view. It describes also a case study of the deployment of a model solution in the Wroclaw University of Economics which includes over 400 zero client terminals and 500 virtualised systems.