Haryana provides e-education to a million students

When the Haryana government wanted to establish smart computer labs, it faced the daunting task of bringing computing to over a million students and required massive amounts of time and money.

The state comprises 21 districts, which have over a million students studying in 2,622 schools. Haryana's ‘ICT in Education' project-part of the government's mission of transforming Haryana into an IT-driven economy-is aimed at introducing every student to computing to empower them with the skills to thrive in the modern world.

Under this project, the state sought to enhance and enrich the learning process for children in state-run schools and prepare them to find jobs in the future.

Search for a Solution

The Haryana government began the search for a cost-effective and energy efficient solution. After evaluating a number of options, the state government decided to implement virtualization solution in all schools. As a result, NComputing's desktop virtualization solution was selected.

The solution allows organizations to run multiple workstations off a single computer or server, saving 75% on maintenance and up to 90 % on energy usage. The new units consume just 1 watt of electricity, compared to 120- 50 watts by the traditional PCs.

The state deployed 58,500 NComputing workstations across its 2,622 schools. All workstations came pre-loaded with the EduBOSS operating system from the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

EduBOSS, a customized version of BOSS Linux for education (free and open source software), helped in bringing down the overall cost of implementation.

As a result, the school incurred no operating system costs.

 

"At C-DAC, we have to be 100% in alignment with the country's priorities, hence, our commitment to enabling affordable access to computing for education. Along with NComputing, this proved to be an ideal solution to provide affordable computing access," says Jagjit S Bhatia, executive director, C-DAC.

A Lab in Every School

With NComputing and C-DAC, every school has a 22-seat computing lab with NComputing's X550 virtual desktops, one desktop PC, one KVA UPS, and one printer.

Now, every student has the opportunity to gain computer skills and experience an enhanced learning environment. With well-equipped computer labs in its state-run schools, the government of Haryana is equipping the next generation of the state's workforce to be globally competitive.