How to Master Challenges Posed by Multiple Locations

In 2013, three regional colleges in Scotland joined forces to form a new educational institute, with one administration and IT organization. With three locations and 30,000 students, West College Scotland demonstrates the challenges for IT departments posed by mergers and multiple locations.

With inconsistent IT environments managed independently from each other, reconciling all the different devices and requirements turned out to be quite a daunting task. West College Scotland’s sites are spread widely around the west side of Glasgow. The college’s IT struggled with distances, merging structures, and an IT environment made up mostly of Windows clients—with a couple hundred Mac® computers thrown in. These Mac devices caused more than their share of work. The college already had Microsoft SCCM in place, so the Windows clients were well taken care of, but the tools available for Mac clients were quite limited.

However, nothing more was needed than Parallels® Mac Management for Microsoft® SCCM. A plug-in for SCCM, Parallels Mac Management allowed IT to manage Mac alongside all the Windows systems via a single user interface. “Today, we can use SCCM for managing all our clients to the last one efficiently, so we are saving a really big amount of time, money, and nerves,“ solutions administrator Chris Parker explained.

Today, Parallels Mac Management helps the college’s IT team integrate Mac devices automatically. Chris and his co-workers are able to install new software packages, updates, and scripts from a single centralized user interface. They can also put the installation of selected applications into the hands of users through a self-service portal.

This West College Scotland case study shows how the institution gained control over their PC and Mac clients.

Learn more about how to manage Mac devices like PCs with Parallels Mac Management for Microsoft SCCM in our weekly Webinars. Register now for free!