The Implementation of BYOD at Melbourne Technology University

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is getting very popular these days. Most of the companies are using BYOD for more user satisfaction. SmartCampus.AU is a company that provides consultancy services for implementation and designing systems called “Smart Campus”. We provide consultancy services to universities and colleges with huge companies. Here, our client is a local company with 8000 student which wants to upgrade their IT infrastructure. We have come up with BYOD technologies with virtualization and Sofware as a Service (Saas) solutions to upgrate the IT infrastructure which will be more elaborated in this report.

Melbourne Technology University (MTU)

Melbourne Technology University (MTU) has around 8000 students. It is a local university created through community ordinance. MTU has labs where students perform their tasks and assuming 90% students have their own devices at home. Performing tasks at the computer lab is inconvenient for students as the lab computers are not portable and the students won’t be able to pay immediate attention to a task after reaching home. They have to wait till the next working day to execute any action or viewing any data. Another problem with computers lab are that they expensive and replacing them is costly. Also, there are not enough computers in computer labs to suffice each student which is a limitation.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) Model

The solution to the above-mentioned problems is Bring Your Own Device i.e. BYOD. It is one the trends that is growing fast in information technology. “A bring your own device (BYOD) service is an information technology (IT) policy that permits employees or students to access information and applications from an organization or educational institute using their own mobile devices.” BYOD is profitable as students will now bring their own devices to the university which will reduce the cost of replacing computers in the lab. Students can make use of digital books which will help them to be up to date the latest technology. Teachers can provide instant feedbacks by conducting interactive test to monitor progress. BYOD will help disable students as they can now more comfortably attend lectures online. BYOD will not only help teachers to send email reminder to students but also allow students to make use of google, kindle, ect. “Personally owned devices are typically more advanced compared to those that are employer issued, and most people usually prefer having newer-generation technology.”

While creating a BYOD wireless network, the wireless network design needs to be in place. Coverage, performance and capacity are the major focus areas for BYOD. To provide top support for all of the diverse devices the access points must be evenly spaced out. Security is one of the supporting factors of BYOD. The core of security in BYOD are identity-based security and next-gen firewall. Identity-based security is where you use logic to identify classify the type of traffic and applications, users, validate devices. With next-gen firewalls you can see everything that is being utilized on your network such as business apps, social sharing, peer to peer, etc.

Virtualization

To shrink the functionalities of several devices into one, a natural solution was provided that is virtualization technology. “Virtualization can consolidate different applications or use cases in isolated virtual machines (VMs) with either the same or different operating systems.” Providing high-performance computing for massive and simultaneous user requests with quick responsiveness and flexible management is the focus of traditional server virtualisation solutions. Researchers invented supplementary hardware assistances, such as 2D page table and single-root I/O virtualization technologies to advance performance. Hardened isolation environments for VMs is required by BYOD for example when accessing privileged data companies want their employees to stop connecting to public network. Industries have many virtualization options for operating or hosting multiple applications or operating systems in a single machine. The most common vitalization services are citrix and vmware. Citrix and vmware are virtual machines hosts multiple operating systems into a single machine. These virtualization options can be used in the campus of MTU and provide teachers, students and staffs with virtual machine which they would be able to operate through their personal devices. The cost of deploying virtualization would involve server, storage array, hypervisor, OS, server maintenance, network connectivity, management software and management maintenance. Below are the advantages and disadvantages of virtualization. 

• Eliminates the need to buy more physical devices which less money required in maintaining or updating software.
• Third party providers controls availability which may to availability issues.
• No need to backup files as virtual machines takes up to date backups.
• There is a level of uncertainty as all the servers are not going to work in the virtual machine environment which means a hybrid system to function is required.
• Offers a better up time.
• It creates a security risk

Software as a Service (Saas)

There are three main categories of cloud computing out which is software as a service along with platform as a service and infrastructure as a service. Saas that is software as a service is a model in which a third-party provider hosts application and present them to the customer over internet. “The emergence of cloud computing has led enterprises to change their focus from deploying and supporting in house business applications to “Software as a Service” (SaaS) applications.” The companies gain good advantage in the market economically due to this transition. Saas services scalability, rapid provisioning and elasticity helps in the business development of an enterprise. As per customer needs the characteristics are adapted. A software as a service can be created for MTU where the students, teachers and staff will have their own user authentication and can access the data such a lecture slides, view lectures, books, assessments, fess, etc. The factors that would contribute to the cost of deploying saas in the university includes supporting vendors, additional capacity such as disk space and number of email addresses, ongoing integration, training, backup and recovery,etc. Below are the advantages and disadvantages of Saas.

• Saas application is already configured and installed in cloud which makes it faster to set up and deploy.
• As it is not that popular, hosted platform is not offered by many applications.
• Upgrades are deployed centrally to the host application which reduces the responsibility of it from you.
• Saas runs on a slower speed than server applications or on-premise client which would affect its performance.
• The only thing needed for access saas is internet.
• Access to software or data will be lost if your internet service fails.

Loan a Device

10% of the Students who doesn’t own a personal device can loan the device from MTU. Students and teachers can also loan the device in the case if they their personal device have facing some issue or if stolen. The devices can be loaned for almost a month. Once, the device has been loaned for a month, the user can again apply for another device.

Improvements in the Existing Labs

Greater computing power is delivered by computer lab workstations and additional screen space compared to mobile devices. Powerful processor pc’s are now a must have in computer labs. The first improvement in the existing lab can be in the terms of task and speediness, the computer must be adequate for the job. Secondly, the lab should be renovated with efficient computers for each student. Thirdly, maintenance should be carried out every fortnight. Fourthly, spare computers should be available in each computer lab. If any computer breaks down or behaves unexpectedly, the spare computer can be used by the user. Lastly, a shared location should be available for each class where the students can save their data or activity and access it from any computer of that computer lab.

Conclusion

“The implementation of BYOD at school is a popular discussion at this time. Along with the many auxiliary learning materials on the internet and the ability of students to have their own personal devices drive this.” In our opinion the best option for Melbourne technology university would be virtualization as saas has a lot of security issues. A private cloud, in its own virtualized environment, provides users the best of both worlds. Virtualizations gives more flexibility and control to the users for managing their systems while providing the consumption benefits of cloud computing. One of the benefits of using virtualization is that the resources can be maximised by reducing physical systems. The most value out of our servers will be utilized as multiple applications and systems can be used on the same hardware.

References

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• Gaff B, (2015) BYOD? OMG!.IEEE,48(2),10-11.doi: 10.1109/MC.2015.34
• Dong Y, Mao J, Guan H, Li J, Chen Y. (2015). A VIRTUALIZATION SOLUTION FOR BYOD WITH DYNAMIC PLATFORM CONTEXT SWITCHING.IEEE,3(1),34-43,doi:10.1109/MM.2015.3
• Samaras V, Daskapan S, Ahmad R, Ray S. (2014). An Enterprise Security Architecture for Accessing SaaS Cloud Services with BYOD.IEEE,129-134,doi:10.1109/ATNAC.2014.7020886
• Yeop Y, Othman Z, Abdullah S, Mokhtar U. (2018).Key Factors to Implement BYOD in Schools.IEEE.doi:10.1109/CR.2018.8626864