McLean, VA - July 8, 2019: eLumin announced today Student Pay allowing students to pay directly for their cloud resources, including virtual desktops and application services, used in their coursework. Much like a technology or lab fee, students are able to purchase access to the resources they need for a particular course or a number of courses they're enrolled. This payment model makes consistent dynamic learning environments available to all students regardless of their location or device, for the price of a textbook. 

"Rolling out Student Pay is a win for both the student and the university. Student Pay provides universities the gateway for provisioning high-performance technology to their students for a fraction of the cost of building out expensive computer labs or providing students with hardware packages that need consistent updating and maintenance," said Greg M. Smith, eLumin's President. Smith continued, "Our goal is to provide all students with the same level of access to the technology they need to be successful in completing their coursework. No longer will department budget restrictions or individual student financial status determine who has access to robust computing resources. Inclusive in the price of their semester lab fee is everything needed for a student to be successful in the learning."

How it works: When a student accesses their lab resources for the first time, if they haven't paid their lab fee, they will be presented with a form to complete payment, once completed they will get an email indicating that their desktop or applications are ready to use. The students will then have access to these resources for the duration of the provisioned period tied to their course/s. 

Student Pay is just one of several methods available to procure eLumin services like Classroom Virtual Desktop, Sandbox, and Sandbox Builder. Through a partnership with Carahsoft, colleges and universities are able to subscribe to eLumin services and leverage existing contracts like NASPO ValuePoint or state specific contracts like the Illinois Learning Technology Purchase Program. 

In addition, Classroom Virtual Desktop and Open Access Lab products are available for purchase in the AWS Marketplace. This allows colleges and universities that are AWS customers to purchase subscriptions for eLumin's platform easily and quickly.

About eLumin

eLumin was founded on the belief that technology should never stand in the way of student learning. We deliver cloud-based solutions for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and voice-enabled technologies to increase engagement on campus and support enhance learning outcomes. To learn more about eLumin, please visit elumin.co.

Let's face it, end-user computing can be complicated. The whole idea of selecting and deploying hardware every year, procuring the equipment, developing and managing images, managing the assets, and then providing technical support for the next three to four years on that device is daunting. There is an easier way, a modern approach to end-user computing, but as with all things technology it comes with its own language and set of acronyms. eLumin is dedicated to making technology easy so that educators can focus on the learning rather than the tech support. In that light, let's break down the alphabet soup that is modern end user computing. 

People throw around terms like VDI, DaaS, Thin Client, Zero Client, Web Client, but what does it all mean and how does it make sense in your environment? Let's start with the difference between VDI and DaaS.

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) is the legacy approach for desktop virtualization. VDI takes a lot of hardware and complicated software, installs it in your basement data center and provides services to your campus users. The idea of VDI is great, but there are challenges around cost, scalability, and performance. 

Desktop as a Service (DaaS) is a modern and flexible approach for providing virtual desktop environments to your campus. DaaS leverages the power of a public cloud provider, like Amazon Web Services (AWS), allowing you to economically and quickly scale services across your campus freeing up resources and staff to focus on adding value beyond commodity computing services. A real world example of this quick seamless scalability came in a project I was working on to provide virtual desktops inside a classroom environment for a large university. The original scope of the project was to deploy services for 400 students. Two days before go live, I received a request from the academic leadership to instead deploy the platform to over 3,200 students. With DaaS, we were able to scale and deploy on the go live date with no problem.

Now that we have established the flexibility and scalability of DaaS, let's look at how we access the platform. We hear terms thrown around like Thin Client, Zero Client, Web Client, and mobile access, but how do we make sense of it all and what is the best approach for your campus? Thin Clients allow you to repurpose the existing hardware you have in computer labs and across campus, increasing their usable life and allowing you to better leverage that capital investment. eLumin provides the glue to bring all of this together and provides the flexibility to mix and match the right connection methods for your needs. 

Zero Client devices are firmware based terminals with a singular purpose of connecting you to your virtualized desktop environment. You can leverage your existing Zero Client investment with the more modern DaaS approach with a few technical caveats, you must be using a Zero Client that supports the Teradici PCoIP (ideally version 6.x or higher). 

Thin Clients are very lightweight devices that run on highly optimized versions of secured operating systems and provide a more modern approach. For example, IGEL OS, is a next generation operating system specifically designed to convert any device to connect to your DaaS deployment. For those who don't have existing hardware to convert, IGEL also has a series of endpoints running IGEL OS, including a unique offering called UD Pocket - a thin client on a USB key. IGEL's Universal Management Suite allows thin clients to be easily managed and the configurations centrally deployed so that you never have to touch an endpoint again. 

Additional Clients can be used to interact with the Amazon Web Services DaaS offering called WorkSpaces. Not only does WorkSpaces support modern Thin Clients (like the IGEL series) and Zero Clients, but it also supports a web client and several installable clients on macOS, iPad, Windows, Android, Fire Tablet, and Chromebooks. This diversity of clients allows your students, faculty, and staff to access the services they need, when, where, and how they want to work. 

Now that you understand the differences between legacy VDI and the modern scalable approach of DaaS, and have an introduction to the power of IGEL OS and Endpoints, we would like to invite you to join us on June 4, 2019 at 2pm EDT for a co-hosted Webinar with AWS, IGEL, and eLumin. We will be talking about modern end user computing and how eLumin brings the powers of AWS and IGEL together to provide a seamless experience for your students, faculty, and staff. 

About Amazon Web Services

In 2006, Amazon Web Services (AWS) began offering IT infrastructure services to businesses in the form of web services -- now commonly known as cloud computing. One of the key benefits of cloud computing is the opportunity to replace up-front capital infrastructure expenses with low variable costs that scale with your business. With the Cloud, businesses no longer need to plan for and procure servers and other IT infrastructure weeks or months in advance. Instead, they can instantly spin up hundreds or thousands of servers in minutes and deliver results faster.

About IGEL
IGEL is the world leader in providing software-defined endpoint optimization and control solutions for cloud and virtualized workspaces. The company’s world-leading software products include IGEL OS™, IGEL UD Pocket™ (UDP) and Universal Management Suite™ (UMS). These solutions comprise a more secure, manageable and cost-effective endpoint management and control platform across nearly any x86 device. Easily acquired via just two feature-rich software offerings, — Workspace Edition and Enterprise Management Pack — IGEL software presents outstanding value per investment.

About eLumin

eLumin was founded on the belief that technology should never stand in the way of student learning. We deliver cloud-based solutions for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and voice-enabled technologies to increase engagement on campus and support enhance learning outcomes. To learn more about eLumin, please visit elumin.co.