Approaches to ed tech cost savings
eSchoolNews is carrying a report on a new set of findings from The Hayes Connection, drawing attention to ballooning tech support costs and possible solutions. While the Hayes research is hosted on the Parallels software website and advocates the use of Parallels as a cost-cutting measure, the report contains several useful strategies outside of a proprietary virtualization approach.
Most notably, the report describes the tendency to simply cut professional development and training, without looking at infrastructure costs first. Professional development allows teachers to use the technology effectively and isn't the easy fix it might appear to be. Rather, excess staffing required to support a variety of new and aging platforms can often be reduced by an initial investment in updated hardware and software. Similarly, IT automation software (used for managing disk images, software installs, etc.), can reduce the need for dedicated staff.
Finally, while the report does not advocate standardizing to one operating system, it does encourage districts to look at virtualization, allowing multiple operating systems to run on a single piece of hardware. The report, of course, cites Parallels in Intel-based Macs (actually a very nice solution if your district has a significant investment in the Macintosh platform), but the same strategy could be applied to Windows- or Linux-based virtualization (and thus realizing the economies of scale inherent in standardizing to a single hardware platform, whether Mac, Wintel, or otherwise).