The Wright Stuff: an interview with King's College London IT director Gareth Wright

King's College IT director Gareth Wright tells Computing how new Dell desktops, Windows 10 and flexible tech support services aid university students and staff

Consistently ranked as one of the top universities in the world and with a campus spread across the heart of the UK's vibrant capital, it's not surprising that King's College London attracts over 26,000 students every single year.

Add to that the institution's 7,000 academic and administrative staff and you get some idea of the sheer scale of the IT estate that spans its various departments, libraries and computer laboratories.

It's the responsibility of Gareth Wright, IT director of King's College London, and his team of over 100 staff to ensure the best IT services, applications and platforms are available to both students and staff, whenever and wherever they're required.

"King's has five main campus locations in central London and as part of the services we provide to students we have around 200 rooms in total that have computer devices inside them, where students can access learning materials and applications," he says.

He tells Computing about his recent efforts to modernise and rationalise the university's hardware and software, which were becoming difficult to manage because of their age and variety.

"There wasn't a consistent operating environment across the five campus sites; we had a mixture of Windows 7 and Windows XP devices and we also didn't have a standard model of equipment in use," Wright explains.

"Consequently, we had quite a reactive environment where if kit failed, we had to take different approaches to [fixing it]."

Wright therefore decided to "introduce a standard operating environment so we had a standard manufacturer, model of device and package of applications available to all students", he says.

The university put together a framework for tender that went out to "the usual suspects you'd expect to see" in a process that involved benchmarking and testing equipment from a variety of vendors.

Dell was selected as the university's hardware supplier, leading to the deployment of 1,700 Dell OptiPlex 9030 All-in-One desktop PCs, which feature touchscreen capabilities that received "very positive feedback" from users, according to Wright.

He was also impressed by the PCs' performance and compact design, which enabled the university to save space and power by replacing a host of dual-screen desktops.

Indeed, the installation of the Dell computers saw an "immediate" cost reduction of £32,000 per year in power consumption alone, an annual saving Wright now expects to almost double to £62,000.

The new PCs are also much easier to support and maintain, Wright says, with staff no longer required to carry out laborious manual installations.

"We've now got an approach to managing the student computer rooms in a single environment. All the applications are packaged so if someone requests an application we're able to make it available across the devices," Wright says.

The systems were installed with Dells help during the relatively quiet summer months when most students are away, and Wright was impressed with how smoothly it went.

"We utilised Dell's deployment services during the rollout, which allowed us to roll out a large number of devices in a short amount of time.

"We've got a finite amount of time over the summer when the student computer rooms aren't heavily utilised and we worked hand-in-hand with Dell to deploy 1,700 devices in a short period of time. It worked really well for us," he says.

Windows 10 upgrade

The Dell devices currently run Windows 8.1, but the university is already gearing up for an upgrade to Windows 10, which Wright is trialling, saying so far he's been impressed by it.

"We plan to upgrade next year," he says.

King's College London provides hot-desking areas for students who wish to use their own laptops. In addition to that, the university has set up IT "TechBars" to help students with any hardware or software problems with their kit.

"From September of this year we're piloting a kind of walk-in IT support service for students and staff in the main library and the Waterloo and Guy's campuses," Wright says.

"If they have a hardware failure they can arrange for it to be fixed," he continues. "It's also Apple accredited, so if they have Macs they can get them repaired at university."

TechBars will sit alongside more traditional IT services, Wright tells Computing.

"We are also providing customer-facing IT support within our libraries, and both of these services are in addition to the IT service desk, which provides support via telephone, email and self-service."

Students don't just want to use their own laptops, they want to connect their smartphones and tablets to the university's wireless network too, and expect to get a signal wherever they happen to be.

‘Three IP addresses per person'

"The demand for services like Wi-Fi has gone through the roof. We're averaging at the start of term in excess of 50,000 new devices connecting to the network, and over the summer we've upgraded our wireless infrastructure to support double that in future," Wright says. "You're almost looking at three IP addresses per person as a minimum now."

To meet this growing use of mobile devices, King's College London has deployed ChargeBox stations for charging smartphones and tablets across the campus. The service is free, takes about 30 minutes for a full charge, and supports all major smartphones and tablets.

"Based on student feedback, they wanted more plug sockets and the ability to charge their devices. So we've deployed 24 of the latest ChargeBoxes across the campus and we're the first university to do so in UK," says Wright.

Looking to the future, Wright predicts wearable technology will be "the next big thing we're going to have to support and work with".

"It's a really interesting area and we've seen recent releases by Microsoft and the Apple Watch. I think wearable technology is going to become part of everyday life before long."

Ultimately, Wright sees his role as ensuring the university is as technologically advanced as possible in order to provide the best experience to its students.

"We're really trying to raise the bar in terms of the services we provide to students; ChargeBox, the TechBars, the relationship with Dell with the rollout, it's all about enhancing the student experience and preparing them for their careers," Wright says.