Bacone College Stays Cutting Edge With OpenOffice.org
By: Rob Reilly
Thursday, March 11, 2004 11:28:09 AM EST
URL: http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/5284/1/
Sound Strategy
After 124 years of continuous operation in Oklahoma, Bacone College must know how to do a few things right, especially when it comes to making strategic decisions for the future.
It should then come as no surprise that the college would choose to standardize on OpenOffice.org for its writing, spreadsheet, and presentation needs.
Recently, the school knew it was time to upgrade and expand their desktop IT resources, but had the usual issues of funding, aging equipment, and resistance to change. Using Open Source Software and several innovative implementation techniques, the school was able to upgrade their IT infrastructure and make all faculty, staff, and student documents compatible.
It wasn't all that complicated. This is the story of how they did it.
Taking Stock
"Lots of pressure financially," said Dr. Robert Duncan, Bacone's president when asked why the school wanted to standardize. Duncan was faced with providing ever-expanding computing resources for his students, faculty, and staff, with a very modest budget to spend.
Many of the school's computers were aging 133 MHz Pentium PCs running Windows 98 and Word 97. Bacone's mission of "stewardship," otherwise known as "getting the maximum benefit from all existing resources and deploying it for the greater good of the community," dictated that they try to recycle as much hardware as possible. The school also had to work with all the students' personal computer hardware. Duncan didn't see any merit in buying new versions of Windows and Microsoft Office, knowing that it wouldn't run very well, if at all, on the old hardware. He knew that any new hardware purchased, would have to work with the old hardware, as well.
The biggest problem Duncan faced was having multiple document formats across multiple platforms. Bacone's IT staff consisted of two MS Certified specialists that were hard pressed to handle user document compatibility problems while keeping networks and servers running. Duncan knew that if documents were standardized across all desktop platforms at Bacone, the IT staff would be able to stop putting out the endless document compatibility fires.
Duncan had an idea that Open Source software might provide a practical, economic computing value across multiple platforms, much like Bacone's charter of providing practical, economic educational value across the very diverse student body, including a substantial number of Native Americans. But, he hadn't converted his own machine over to Open Source... yet.
The first order of business was to take stock of the current Information Technology infrastructure and look at the areas that would need attention. Duncan, rounded up his staff IT specialists, some students, and his son Rob, who was an undergrad in the school of Business Management. Together the team evaluated the current systems.
These included:
- 46 computer lab machines
- 30 faculty computers
- 15 Athletic department computers
- 15 Library computers
Students and faculty also had personal machines running various forms of Microsoft and other operating systems.
The team looked at the processes that might be affected by tweaking the IT infrastructure, too. Questions came up about how new software would be deployed, how users could be trained and how the school might handle the idea of "change" itself. While many people on campus thought upgrading the systems was a good idea, many others were skeptical, and everyone was a little reluctant to go forward.
Duncan and company decided that buying newer hardware for the computer lab and library made the most practical sense. They wanted to create a public cyber cafe for students, so they decided that the lab machines could be recycled for that purpose, since researching on the web didn't really take ultra performance machines. To add flexibility in the library, they decided that 15 new laptops would fill the bill. Operating systems and office suites were still, as yet, undetermined.
The school had also purchased and refurbished an old Holiday Inn motel close to the campus for use as a student dorm. The dorm needed to be connected for the planned 40 to 60 students, so it was determined that wireless would be the most practical route. Nine wireless access points and some cabling would be added to the new hardware list.
With the general hardware configuration and expansion proposed, attention turned to the problem of what software to run on the newly revamped systems. If the project was to be a success, a decision had to be made.
Pulling a Fast One
As it turned out, the younger Duncan had a few tricks up his sleeve. He had some experience with OpenOffice.org and Linux and decided to prove that Open Source not only worked, but would not be that hard to implement.
One day while Dr. Duncan wasn't looking, Rob loaded OpenOffice.org on his father's Windows laptop and set it up so that it started when MS Word was selected.
The inevitable "What's on my laptop?" question soon came over the phone.
But by then it was too late--the elder Duncan was off on a road trip to take care of some school business. He had no other choice but to see how OpenOffice.org performed first hand.
It performed so well, Duncan picked it up without a hitch. He then knew that he had his new package of office suite applications.
Educational faculty and staff are always more apt to make a change if they have a roadmap to follow during the transition. That roadmap came in the form of a couple of books from Hentzenwerke Publishing.
"OooSwitch: 501 Things You Wanted To Know About Switching to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft Office" was a 300-plus page book that literally discussed everything that a staffer could ever want to know about OpenOffice.org.
"Linux Transfer For Windows Network Admins: A road-map for building a Linux file and print server" covered setting up Windows and Linux based desktops to work with Linux file and print servers. The book also showed how to replace a Windows domain controller with a Linux server.
While the books looked like the perfect answer to Bacone's textbook needs, buying copies for every student, faculty, and staff member on campus wasn't in the budget. Young Duncan, the Business Management student, used some of his schooling to work out a licensing deal with Hentzenwerke and put electronic copies on one of Bacone's web servers. The complete texts could then be accessed by anyone on the campus, via the web.
"Adding the textbooks made the difference with acceptance by the staff, faculty and students," Rob Duncan said.
With the problem of selling upper management and then educating the school on OpenOffice.org behind them, the team then turned its attention to the actual implementation of new software and machines.
Rounding Out The Upgrade
Most of the rest of the transition to the new plan went off without too much trouble.
The new machines were phased in over time, starting with the Library, then the Computing lab and finally the Cyber Cafe.
Interestingly, the Bacone team decided to stick with Windows 98 as their operating system platform. A program called 98Micro was used to strip out all un-needed fluff in Windows 98 and make the program as lean as possible. Windows 98 had worked for Bacone, it just needed to be fast and reliable on the old hardware. OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other Open Source software were also loaded on the school's machines.
IBM Thinkpads were chosen for the Library and new Dell desktops were purchased for the Computer lab. Bacone was able to work out some pretty healthy discounts with Dell because of their educational institution status.
Although the "trial" students on the library machines didn't really notice much difference between using OpenOffice.org and MS Office, some of the faculty and staff resisted initial use of the Open Source packages.
The difficulty was minimized by burning CDs of OpenOffice.org to be taken home and tried out on personal machines. Most of the doubt turned out to be the belief that moving over to the new applications "couldn't" be that simple or compatible. Several of the people that installed OpenOffice.org at home, later wholeheartedly jumped on the bandwagon and even shared the program with family members.
As the Computer lab PCs were moved into the newly built Cyber Cafe, Morphix Linux on CD was used to provide OpenOffice.org access and Mozilla for web surfing. Running Linux from CDs minimized maintenance and made it easy to stay standard on the Cyber Cafe machines.
Overall, Dr. Duncan said that the work to improve his school's IT program wasn't all that difficult.
We've seen the techniques that were used by Bacone College successfully accomplish a rollout of new hardware and more standardized software. No case study would be complete without a summary of the steps that were take to reach the goal.
The Bacone team:
- Identified the need to standardize office productivity software across the campus.
- Inventoried the school's IT resources.
- Evaluated options for hardware and software
- Persuaded personnel to trial the new changes in infrastructure.
- Set up a partnership to obtain the textbooks needed to support the project.
- Rolled out the implementation in phases.
- Eventually, flipped the switch and started using the new hardware and software.
Rob Duncan summed it up when he said that it was "Not a complicated implementation."
Bacone has since enjoyed the fruits of its labor with the upgrade of its IT infrastructure.
They were able to transfer documents between machines and across groups without any compatibility issues. They maximized their investment by extending the life of existing hardware, while minimizing the outlay of cash for new equipment. They were able to provide good support via online manuals. And, finally, the school created a Cyber Cafe that was easy to maintain and stable.
No doubt, Bacone College will continue to provide outstanding education value for it's students, for a long time to come.
Rob Reilly is a freelance technology writer, speaker and consultant whose articles appear in LinuxToday.com, Linux Journal Magazine, NewsForge.com and PC Update magazine. He offers professional writing and seminar services on Linux desktop applications, portable computing and presentation technology. He's always interested in covering cool Linux stories. Send him a note or visit his web site at http://home.earthlink.net/~robreilly.