Skyline West High School Deploys ClearCube PC Blades In Brand New Campus Facility High School Increases Security and Achieves Centralized Management with New System Austin, Texas and Peoria, Arizona - March 31, 2005 - ClearCube Technology, the market leader and pioneer in PC Blade computing, today announced that Skyline West High School, based outside of Phoenix, Arizona, has deployed the ClearCube PC Blade solution in its flagship school. The five-year-old public charter school is using the PC Blades in its new "home base" facility, the largest of its three buildings in the city-wide campus that comprises two high schools and one junior high. The new high school was built in August of 2004 and serves 300 students in grades 9 - 12. "Our goal with the PC Blade solution was to cut down on vandalism, since that had been a major expense for us with traditional PCs, and the ClearCube solution has completely eliminated that problem," explained Brian Shipman, Skyline West principal. "Since working with ClearCube we've discovered many benefits above and beyond physical security, including data security, space savings, noise reduction, and being able to easily manage the systems from a centralized point. This all adds up to a better learning environment for our students." The PC Blades are deployed in the high school's central student computer lab and are used for classes in Microsoft Office XP, HTML / web page creation, Adobe Photoshop and Career Prep/Life Skills. "With so many young users, our traditional PCs fell victim to vandalism. In one year, I would spend several thousand dollars in replacement parts on them," said Brandon Ayers, technical support director at Skyline. "We still have some at the high school along with the ClearCube PC Blades, and three of the PCs have already been vandalized, but the PC Blades haven't been touched. There are no floppy drives that can wear out, break, or tempt students to stick something in them. Plus, the i/ports are useless on their own, so that has deterred theft." Increased data security has been another major benefit of the ClearCube PC Blades: "Content filtering and virus protection is much more efficient and effective," explained Ayers. "The lack of floppy disks goes a long way toward virus prevention. In addition, because we have numerous PC stations connected to just five blades, I technically only scan and filter five blades, but I'm protecting many more workstations." The ClearCube management software has made a tremendous difference for the school's technical staff. The team can deploy and make changes to the PC Blades from a centralized point with just a "mouse click," rather than go from hard drive to hard drive and physically plug and unplug the PCs. The i/ports make it easier in the long run to manage the whole system, explained Ayers: "For example, if there is a corrupted system file in Windows, you can re-set it back to defaults on the i/ports and you're good to go. You're not dealing with an unmanageable number of individual hard drives." The Skyline team evaluated the use of traditional PCs as well as thin clients and X Terminals, but ultimately decided that the PC Blades were the best investment. According to Ayers, "There is really no comparison in terms of price and performance. The other technologies we evaluated are much older, and after serious research the only ones that could compete with desktops were the ClearCube PC Blades. And we get so much more from them in the way of security and management features." "The PC Blades have been a great solution for us and we're only about halfway through what we think we can do with the technology," concluded Principal Shipman. "The technology will help us easily grow the system and set up new PC Blades in other classrooms. We have plans eventually to incorporate the PC Blade system into a more robust scheme, tied into our whole campus through a virtual private network." About ClearCube Technology For more information, visit www.clearcube.com .
ClearCube Press Contacts: Maureen Robusto
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