Saskatchewan Polytechnic Ushers in the Next Generation of Industry Leaders With a New Era of Learning Supported by HPE GreenLake

By: Hewlett Packard Enterprise via Business Wire

February 06, 2024 at 09:00 AM EST

By transforming to state-of-the-art IT solutions, the institution’s students can learn securely

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) today announced an agreement with Saskatchewan Polytechnic to improve student and faculty experience, and modernize its technology environment and deliver enhanced flexibility with the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform.

Sask Polytech, the province’s primary public institution for post-secondary technical education and skills training and its only polytechnic, has been a leader in innovative applied learning for more than 60 years. Sask Polytech offers over 150 hands-on degree, diploma and certificate programs to students at four campus locations across the province of Saskatchewan.

Sask Polytech sought to transform IT deployment and consumption, and selected an agile cloud operating experience so it could engage computing resources quickly and efficiently on a pay-per-use financial model, while having the security and protection of their data on-premises.

“What we needed more than anything from our chosen solution was flexibility to fit within our environment,” said Gwen Bourque, associate vice-president for Information Technology Services at Sask Polytech. “We also needed a strategic plan to upcycle and replace our aged technology at the right moment in time. We’ve been working with HPE in some capacity for more than a decade and chose to work with our partners who know our needs to find efficient solutions.”

With an enrollment of more than 11,000 students, Sask Polytech wanted to utilize a system that would ensure business continuity and a seamless migration of the applications and workloads onto the new environment. In addition, with some courses using graphic-intensive workloads, consistency in high availability was imperative. The HPE GreenLake platform offered an edge-to-cloud experience that would allow for the flexibility the team knew they would need. Additionally, using HPE SimpliVity to transition from Hyper-V to VMWare, the team is already seeing improvements to their VDI workloads for remote education.

“Supporting new training models and heavy computing demands stemming from AI, CAD (Computer-Aided Design), GAM (Generalized Additive Models) and graphic-intensive applications is an area that will continue to grow in demand for countless areas of study, and ensuring high availability and continuity as systems transition over time is imperative to ensure learning, testing, reporting and grading experience no disruptions,” said Andrew Perchaluk, Hybrid-IT Enterprise Architect, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “We are thrilled to bring the best mix of resources to Sask Polytech to meet their needs in an energy-efficient, end-to-end solution that will impact not only students and faculty, but a significant percentage of workers in the province across many vital industries.”

Powerland, an HPE Partner with more than 30 years of expertise in planning, deploying, supporting and managing technology solutions for organizations, worked with Sask Polytech to determine their needs and priorities, and proposed the HPE GreenLake and HPE SimpliVity solutions the school is now using.

“Ultimately, we determined Sask Polytech wanted to provide an improved student and faculty experience through high availability and enhanced security, while decreasing overall costs. HPE GreenLake was the best solution for them,” said Chris MacDonald, Technical Account Manager, Powerland Computers Canada. “And with this solution, we’ve been able to increase distance education opportunities for students, which has become vital for education institutions over the past few years.”

About HPE GreenLake

HPE GreenLake is HPE’s portfolio of cloud and as-a-service solutions, delivering the cloud experience wherever the apps and data live. HPE GreenLake services can run on-premises, at the edge, or in colocation facilities, and connect to public cloud. In its fourth fiscal quarter of 2023, HPE reported Annualized Revenue Run-Rate (ARR) of $1.3 billion, a growth of 39% from the prior-year period in constant currency. HPE GreenLake has 29,000 unique customers and powers more than 3.56 million connected devices worldwide. These organizations benefit from one control plane from which to automate, orchestrate, and run their hybrid cloud strategy. The scalable, pay-as-you-go HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform delivers robust security, compliance, and control, and supports a broad partner ecosystem – including channel partners, distributors, independent software vendors, public cloud providers, service providers, and system integrators. For more information on HPE GreenLake, please visit: https://www.hpe.com/us/en/greenlake.html

About Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE) is the global edge-to-cloud company that helps organizations accelerate outcomes by unlocking value from all of their data, everywhere. Built on decades of reimagining the future and innovating to advance the way people live and work, HPE delivers unique, open, and intelligent technology solutions as a service. With offerings spanning Cloud Services, Compute, High Performance Computing & AI, Intelligent Edge, Software, and Storage, HPE provides a consistent experience across all clouds and edges, helping customers develop new business models, engage in new ways, and increase operational performance. For more information, visit: www.hpe.com.

About Saskatchewan Polytechnic

Saskatchewan Polytechnic serves students through applied learning opportunities on Treaty 4 and Treaty 6 Territories and the homeland of the Métis. Learning takes place at campuses in Moose Jaw, Prince Albert, Regina and Saskatoon and through extensive distance education opportunities. Programs serve every economic and public service sector. As a polytechnic, the organization provides the depth of learning appropriate to employer and student need, including certificate, diploma and degree programs, and apprenticeship training. Saskatchewan Polytechnic engages in applied research, drawing on faculty expertise to support innovation by employers, and providing students the opportunity to develop critical thinking skills.