Strategy Implementation
CHALLENGE
In the mid-1980s, the management of a nationwide, post secondary business school
group realized that they needed to include desktop computer skills in their curriculum in order
to provide their students with the best future employment opportunities. At that time, personal
computers and business software was still in its infancy and there were no other proprietary
school groups offering such a line of training.
SERVICE
Working with other consultants who set the instructional parameters for the course
work, MCS was assigned the responsibility for developing the hands-on component of the
training. Reviewing all technology then available, MCS determined that the new capability of
"Local Area Networks (LANs)" offered the greatest potential although at the time LAN software
was still in a fairly rudimentary form and none of the application training software had yet been
developed in network form. MCS developed, installed and demonstrated a prototype of a
LAN-based computer lab featuring diskless booting and automatic log-in, menu driven
application selection (pre-Windows), printer resource balancing, and security from execution of
unauthorized software. MCS was then contracted to perform turn-key installation, support,
maintenance and faculty training of these LAN-based computer labs in 18 schools nation
wide.
RESULTS
The school group was able to present itself on the leading edge of business computer
education as the first schools to offer networked computer labs. Over the next 5 years, until
the advent of Windows, over 150 instructors and 5,000 students received hands-on
experience in current business software. In that time the security of no individual network was
corrupted and, although individual units did occasionally fail, lab redundancy was provided
such that no school was ever without lab resources due to network failure.
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