Education
If you have a relationship or do business with technology coordinators, technology directors, or academic computing managers, you already understand that educational environments often have limited resources and reduced budgets. Schools, colleges, and universities struggle to protect and maintain workstation assets. Faronics products provide solutions for these dynamic and challenging environments:
Deep Freeze significantly reduces software maintenance and insures continuous availability of scarce resources. Deep Freeze eliminates the need for IT professionals to perform rebuilds, re-image, or troubleshoot computers. For more information refer to our whitepaper Non-Restrictive Technology in Education - The Reboot-to-Restore Concept.
Faronics Anti-Executable prevents students from wasting valuable time and bandwidth using unauthorized programs such as: peer-to-peer file sharing software, instant messaging, or games. Environments concerned with AUPs and software compliance use Anti-Executable to automatically restrict users from running unauthorized programs.
Faronics Power Save offers a way to effectively balance the needs of facility managers to conserve energy (and save money) and the needs of IT professionals to guarantee computers are online for required maintenance and update tasks.
Macintosh computers make up approximately 20-30% of computers in education. Faronics is firmly committed to supporting the Macintosh platform as evidenced by Mac editions of Deep Freeze and Power Save and new products in our development pipeline.
Libraries
If you deal with library IT staff then you probably already know that library settings are among the harshest public-access computing environments to protect or maintain due to the dynamic nature of patrons. Libraries have a delicate balancing act between allowing patrons freedom to use workstations as they desire, ensuring workstation availability (and “cleanliness”), and protecting patrons’ private information. Faronics offer solutions that not only protect these computers, but also provide customized control options and enterprise scalability.
Deep Freeze automatically restores 100% functionality every time the machine is rebooted. This eliminates the need for IT staff to perform rebuilds, install patches, re-image, or troubleshoot problem computers while removing all traces of activity that occurred during previous user sessions. For more information refer to our whitepaper Non-Restrictive Technology in Computer Based Business and Services which includes a section on libraries.
Faronics Anti-Executable’s technology prohibits any unauthorized or unwanted programs from running, including software introduced via removable media or the Internet. Because Anti-Executable prevents any new executable from launching or installing, executable viruses and spyware (including zero-day attacks) will be permanently blocked without requiring definition file updates.
WINSelect provides the ability for administrators to turn a computer into a Kiosk-style workstation by locking down browser functions and Windows application settings. Administrators can selectively control third-party programs and Windows operating system features.
It is this type of security and control that will allow your Library customers to remain operable and reduce maintenance costs.
Embedded Systems
Hardware devices with embedded operating systems such as those used in healthcare and other industries need to be 100% reliable to meet the end-user’s expectations and decrease technical support incidents for the manufacturer. A perfect example of a Faronics customer using one of our products to protect their device is Volcano Corporation.
Volcano uses Deep Freeze as its primary security solution to ensure 100% availability of its state-of-the-art suite of interventional imaging tools that are used to diagnose and assess diseases of the coronary and peripheral vasculature. “Deep Freeze technology enables Volcano’s physician partners to remain confident that their valuable patient diagnosis and data will not be compromised, despite other uncertainties present in today’s computing environment,” said Joe Burnett, Associate Director of Marketing at Volcano
Corporation.
Deep Freeze provides 100% protection for Volcano’s equipment, ensuring uptime and guaranteeing immediate recovery.
In February 2006, Faronics and Volcano Corporation issued a joint press release announcing Deep Freeze Protects the Heart of Volcano Corporation’s Medical Devices.
If you have customers with similar systems, share the press release and introduce them to Deep Freeze today!
Retail & Hospitality
Do you have clients with public access computers in environments such as retail stores, hotels, Internet cafes, Boys and Girls Clubs, or other kiosk stations? Retail and hospitality environments present unique challenges and much like a school or library these are truly multi-user computing environments that often consist of a dangerous combination of innocent clickers and malicious users. Furthermore, there is always the risk of a virus infection or of a computer being invisibly set up as part of a distributed botnet.
Two common approaches to managing workstations in these environments are to either lock everything down as tightly as possibly or to repair problems as they are reported. Both approaches have problems such as placing too-severe restrictions on what end-users are able to do, inefficient allocation of IT resources, and inability to guarantee workstation availability.
Deep Freeze offers a much more flexible approach by allowing for a completely non-restricted environment while ensuring that all software and operating system problems are 100% “repaired” with a simple restart (including removal of any virus, spyware, or botnet). That’s why Deep Freeze is used by hundreds of hospitality companies around the world including Hilton Hotels, Holiday Inn, and others. In fact, Microsoft even protects the computers in their own visitor center with Deep Freeze!
For more information refer to our whitepaper Non-Restrictive Technology in Computer Based Business and Services.
Cities, Counties, and Law Enforcement
If cities, counties, law enforcement agencies, or other government offices and similar organizations are among your customers, you know that computer availability and security are of paramount importance. That’s why organizations such as the Los Angeles Police Department rely on Deep Freeze and Anti-Executable for the laptops deployed in officer patrol cars.
Tim Riley, the CIO and Bureau Chief of the LAPD sums up the benefits perfectly, “Deep Freeze and Anti-Executable are crucial to preserving an image determined for mission critical law enforcement systems used 24x7 to ensure reliability and security with minimal downtime and with the least reliance on IT personnel.”
For detailed information refer to our case study Deep Freeze, Faronics Anti-Executable, and the Los Angeles Police Department.
Training & Testing Labs
If you have business relations with clientele that operate training or testing labs you understand just how important consistency can be. Variables introduced as a result of inconsistent computers can produce costly delays and unusable data. Furthermore, the very nature of activities like software testing all but ensures computers will need to re-imaged regularly to maintain the standard system configuration.
With Deep Freeze, consistency is the name of the game. In fact, Deep Freeze has thrived in the education market because of its ability to provide a parallel environment regardless of user changes and corruption. No imaging required.
Many institutions use Deep Freeze Server to efficiently teach Windows 2000/2003 server administration to students. Students are free to experiment and make any desired changes without fear of misconfiguring the machines – a simple restart sets everything back to the baseline configuration. Other organizations such as Harley Davidson ensure 100% availability of their training lab computers with Deep Freeze.
Creating Bulletproof Computers
If you are in charge of deploying and maintaining a client’s standard operating environment, Faronics products are the perfect solution to lower your overall support incidents and costs. We call it the bulletproof computer – no matter what happens to a computer (hardware issues excepted), just reboot to go back to the exact original configuration.
Install Deep Freeze as part of a master image. If your client uses roaming profiles, no further configuration is required – all user data will be stored securely on the server and the rest of the computer will always be consistent, reliable, and trouble-free. If profiles are not stored on a server and user data needs to be retained, then some easy “mapping” is required. For technical details, refer to our whitepaper, Deep Freeze – Retaining User Data. We can assure you that the short amount of time spent mapping data now will more than pay for itself through saving time that otherwise would have been spent reconfiguring or repairing each computer.
In fact, Deep Freeze operates at such a low level that if you begin with a 100% defragmented hard drive, Deep Freeze will ensure that the hard drive remains 100% defragmented forever. That’s what we mean by bulletproof.
Citrix Environments
Do your clients operate in a Citrix thin-client environment? If so, you already understand the benefits such as shaving the costs of application management, enhancing access security, enabling faster and more effective disaster recovery, and extending the life of client hardware. However, the most glaring weakness in this environment is that there is now a single point of failure instead of a resilient distributed network of systems. That’s where Deep Freeze Server comes in – for a small cost it offers “five nines” reliability and uptime for your client’s software systems in exchange for a minute or two of downtime when the server is restarted.
For a real-world example of Deep Freeze Server’s benefits in a thin-client environment, refer to our whitepaper Faronics Deep Freeze Server and The Center: Orthopedic & Neurological Care & Research. |
