AppSense and Warwickshire Education Services partner to provide Kingsbury School with DataNow and improved ICT services

Daresbury, UK – October 1, 2013 – In a move designed to limit impact on teaching time, increase IT security and encourage more collaboration amongst students, Kingsbury School and Warwickshire Education Services have adopted AppSense DataNow technology. DataNow, which was rolled out earlier this year, provides students of the Diploma of Digital Arts with simple, secure access, synchronisation and sharing capabilities in order to access coursework files no matter where they are, without having to use troublesome and often unsecure portable memory devices.

Kingsbury School, in Warwickshire County, UK, with a student body of over 600, specialises in science and mathematics and has a progressive approach to the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the classroom. AppSense DataNow is currently being used to help connect students to the school network via the cloud and it has also enabled the secure sharing of data with multiple devices.

Implementing DataNow has enabled students to access projects from anywhere, virtually eradicated the time wasted on attempting to retrieve data or redoing the same work due to lost USB keys. It has also minimised the spread of malware throughout the school network. As a result more time could be devoted to teaching time and completing course work.

Anthony Lander, Senior Systems Engineer at Warwickshire Education Services said: “We needed a solution where an appliance could be built into a website that could offer a front end that was accessible to students through a browser. Keeping things as simple as possible for the students was essential as it had to be at least as easy as using a USB drive or they wouldn’t want to use it. It would also have to be simple enough for a member of the teaching staff to be able to manage on a day to day basis with as little fuss as possible. DataNow appeared to be the perfect fit so we spoke to AppSense about how we could implement it in the school for the new academic year.”

AppSense DataNow enables simple, secure access, sync and sharing of files, no matter where students or employees are located. DataNow’s unique approach does not require data migration or new storage and makes existing storage locations like file servers and Microsoft SharePoint easily accessible from any device, keeping users’ files in sync at all times. DataNow puts IT teams in complete control over where files are stored and provides granular policy control over how data is accessed.

Jon Rolls, VP of product management at AppSense, said: “People are becoming more mobile and workforces more dispersed than ever before. Providing secure and flexible access to data, no matter the location it is being accessed from, is a challenge increasingly faced by both education facilities and businesses. By adopting AppSense DataNow, Kingsbury School, has overcome many of these day-to-day challenges, and will ultimately be empowered to protect its ICT infrastructure, while ensuring that students get the most of their educational experience.”

ICT projects in Kingsbury School are run in conjunction with the Warwickshire Education Services’ ICT Development Service. Together with the ICT Development Service, the school assess its ICT requirements before implementing specific solutions to aid teaching and learning.

For more information about AppSense and DataNow, please visit: http://www.appsense.com/