Case Study: Humber College achieves rapid virtualization and remote access to 300+ academic applications with Rackspace Technology (Onica) on AWS

Humber College fasttracks virtualization for remote students

Humber College, a Toronto-based institute serving about 30,000 students, faced an urgent challenge when COVID-19 closed its campuses: students suddenly lost remote access to more than 300 campus‑licensed academic applications that had only been available on on‑campus Windows workstations. The college needed a fast, secure way to restore access on any device so students could continue their programs with minimal disruption.

Working with AWS Premier Consulting Partner Onica (a Rackspace company), Humber accelerated its cloud PoC into production using Amazon AppStream 2.0 and supporting AWS services (VPC, Route 53, EC2, FSx, S3, IAM, Transit Gateway, etc.). The team stood up the first AppStream environment in 10 days, streaming 83 applications initially and targeting about 80% of apps by summer 2020. The deployment restored student access from anywhere, reduced reliance on physical labs and desktop provisioning, improved scalability and resilience, and lowered operating costs.

Humber College

Ryan Burton

Director, Digital Solutions