Case Study: Skegness Grammar School achieves significant cost-savings and improved stability with Ubuntu

Ubuntu delivers significant cost-savings for specialist sports school

Skegness Grammar School, a small selective specialist sports college of nearly 800 pupils with boarding for around 60, faced an ageing Novell and Windows 98 curriculum network in 2001. Upgrading to Windows 2000 and required Office software would have cost tens of thousands, so IT manager Alistair Crust sought a secure, robust, low-cost solution that would cause minimal disruption; a small, stable Linux setup in the boarding house pointed the way.

Alistair implemented Ubuntu across a new Linux network at roughly 30% of the cost of proprietary alternatives. Ubuntu now runs on 150 PCs (110 thin clients) providing OpenOffice, photo and graphics tools, mind-mapping, databases and CMS software; the school gained outstanding stability, servers handle peak loads, ITLab usage increased, and network manageability, complexity and maintenance time were all significantly reduced—delivering substantial cost savings.

Skegness Grammar School

Alistair Crust

Skegness Grammar School