Case Study: Niagara College Canada achieves modernized IT, better student experiences, and cost savings with VMware

Niagara College Modernizes It from the Data Center to the Desktop, Giving Students Better Experiences

Niagara College, a public college in Ontario serving over 10,000 full‑time students and thousands of part‑time learners, needed to modernize IT to give students better computing experiences, simplify operations, and keep costs predictable. The college faced extreme workload spikes during registration (up to 50x normal load), limited lab space, dispersed software, and a desire to scale without expanding data center footprint or headcount.

The college virtualized its servers with VMware vSphere, deployed 350+ virtual desktops with VMware Horizon (using Instant Clones and App Volumes) and replaced legacy storage with an all‑flash VMware vSAN cluster, plus thin clients in labs. The result: anywhere/anytime access to course software, desktop provisioning reduced from hours to ~15 seconds, the ability to redistribute capacity during registration spikes, halved open‑lab footprint, and lower CapEx/OpEx while scaling with the same IT team and improving uptime.

Niagara College Canada

John Levay

Chief Technology Officer