 Hi, this is Yoho Sakil Bhartiya, and welcome to TFR. Let's talk today. We have with us Dave Birmingham, director of customer success at SciOS Technology. Today's topic is empowering education, enhancing system availability. Let's look at, since COVID happened, there was an increase of tech-driven classroom more and more, not only K-12 schools, universities, my kids, they were all doing everything virtual. So talk a bit about, with this rise of technology-driven classrooms, how can, of course, unplanned system downtimes affect the modern students' learning experience, whether it's K-12 schools or universities? As you mentioned, especially with COVID, really accelerate the adoption of the technology-driven classrooms, and it's made education increasingly reliant on digital platform. So any unplanned system downtimes can significantly disrupt this modern learning environment, and particularly the K-12 schools and universities. So when systems fail, it not only leads to loss of valuable instruction time, but also hampers access to critical digital resources like e-books and online assignments and educational videos. The interruption can result in a cascading effect affecting the students' ability to keep up with the curriculum, which diminishes their engagement and potentially impacting their academic performance. This younger generation of students being digital experts that are particularly impacted as their learning experiences are deeply intertwined with technology. In the case of colleges and universities, what are some of the potential repercussions of, let's see, registration errors or delays due to system downtime during peak traffic seasons, which may not have directly to do with the actual back and forth interaction with the teachers, but just to get on that classroom? Having three kids in college myself at this present time, I know exactly the challenges they face. A lot of that is during the peak registration period, where my son is a senior that's like one class he has to get, and there might be 12 seats and 15 people trying to get in that class. So if the system's down during those peak registration periods, the colleges and universities can face a high risk of system overloads from potential downtime, because everyone's logging on exactly 6 AM on Monday morning, whenever they said that registration was going to open up. That downtime can lead to significant registration errors or delays, which can affect a large number of students and staff. And the implications range from students missing out on essential courses for their majors to delay or delays in our financial aid disbursements. And housing assignments is another big thing. Everyone wants to be in the best housing. So having downtime can certainly impact their ability to choose their housing. So those disruptions not only cause immediate stress and confusion, but can have also long term consequences affecting students' academic trajectories and financial situations. These situations can strain the institution's administrative resources and even tarnish its reputation for efficiency and reliability. Even if this rise of online courses and education picked during COVID time, but after that, what was realized that because of virtual learning, you can get access to a lot of university or you can get access to a lot of students, which may not be physically present there. So there has been a growing number of students who are participating in remote learning from different parts of the way. It doesn't really matter. And it's not just about universities. A lot of other specialized courses, even tech courses, you can become expert in Kubernetes or data protection. And you can do a lot of courses online. Talking about looking at this growth of students who want to leverage remote learning, what is the importance of 24-7 system availability so that, as we talked about earlier, some of the shortcomings are down side of downtime so that these students don't suffer irrespective of, once again, the demographics. The rise of remote learning to educational institutions, they now are catering to a diverse and a global student body. So that means that 24-7 system availability is more critical than ever. It's not just 9 to 5 at the university campus. It's 24-7 access to students in different time zones, require constant access to those learning materials in the virtual classrooms, and to support services to ensure a seamless educational experience. The downtimes in those systems can create significant barriers for international students, leading to an uneven educational opportunity and potentially impacting the institution's ability to maintain a truly global and inclusive education environment. So continuous system availability is not just a technological requirement, but a commitment to educational equality and accessibility for all students regardless of their geographic location. What are some of the major challenges that organizations face when it comes to balancing, cutting edge IT solutions, and, of course, budget constraint? I spent six years on my local school board as a school board member, so I know budgets at the local, you know, the K through 12 can be very, very, very strained. And there's always competition for, do we need new books for history this year, or some computers in the computer lab, or Chromebooks for the kids, or whatever it might be. But, you know, very often the high availability investment can sometimes be seen as a insurance policy, really, so it might not get the attention or it's not the shiny thing that people will see. But balancing the need for advanced IT solutions against budget constraints is a common challenge for all education institutions, whether it's K through 12 or your college level institutions. But having the cost of not investing in high availability and disaster recovery can be significantly higher than the initial investments. You think about the extended down times can lead to substantial direct and indirect losses. Those losses, again, include lost productivity, diminished student satisfaction, potential enrollment declines, and the damage to the institution's reputation. So investing in HA and VR solutions is a proactive strategy that, in the long run, can save institutions from the far greater cost and reputational damage associated with system failures and data losses. As critical as availability of the system, well, students are logged in, which is data. Today is not just institutions, almost everybody is storing vast amount of data. Some data is very, very sensitive. Can you also talk about the importance and potential risks if they are not ensuring data protection and high availability for this sensitive data? Yeah, so we're talking about data protection and high availability, kind of two different things, right? So of course you need to make sure your data is available and not lost and highly available. So the high availability and data protection kind of go hand in hand, but data protection itself in terms of protecting ants, your sensitive data, including personal information of students and staff and your academic records and financial details and the consequences of data breaches can be severe. So you want to make sure you have beyond availability solutions, some data protection solutions in place as well. Data protection can, you know, risk range from identity theft to privacy violations to legal repercussions and loss of the public trust. So in an era where data breaches are increasingly common, maintaining high availability and robust data protection is not only technical imperative, but also a critical component of its institutional responsibility and ethical governance for sure. The fact is that every system is not equally, systems are, they have different importance, but if you look at the tolerance for system downtime, does it vary between critical systems like learning management systems and other administrative systems? And if yes, what is that tolerance there? The tolerance for system downtime can vary significantly across the different types of systems in education. Critical systems, like you mentioned, learning management systems are integral to the teaching and learning process. Thus, you know, they require higher degree of reliability and minimal downtime. Any interruption in those systems can directly impact the course delivery and the student learning and the assessment process. Whereas, you know, other systems, maybe administrative systems are important for the smooth operation of the institution. They may be able to tolerate slightly longer downtime as they do not directly affect the immediate teaching and learning activities, but, you know, prolonged issues in these systems can still lead to significant administrative challenges and frustration among students. Typically, when you're planning your business continuity plans, you're gonna create different categories and put the systems in different categories in terms of what is your downtime tolerance and then make sure you plan whatever, you know, availability system you have in place to meet those levels of downtime commitments. How do you folks help these institutions, organizations to maintain a consistent and reliable learning environment as we talk about some of the challenges there, especially when, you know, we are relying more and more on digital tools and platforms. CIOs can play a crucial role in helping educational institutions maintain a consistent and reliable learning environment amidst the growing reliance on digital tools and platforms. So we provide high availability and disaster recovery solutions to ensure critical applications and data are protected against outages and disruptions. This protection is vital in educational landscape while increasingly dependent on digital resources where any interruption can have far-reaching impacts on both the educational processes and the institution's reputation. So with CIOs solutions, educational institutions can, you know, offer more resilient and dependable digital learning environments, which are essential for today's technology and driven integrated solution. Dave, thank you so much for taking time out today and talk about this topic. And as usual, I would love to chat with you again to discuss another topic related to high availability and data disaster recovery. Thank you. I'm sure.