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W hen the COVID-19 pan- demic scattered stu- dents back to their homes to begin dis- tance learning, Auburn University was faced with the challenge of providing remote access to on campus applications and data. The university, a nationally ranked land grant institution, is home to more than 30,000 students, fac- ulty and research partners. IT leaders at the university quickly realized that for classes to resume, a remote access so- lution was needed to connect students seamlessly to desk- top resources. They turned to Leostream, a vendor-agnostic platform that provides a com- prehensive and scalable solution for organizations to deliver and manage remote access securely to physical and virtual machines hosted on premises and in cloud environments. Challenges faced the Auburn University’s IT team. It looked to solve these by adopting Leo- stream as a remote access solu- tion. Because of the rapid nature of the pandemic’s change to learning environments, the team needed a solution that could be implemented quickly. It also sought a way to allow students to tap into the rich software re- sources at the university – such as Photoshop and AutoCAD – without loading individual licenses on each personal computer (a logistical, financial and technical dilemma). Like many organizations, Au- burn University also required a solution that would remain se- cure despite students, faculty and staff logging in from a variety of environments, and that would be scalable and flexible to suit their needs. Leostream delivered. Within the first month of the pandemic, several university departments implemented the technology company’s solution to manage student connections to lab work- stations and applications hosted on premises. Expedited Implementation Continuing with the academic curriculum hinged on a solution that could enable students to com- plete coursework while at home. The Samuel Ginn College of Engi- neering was first within the univer- sity to roll out Leostream’s solution. Shannon Price, the director of network services, and Jeffrey Hollis, the systems administrator, played integral roles in the deployment of the remote access solution. “With Leostream we were able to get up and running easily and provide dedicated, preferred machines for each engineering group. Our students had on- campus-like access to what they needed,” Price said. On another side of campus, Christopher Mixon, IT specialist for the university’s Media & Digital Resource lab, took a cue from the College of Engineering. “We were looking at what to do about developing a virtual envi- ronment for remote access and realized it would take two to three months to implement one due to testing and getting internal staff trained to manage it,” Mixon said. After learning about the quick turnaround time with Leostream, Mixon’s team deployed the plat- form for remote access connec- tions to the systems at the Library and IT Commons. “With Leostream, we had a far more turnkey solution, and within weeks of the students being sent home, they were live,” he said. Shortly after deciding to use Leostream, Mixon’s IT team had provided remote access to more than 5,000 undergraduate and graduate students to assist them in completing their homework and class assignments. Access to Large Apps For the College of Engineering and the Library and IT Commons, integrating a remote model with access to on-campus labs and By Karen Gondoly INTELLIGENCE Taking the Tigers Remote Leostreamfacilitatesstudents’remoteaccesstolargetechnicalapplications 16 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com