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resources has been critical to maintaining a quality educational experience. “For the last 10 to 15 years, we’ve managed computer and dig- ital resource labs on campus for students to get work done,” Mixon said. “Our lab featured the latest software for students and staff to use, and when the pandemic hit, we were scrambling to get people the resources they needed to do their work.” Mixon explained that provid- ing access to the technology library’s riches became an imme- diate concern when the pandem- ic forced students to study re- motely. Particularly for students in programs such as Engineering and Architecture, access to large technical applications such as AutoCAD and Photoshop were a priority. He believed manually loading these large, resource- intensive applications on the laptops of each individual stu- dent and then having to manage those applications would have been nearly impossible. Hollis echoed this sentiment, especially when it came to han- dling software licenses. Some of the classes depend on access to applications, which were only available on lab computers. “We have these really expen- sive licenses for software that students can’t run on personal computers because they are so resource-intensive,” Hollis said. “This became a big issue when students weren’t on campus.” Prior to the pandemic, stu- dents came into the labs, but now they use Leostream to run the programs remotely. “Without being able to run these applications, a lot of class- es wouldn’t have been able to take place,” Hollis acknowledged. Out of the Box When the College of Engineering learned students were moving off- site, the IT department considered developing an in-house solution. “We started to write our own remote desktop, and we ran into problems with firewall and man- agement,” Price recalled. After experiencing issues with virtual private networks (VPNs) and Windows Remote Gateway, the college opted for Leostream. According to Price, the Leo- stream solution cost less than other virtual environments, needed no additional hardware to install and provided a “rock solid remote gateway and interface.” The students leverage an intui- tive portal to login and launch a workstation. That portal is made available remotely using the Leostream Gateway, a VPN-less remote access gateway that also provides a built-in HTML5 client for in-browser viewing that only requires internet connectivity. From the back end of the Leo- stream Platform, the University’s IT administrators have configured a variety of features to best manage authentication, desktop assign- ments and the monitoring of con- nections and resource usage. Security & Flexibility Hollis, who focuses on desk- top deployment and application delivery for engineering students on-campus and remotely, relies on the full functionality Leostream offers – particularly when it comes to security, onboarding students and managing resources. “The big draw for us is how Leo- stream brokers the connections,” Hollis said. “Some of the features that really sold us were the duo factor authentication, active directory integrations, and we wanted an efficient pooled ap- proach to desktop management — which is exactly what we got.” These elements allowed the IT department to onboard students quickly while also giving students a secure, user-friendly experi- ence. Duo-factor authentication ensured students could log in on their own computesr while keep- ing IT resources secure. Using an active directory in- tegration with Leostream auto- mated the process of onboarding the students. The college pro- grammatically maintains active directory groups for each course and major, so when a student is enrolled in a particular class, he or she automatically will get ac- cess to the labs and software they needed. This flexibility was enhanced with desktop pooling and policy options Leostream provides, which allow for dynamic desktop assign- ments. Rather than one-to-one assignments to machines, the university can create policies that help use resources better. The entire lab environment is available to students, but if a desktop has been idle, it can be timed out and released back to the pool for an- other student to use. The experience with the re- mote access solution has been so successful for Auburn University that Mixon and Hollis expect to continue to use it even when stu- dents fully return to campus. Mixon said Leostream provides options for students to work from anywhere on campus without physically needing to visit the technology lab. Hollis added that from a con- venience standpoint, there’s a benefit to students. Not only can they log in to lab workstations from anywhere with an internet connection, but they also can use their device of choice. “Right now, the labs are open to students 24/7, and they can work on projects from their own per- sonal computers,” Hollis explained. Auburn is in the early stages of determining how to integrate its remote access solution into its cur- riculum once students return to campus full-time. The IT teams are exploring creative ways to offer re- sources on campus in combination with the ability to log in remotely. J Karen Gondoly is the CEO of Leo- stream. 17 REMOTE WORK SOLUTIONS rwsmagazine.com