5 Big Money-Making Opportunities For VARs In Education

Opportunities Abound In The Classroom

As schools become better connected and classrooms implement advanced electronic educational tools, solution providers are in prime position to make some serious money through service and solution offerings.

Brendan Reid, vice president of marketing at Boston-based WAN optimization specialist Exinda Networks, says the majority of schools have about the same bandwidth as the average home, making it difficult to harness advanced learning tools and connected classrooms. Solution providers are in the unique position to be able to provide offerings for bandwidth-strapped schools that bring them into the digital age.

Here are five problems facing schools today, and how VARs can build WAN optimization solutions to solve them.

Managed Wireless/Bandwidth Management Services

Problem: K-12 schools need to protect their valuable bandwidth. Educational activities and applications such as Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers testing and online distance learning are bandwidth-dependent and must be prioritized over other bandwidth-consuming uses, Reid said.

Opportunity: Managed bandwidth services can help K-12 districts segment, allocate and prioritize bandwidth based on the importance of applications, websites, user groups and location.

"It's critical that these K-12 and higher education institutions have a methodology that they can ensure will provide a good user experience across the board, but also guarantees that those applications that are absolutely critical to their core mission have the bandwidth needed to perform efficiently for the user community," said Steve Inman, president of VistaOne, a Richmond, Va.-based solution provider and Exinda partner.

Network Readiness Assessments

Problem: BYOD, distance learning and other new IT initiatives can place significant stress on the network. Implementing these strategies without testing the network impact first can lead to big problems.

Opportunity: Solution providers can identify network resources and simulate expanding traffic demands to model the impact of new IT services before they go live.

"That's a very critical requirement in something that our company does and we see a lot of growth and demand in that arena," said Inman. "Having all the infrastructure not just the network assessed for readiness to be able to handle a new application wherever it's delivered from is very, very critical."

Managed Services For Applications

Problem: K-12 districts look toward thin client applications to ensure quality network services across a diverse pool of student devices -- for instance, one student has a 4-year-old Android device and another has a brand new iPad.

Opportunity: Managed bandwidth and WAN optimization services can ensure thin client applications like Citrix always perform as expected.

"Applications that used to be housed and served up locally inside, from a campus data center, for example, they're all being delivered by a cloud utility," said Shannon Champion, business development manager at Jasper, Ind.-based solution provider Matrix Integration. "The main functionality that use to be accessed over a local area network [LAN] is now required to go out over the Internet. … So there's opportunity there [for VARs]."

Providing Technical Development Programs For Educators

Problem: While K-12 schools and districts are implementing a wide variety of technology solutions aimed at improving the quality of education, many have overlooked the importance of also training the educators to ensure that these solutions have the maximum positive impact.

Opportunity: Channel partners can provide value to educators and administrators in K-12 schools and districts through training and technology enablement to ensure that they get the most out of their classroom technology.

Network Use Policy Enforcement

Problem: As more K-12 schools embrace BYOD and offer more Internet access in the classroom, it is more challenging to enforce policies to ensure safe and equitable use of network resources.

Opportunity: K-12 schools and districts need visibility and granular control to help them build, implement and enforce network use policies for students, faculty and administrators by user, device, location and time of day.